Is Gymnastics the Hardest Sport? What the Rankings and Injury Data Show
Ask gymnasts which sport is the hardest and most will name their own. Ask a boxer, a wrestler or a hockey player and you’ll get a different answer. So is gymnastics really the hardest sport?
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No study can settle it, because “hard” covers several different things: how many athletic abilities a sport needs, how risky it is, how long its skills take to learn and how much training it takes. What the evidence does show is that gymnastics sits near the top on several of those measures without coming first on all of them. The best-known expert ranking put it eighth out of 60 sports. In a large study of US college sports, women’s gymnastics had the highest injury rate of any women’s sport.
This article is about artistic gymnastics, the Olympic sport with events such as vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor, pommel horse and rings. Rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline and the other types of gymnastics are separate sports with their own demands.
At a Glance
| What was measured | Source | Where gymnastics lands |
|---|---|---|
| Expert ratings of 10 athletic abilities across 60 sports | ESPN panel, 2004 | 8th overall; the top score for flexibility |
| Injuries per 1,000 practices and competitions in US college sports | NCAA Injury Surveillance Program, 2009–10 to 2013–14 (CDC report) | Highest rate of any women’s sport (10.4); men’s wrestling was highest overall (13.1) |
| Landing forces | Systematic review, 2024 | Can exceed nine times body weight, mainly on floor and vault |
| Training load of elite young gymnasts | One French national training centre, six seasons | About 30 hours a week on average |
Each of these answers a different question, so none of them can crown a “hardest sport” on its own. The sections below explain what each one shows and where its limits are.
Why There’s No Single “Hardest Sport”
Every “hardest sport” list has to decide what counts. A sport can be hard because it needs great endurance, because athletes take hits, because the skills are complex and take years to learn, or because one mistake can cause a serious injury.
Each of those yardsticks produces a different winner. Endurance favours sports like distance running and swimming, contact favours football and boxing, and flexibility favours gymnastics. Many online top-10 lists don’t say how they were made at all, which makes them opinion rather than evidence.
Two kinds of evidence are worth looking at. One is a structured expert rating, where the same panel scores every sport on the same scale. The other is injury surveillance, which counts injuries the same way across many sports.
Where Gymnastics Ranks in ESPN’s Sport Difficulty Study
The most quoted ranking comes from ESPN’s Page 2 in 2004. A panel of sports scientists and sports journalists scored 60 sports from 1 to 10 on ten abilities: endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude. The scores were combined into one “degree of difficulty” for each sport (FasterSkier, June 2004; Top End Sports).
| ESPN rank (2004) | Sport |
|---|---|
| 1 | Boxing |
| 2 | Ice hockey |
| 3 | American football |
| 4 | Basketball |
| 5 | Wrestling |
| 6 | Martial arts |
| 7 | Tennis |
| 8 | Gymnastics |
| 9 | Baseball/softball |
| 10 | Soccer |
Gymnastics finished eighth (Live Science). It received the panel’s highest flexibility score, a perfect 10, ahead of diving and figure skating (Top End Sports).
Read the list as informed opinion, not measurement. It reflects what one panel thought in 2004, it didn’t rate men’s and women’s versions of a sport separately, and Top End Sports notes that it may lean toward American sports. It is still the best-known attempt to compare sports on one scale, and it doesn’t put gymnastics first.
How Gymnastics Injury Rates Compare
Injury rates measure risk, not difficulty. They are, though, the most consistent numbers available for comparing sports side by side.
The largest comparison comes from the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program, which tracks injuries in US college sports. A CDC report covering the 2009–10 to 2013–14 seasons counted injuries that happened in an organised practice or competition and needed care from a doctor or athletic trainer. Rates are given per 1,000 athlete-exposures. One exposure is one athlete taking part in one practice or one competition.
| College sport (2009–10 to 2013–14) | Injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures |
|---|---|
| Men’s wrestling | 13.1 |
| Women’s gymnastics | 10.4 |
| Men’s ice hockey | 9.5 |
| Men’s football | 9.2 |
| Men’s basketball | 8.5 |
| Women’s soccer | 8.4 |
| Men’s soccer | 8.0 |
| Women’s basketball | 6.5 |
| Women’s swimming and diving | 1.8 |
Women’s gymnastics had the highest overall rate and the highest practice rate (10.0) of any women’s sport. It wasn’t the highest of all sports, though. Men’s wrestling was, football had by far the highest rate in competition (39.9), and women’s soccer had the highest competition rate among women’s sports (17.2).
A later study of NCAA women’s gymnastics, covering 2014–15 to 2018–19, found 8.0 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures. Injuries were more frequent in competition than in practice, and concussion was the most commonly reported specific injury (Chandran et al., Journal of Athletic Training, 2021).
What the elite youth data adds
College gymnasts are adults. A 2023 study in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine followed 43 elite female gymnasts aged 10 to 19 at one French national training centre over six seasons. On average, about 91% had at least one injury needing medical attention each season, with 2.6 injuries per gymnast per season, or 1.8 injuries per 1,000 hours of training. The knee, elbow and ankle were the most common sites.
That is one small group at one centre, counted per hour of training rather than per session, so its figures can’t be set against the college table or read as a rate for every gymnast. For young gymnasts in general, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) singles out wrist pain, stress fractures in the lower spine and ankle sprains as common, and notes that knee injuries are seen too (HealthyChildren.org).
Why Gymnastics Is So Demanding
The ranking and the injury data point to the same features that gymnasts and coaches describe.
Many abilities, many events
The AAP describes gymnastics as building strength, flexibility, balance and coordination, and a single routine can call on all four within seconds. ESPN’s panel rated no sport higher for flexibility.
Gymnasts also have more than one event to master. Women’s artistic gymnastics has four apparatus and men’s has six, each with its own skills (see the four women’s and six men’s events). An all-around gymnast trains every one of them.
Hard landings and rising difficulty
A 2024 systematic review in the Science of Gymnastics Journal found that peak landing forces in gymnastics can exceed nine times body weight, mainly on floor and vault.
At the elite level, difficulty has no ceiling. World Gymnastics (formerly FIG), the sport’s international federation, uses an open-ended difficulty score, so the hardest routines keep getting harder. The highest-valued women’s vault in the current WAG Code of Points 2025–2028, the Yurchenko double pike, is worth 6.40 (p. 68). Our guide to the hardest vaults ever performed has the full list.
Gymnasts perform alone, and mistakes are expensive. Under the FIG women’s Code, a fall costs 1.00 from the execution score, and a coach physically helping a gymnast through a skill in competition costs 1.00 as well (WAG Code, pp. 36–37). In training it is the opposite: spotting by a trained coach is a normal safety measure, and the AAP lists it among the things a safe gym provides.
Training while still growing
Much of a gymnast’s training happens during childhood and the teenage years. A 2025 review of what causes gymnastics injuries notes that rapid growth, roughly between ages 9 and 14, makes young gymnasts’ bones and joints more vulnerable. The elite gymnasts in the French study averaged about 30 hours of training a week.
Gymnastics vs. Football, Soccer, Swimming and Cheer
Head-to-head comparisons only work where the same method covers both sports. This table puts the two sources above side by side.
| Sport | ESPN rank (2004) | College injury rate, overall (per 1,000 exposures) | College injury rate, competition |
|---|---|---|---|
| American football (men) | 3 | 9.2 | 39.9 |
| Gymnastics (women) | 8 | 10.4 | 13.2 |
| Soccer (women) | 10 | 8.4 | 17.2 |
| Swimming and diving (women) | Not in the top 10 | 1.8 | – |
Football ranked five places above gymnastics in ESPN’s study. Its overall college injury rate was a little lower than women’s gymnastics, but its competition rate was three times higher, as you’d expect in a collision sport. Women’s soccer showed the same pattern on a smaller scale. Swimming is an endurance sport with almost no impact. Men’s swimming and diving had the lowest injury rate of any college sport tracked (1.7), and the women’s rate was almost the same (1.8).
Cheerleading isn’t in either data set, and we found no study that compares cheer and gymnastics using the same method. The AAP’s 2024 policy statement on cheerleading says cheer’s overall injury rate is two to three times lower than girls’ soccer or basketball, but stunting is involved in nearly 70% of high school cheer concussions (NPR, October 2024).
How Much Do Gymnasts Train?
Training hours vary enormously. Elite gymnasts in national programmes can train around 30 hours a week, as the French study shows. A child in a weekly recreational class trains a tiny fraction of that.
For children and teenagers, the AAP suggests training no more hours each week than the child’s age in years, taking 1 to 2 rest days every week and having at least 2 to 3 months off a year, which can be split into one-month breaks (HealthyChildren.org, 2024). These are upper limits, not targets. On its gymnastics page, the AAP also links burnout to long hours, year-round training and specialising at a very young age. If you’re weighing extra sessions for a young gymnast, our guide on whether a child is ready for more training covers what to look at.
The AAP’s checklist for a safe gym includes trained coaches, proper spotting, sensible gym rules, the right equipment and an emergency plan. Flips belong in that setting, not in the backyard. The AAP advises keeping children off trampolines except where there are professional coaches and specialised equipment. For families who do have one, it says no flips or somersaults, because these cause the most serious neck, head and back injuries (HealthyChildren.org).
Common Questions
What is the hardest sport in the world?
There is no agreed answer, because it depends on what you measure. In ESPN’s 2004 expert ranking of 60 sports, boxing came first, followed by ice hockey and American football.
Is gymnastics the hardest sport for girls?
No ranking rates girls’ sports separately. Among US college women’s sports, gymnastics had the highest injury rate in the 2009–10 to 2013–14 NCAA data. Injury risk isn’t the same thing as difficulty, but no other women’s college sport was higher on that measure.
What is the hardest Olympic sport?
There is no official ranking of Olympic sports by difficulty. The ESPN list mixes Olympic and non-Olympic sports, and gymnastics came eighth on it.
Is gymnastics harder than football?
It depends on the measure. ESPN’s panel ranked football higher (third against gymnastics’ eighth). Women’s college gymnastics had a slightly higher overall injury rate than college football, but football’s injury rate in games was three times higher.
What is the hardest high school sport?
No official body ranks high school sports by difficulty. The studies in this article cover college and elite athletes, so use them as a guide to each sport’s demands rather than as a high school ranking.
The Short Version
Gymnastics can’t be proven to be the hardest sport, and the best-known ranking puts it eighth. It is still one of the most demanding: it earned the top flexibility score in that ranking, women’s gymnastics had the highest injury rate of any women’s college sport, landings can exceed nine times body weight, and serious training often starts while children are still growing. If “hardest” means needing the widest mix of strength, flexibility and control, gymnastics has a strong case. If it means collisions or endurance, other sports come out ahead.