While it has always been widely known that gymnasts often develop close friendships, especially when they have reached the team level, a 1996 scientific study by Wiess, Smith and Theeboom investigate the topic in depth.

How To Win Friends
One of the interesting aspects of the study is that it points the way for how gymnasts can actively take steps build and maintain close friendships and relationships on their gymnastics team or in their gymnastics program.

Only Other Gymnasts Can Really Understand You
Gymnastics is such a specialized sport that often the only ones who understand the amount of work and difficulty of what gymnasts are doing and the specifics of the sport are other gymnasts.  Even parents often don’t understand just what their gymnasts are going though.

Only Gymnasts and Coaches Really Understand the Sport
The rules of the sport are complicated and the number of skills and combinations so numerous that friends outside the gym and parents often cannot understand the intricacies and complexities of the sport enough to be able to keep up in a gymnastics conversation.

No Time To Waste
The amount of hours many gymnasts spend in the gym often isolates them from their school mates and friends outside the gym and keep them from participating in the perhaps less important but more common social activities like going to the mall, talking on the phone and hanging out.

Learn How To Build Friendships in the Gym
This makes gym friendships important for gymnasts to develop and maintain.  It is also very likely that a good number of the friends a gymnast has will be other gymnasts. It can be useful and instructive to know the dimensions of gym friendships and to know what steps can take to build and maintain them. 

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