I am five foot and five inches and am the tallest person on my high school gymnastics team. http://teens.lovetoknow.com explains that the average height of a teenage girl between the ages of 16 and 17 is 64 inches, 5 feet and 4 inches. On this scale, I am about average. My question is whether gymnastics just attracts short people because the sport is easier when one is small or does it Stunt one’s growth?

LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 31: Alexandra Raisman of the United States of America competes on the balance beam in the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s Team final on Day 4 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at North Greenwich Arena on July 31, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Sports injury bulletin explains a study performed in Australia where they measured the “height, sitting height, leg length, lengths and breadths of the humerus, radius, femur, and tibia, diet, serum insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), testosterone, and cortisol in pre-pubertal and early pubertal gymnasts and similar-aged, normally active non-gymnasts”. At the end of an eighteen-month period, they found that there was no difference between the two groups. An explanation for this could be that rather than gymnastics stunting people’s growth, it is small people who chose to do the sport. Tall people know that they are at a serious disadvantage when competition against one who is smaller. Most people did gymnastics as one point in their childhood but maybe it is only those who were smaller who continued because they were the ones succeeding in the sport.

The same article explains the other side of the question too. It looked into the skeletal age of some gymnasts, which is the measure of the maturity of our skeleton that can be the same, less or more than our real age. It showed that most gymnasts have a bone age of their actual age, which is very normal, in child hood. It isn’t till late adolescence when their bone age begins to slow down and is not caught up to their real age. Some people believe that this is because of the extremely strenuous exercise gymnasts due during puberty.

One other explanation for gymnast’s heights being generally lower than non-gymnasts could be damage to the growth plates. Tumbling put immense pressure on the body and the forearms. Doing this often could definitely have a permanent on effect on the distal radius.