Other forms: gymnasts. A gymnast is a person who trains in and practices the sport of gymnastics. If you become a gymnast, you'll learn to walk and jump and even do cartwheels on a balance beam. Athletes who participate in gymnastics are gymnasts.

The term gymnastics, derived from a Greek word meaning “to exercise naked,” applied in ancient Greece to all exercises practiced in the gymnasium, the place where male athletes did indeed exercise unclothed.

a. : physical exercises designed to develop strength and coordination. b. : a competitive sport in which individuals perform optional and prescribed acrobatic feats mostly on special apparatus in order to demonstrate strength, balance, and body control.

'Gymnastics is a sport that includes exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination and endurance,” according to Wikipedia. Merriam-Webster agrees, calling gymnastics a 'physical exercise designed to develop strength and coordination.”