Why don't do Rhythmic Gymnasts do Flips?

The story of our life. Every rhythmic gymnast has heard the famous question: "Can you do a flip?". And when we tell people that not really, they get very confused. They might say, "I thought you did gymnastics?", "What about the bars?" or the worst one of them all: "That's right, you do the dancing with the ribbon!"

Whether you are one of those who has asked these questions before or one of those who had to answer it, this post is for you. We will explain what rhythmic gymnastics is, the differences between rhythmic and artistic and how they cannot be compared. Going through all the details we will answer the big questions, why don't rhythmic gymnasts do flips?

Although it seems like a straight forward question to answer there is more than one answer to this, starting with the most obvious one, flips are a skill that belongs to ARTISTIC gymnastics, a completely different discipline. Artistic gymnastics is a discipline with many skills done in the air performed on asymmetric bars, balance beam, floor, or vault -for women-; and it has a completely different set of rules (all stated in their own Code of Points). They aim for different executions with flights (aka flippy things).

Rhythmic gymnastics, on the other hand, is a discipline that requires the gymnast to perform