A bluffer's guide to artistic gymnastics: Parallel bars

If you see someone wandering up and down the bars on their hands and you’re thinking ooh that’s clever, surely a bonus point. No, no. Judges see that as being out of control and off-balance and will deduct marks accordingly. So instead of, ‘oh, cool’, shake your head knowingly, and mutter, ‘oh dear’.

Parallel bars is one of six pieces of apparatus for the men. The routine, which takes place on two horizontal bars 3.35 metres long and about two-metres high, is filled with dramatic pauses and bicep bashers. More on those later.

Prior to mounting the p bars – the shortened form used by the gymnastics community – gymnasts pause to take a breath. The longer the pause, the better your routine should be, as you’re building up expectation from both judges and fans alike.

Once on, a series of strength-based moves to handstand, and swing moves to handstand, mostly between the bars, but sometimes sideways on, must be performed, keeping an immaculately straight bodyline throughout. To dismount you swing your body off the side, do a double somersault of some description before landing in a waft of chalk that rises from the mat where you’ve just stuck a perfect landing... hopefully.

Another dramatic pause is required if your routine was really good – or you’re trying to encourage the judges that it was really good – before slowly turning to present to the judges with a big did-you-see-that grin.

Let’s take a little look at exactly what is being talked about here with a showcase routine from China's LI Xiaopeng and his Olympic gold medal-winning routine from Beijing 2008.

Dramatic pause at the beginning – tick; legs locked neatly together throughout – tick; rotation on one bar – tick; flying from one length of the bar to the other – tick; swing to handstand, forward and backward somersaults between the bars, good pacing – tick, tick tick. Finished with a dramatic pause in handstand before the dismount, which is… argh… not quite perfect but he does ‘kick out’ of the double pike and creates a good waft of chalk on landing, so this still warrants a dramatic pause, before turning to the judges and receiving a huge score of 16.45 for his troubles.

So what does it actually feel like to go through a world-beating routine. Tokyo 2020 asked current parallel bars world champion, Joe Fraser, for his thoughts. The Brit won the title at the 2019 world championships in Stuttgart, Germany.

What to look out for

So, these ‘bicep bashers’, the term coined by our friend Fraser, takes little describing. The picture below of People's Republic of China's YOU Hao - an excellent gymnast in his own right - says it all. Basically on completing somersaults on the apparatus the only place to catch on the bars to stop you from falling is your upper arms, which is why many gymnasts wear padding on those areas. However, if you’re slightly offline like You here, you can also get friction burn as your skin comes into contact with the apparatus... alongside the ever-present bruising from repetitive practice. So that’s fun.

The second photo shows sideways work on p bars with Russia Olympic Committee's Artur Dalaloyan showcasing the much less painful press to handstand... unless you get it wrong that is.

Scores on all apparatus are made up of an execution score (the E score) and the difficulty score (the D score). Both marks are shown to viewers, so for fans of the old-school perfect 10 scoring system, check out the E score. This starts at 10 and marks are removed by judges for loss of form such as toes that are not pointed or a fall from the apparatus. Xiaopeng’s E score in the parallel bars performance above was 9.55.

The D score is the total marks calculated by judges from the value given to each move performed by the gymnast via a Code of Points, which is renewed every Olympic cycle. Xiapoeng’s D score for the routine above was 6.9.

What to expect in the parallel bars apparatus final

Any apparatus final tends to be a free-for-all in terms of those winning medals, so expect emotional moments from unexpected winners. Many of the top gymnasts will have already competed over three days in the qualifiers, the team event, and individual all-around competitions, so start to get weary by the latter stages of the nine-day event.

This is when the apparatus specialists step up, those who focus on one or two events only, and some of the lower profile gymnastics nations come to the fore. Some gymnasts have literally just qualified for Tokyo 2020 for one apparatus, via various events and World Cups leading up to the Games. Their country may not have even have qualified a team. So for them, it’s all or nothing in the qualifiers, trying to make the top eight. If they make a mistake, that’s it, Games over.

China’s ZOU Jingyuan will be looking to make up for the error that cost him the opportunity to try to claim a third world title on the apparatus in 2019, when he made a mistake on his favourite apparatus in qualifying and failed to make the final. The stunning routine below is from the 2018 world championships parallel bars final in Doha. When you see gymnasts from other countries clapping and smiling at the routine they’ve just seen, even if it does them out of a medal, you know it’s a good one.

Ah now, Artur Dalaloyan, he of the sideways example above. The Russian Olympic Committee athlete would have been a sure-fire challenger to compatriot Nikita Nagornyy at Tokyo 2020 in the all-around event if he hadn’t torn his Achilles’ tendon ahead of the European Championships in April. Now, despite having surgery on the injury and expected to return to full fitness next month, it’s likely Dalaloyan will compete on only a few pieces of apparatus – the ones that don’t require much footwork – and parallel bars is one of those.

And, if he’s not doing all apparatus, the less tired he’ll be than other gymnasts coming in to the apparatus finals. So an emotional pulling-on-the-heartstrings possibility of a medal here for the 25-year-old. He also appears to be working on some new moves in the gym, which appear to defy the laws of gravity…

The men's parallel bars final takes place on the final day of the artistic gymnastics competition, on Tuesday 3 August. The artistic gymnastics qualification starts on Saturday 24 July 2021. Next up in the weekly bluffer's guide to artistic gymnastics series, is the uneven bars, published Tuesday 29 June.

See more from the series, which so far covers vault, floor, pommel horse, beam and rings.