Floor (gymnastics)

In gymnastics, the floor is a specially prepared exercise surface, considered an apparatus. The floor exercise (English abbreviation FX) is the event performed on the floor, in both women's and men's artistic gymnastics (WAG and MAG). The same floor is used for WAG FX and MAG FX, but rules and scoring differ; most obviously, a WAG FX routine is synchronised to a piece of recorded dance music, whereas MAG FX has no musical accompaniment. A spring floor is used in all gymnastics to provide more bounce and help prevent potential injuries to gymnasts' lower extremity joints due to the nature of the apparatus, which includes the repeated pounding required to train it. Cheerleading also uses spring floors for practice. The sprung floor used for indoor athletics is designed to reduce bounce.