Per Henrik Ling in Sweden elaborated techniques of gymnastic train that were finally adopted by school systems in Britain, the United States, and Japan. These noncompetitive alternate options to trendy sports also flourished in eastern Europe in the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among repressed ethnic peoples such as the Poles and Czechs, gymnastics turned virtually a lifestyle. For them, gymnastic festivals have been grand occasions at which tens of hundreds of disciplined women and men demonstrated nationalistic fervour. In 1988, for instance, the German Democratic Republic , with a inhabitants of some 16 million, outscored…