Vault Basics: What Parents and Gymnasts Should Know

Written by Aleena Zuberi · Approved by Sophina Dejesus · Published Aug 24, 2026 · 8 min read

Vault is the fastest event in gymnastics: the skill itself takes about two seconds from the gymnast's hands hitting the table to landing on the mat. Parents new to the sport often leave a first meet unsure exactly what they watched.

This guide covers the vault table, the terminology, and how requirements build level by level in USA Gymnastics' Development Program.

What Is Vault in Gymnastics

Vault is the shortest event in the sport: run, spring, push, fly, land. The gymnast sprints down a runway, hits a springboard with both feet, and uses that bounce to drive her hands onto a padded table. From there she blocks off the table with her arms and shoulders, launches into the air, and performs whatever combination of twists or flips the routine calls for before landing on a mat.

According to Britannica, the table itself is built for safety as much as performance:

• Table size: 95 cm wide by 120 cm long
• Table height: 125 cm (about 4 ft 1 in) for women, 135 cm for men
• Construction: heavy-duty galvanized steel with padding designed to spread the rebound evenly across the surface; a deliberate upgrade from the old vaulting horse, which had a narrower, less forgiving contact area
• Springboard: birchwood construction with chrome silicon steel springs, which is why a well-timed hurdle onto the board produces so much lift (NBC Olympics)

Runway length matters more than most parents expect. The full runway can stretch up to 25 meters, though a gymnast is not required to use the entire distance; younger or shorter athletes typically take fewer steps.

USA Gymnastics' apparatus specifications set the runway at 78 to 82 feet, and require a springboard height of 22 centimeters plus or minus 1.5 centimeters, measured to the highest point of the board. These numbers matter less to how a vault feels than to why a coach spends time on run mechanics before ever letting an athlete near the table.

Vault Families: Yurchenko and Beyond

Most women's gymnasts you'll see at a meet are performing some version of a Yurchenko vault. NBC Olympics explains the entry: a round-off onto the springboard, followed by a back handspring onto the table, then a release into the air where the twisting or flipping happens. It is an unusual approach compared to most gymnastics skills, since the gymnast moves backward onto the equipment instead of facing it head-on.

Men more commonly use Tsukahara-family vaults, a forward approach with a quarter or half turn as the hands contact the table, though both families technically exist for either gender. The vault's difficulty rating depends on what happens after the block. A simple layout earns far less credit than a vault with one, two, or two and a half twists layered on top of a salto, seen in vaults like the Amanar. Higher-difficulty vaults exist too, such as the triple-twisting Yurchenko and Simone Biles' Yurchenko double pike, but the Amanar remains one of the most common high-difficulty vaults gymnasts train toward.

Coaches introduce twisting vaults only once an athlete has the basic entry, block, and landing locked in, which is one more reason this isn't a skill sequence to piece together from a video at home. Progression on vault runs through a qualified coach, a spotting belt, and a mat stack, in that order.

One thing worth relaying to your gymnast directly: the run matters more than anything else on this skill. A choppy, uneven run kills more vaults than a bad block ever will. If her coach has her counting steps or marking hurdle spots with tape, that's not busywork. It's the part of vault that determines everything downstream of it.

How Vault Scores Are Calculated

Vault uses the same two-part scoring structure as every other women's artistic gymnastics event: an execution score and a difficulty score. Olympics.com breaks it down cleanly. Execution starts at a perfect 10.0, and judges subtract for things like bent knees in the air, a hop on landing, a step forward, or, the costliest error, a fall, which removes a full point.

Difficulty works in the opposite direction: it starts at zero, and points get added based on the specific vault attempted, since each one carries a preset value tied to its complexity.

At the elite level, bars, beam, and floor scores are built from a full routine of up to eight scored elements. Vault is judged on a single skill instead, at every level of competition. That single-skill format is part of why body control and a clean landing carry so much weight in the final number.

A gymnast who blocks well but lands with a big hop can lose more from execution than a less flashy vault performed with a stuck landing.

Vault Levels and How the Skill Set Builds

USA Gymnastics organizes its Development Program into three broad segments, and vault requirements climb through all three: Levels 1 through 3 are developmental, non-competitive or introductory in most gyms; Levels 4 and 5 are compulsory, meaning every gymnast at that level performs the identical routine; and Levels 6 through 10 are optional, where athletes and coaches build a personalized routine within the rules.

That structure plays out concretely on vault. According to level breakdowns published by BeamIQ

• Level 1: a straight jump onto a mat stack, no table, no springboard technique yet, just body position and a controlled landing
• Level 4: a front handspring over the vault table, the compulsory entry into table work
• Level 5: the same front handspring vault, judged on a distinct preflight phase and a powerful block off the table

Think of this progression less as a how-to and more as a way to understand what your gymnast's coach is building toward, level by level. A ten-year-old on Level 3 isn't behind schedule just because a teammate two years older is already vaulting with a twist.

Advancement itself is gated. USA Gymnastics requires gymnasts to hit a minimum mobility score at a sanctioned competition before moving up, and levels generally can't be skipped, with one exception: Level 6. That gate exists partly for scoring integrity and partly as a built-in safety check. A gymnast doesn't advance to harder vault skills without demonstrating she has the current level under control first.

Safety Basics Every Family Should Know

Vault landings are high-impact by design. That's the whole point of the springboard and the block. Overall injury rates in competitive gymnastics run in a comparable range for men and women, with one peer-reviewed study in Sports Health reporting roughly 9 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures for women.

That same research could not cleanly separate injury counts by individual apparatus, so it's worth resisting any blog or forum post that hands you a precise "vault causes X% of injuries" statistic. The data most researchers actually work with doesn't support that level of specificity.

What the research does support is prevention through structure. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a gradual increase in training intensity, proper skill progression rather than skipping steps, adequate warm-up, and consistent access to certified coaches and spotters.

On vault specifically, that translates to mat stacks before tables, spotting belts before independent attempts, and a coach who won't move a gymnast to a harder vault family until the current one is consistent.

Parents evaluating a program should ask two direct questions: how does the coaching staff introduce a new vault, and what does the landing surface look like during that introduction? The answers tell you more about a gym's safety culture than any marketing page will.

This article is for general information. It is not medical advice for your individual athlete. Talk to your pediatrician or a sports medicine provider about any pain, swelling, or injury rather than trying to diagnose it from an article.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a vault in gymnastics?

A gymnast sprints down a runway, punches off a springboard, and pushes off a padded table to fly into the air before landing on a mat. The entire skill takes about two seconds from board contact to landing, which is part of why it rewards raw power as much as technique.

How high is a gymnastics vault table?

125 centimeters, or about 4 feet 1 inch, for women's competition. Men vault at 135 centimeters. Both heights are set by international rule and don't vary by age group at the elite level, though club-level training tables can be lowered for beginners.

What is a Yurchenko vault?

It's the vault family most women's gymnasts use: a round-off onto the springboard followed by a back handspring onto the table, then a release into the air for twists or flips. Men more often use Tsukahara-family vaults, a forward approach with a turn onto the table instead.

Is vault the most dangerous gymnastics event?

No single event carries a clean "most dangerous" label in the research. Overall injury rates in women's competitive gymnastics run about 9 per 1,000 athlete-exposures, and most studies can't cleanly isolate vault from the other three events. Vault landings are high-impact, which is exactly why matting, coaching, and progression matter so much on this apparatus specifically.

What do judges look for on vault?

Body control in the air and a stuck landing. Execution starts at 10.0 and loses points for bent knees, hops, steps, or a hand touchdown; difficulty is added separately based on which vault family and how many twists or flips the gymnast attempts.

What age do gymnasts start vaulting?

Most programs introduce vault basics well before a child ever sees a real table, using mat stacks and springboards to teach the run and the block. Level 1, the entry point of USA Gymnastics' Development Program, starts with a straight jump onto a mat stack rather than a true vault, so the table itself comes later.

Where to Go From Here

Vault rewards a good run more than raw fearlessness, and that's easy to miss when all you see at a meet is the flip. The table, the springboard, and the level system all exist to build a gymnast up to that moment gradually, with matting and coaching at every step rather than trial and error.

If your gymnast is working through this apparatus right now, how gymnastics skills progress from level to level walks through the bigger picture across all four events, and uneven bars basics covers the grips, kips, and casts that make up the next apparatus most gymnasts learn.

For the full picture of what a season in the sport looks like, start with the youth gymnastics parent guide, or look into gymnastics programs built around this kind of level-appropriate progression.

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