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Video: Inside the World Gymnastics with Beth Tweddle (UK only)

The European Championships, in May this year, saw the last major marker laid down by the British men and women. There, they wrapped up silver medals in both the men's and women's team events, making European champions of Tweddle and Keatings in the process.

As a result this year would have been incredibly successful even without winning medals in Rotterdam, and it is further evidence of the sea change in the fortunes of British gymnasts that nobody stopped after May. Instead, medals kept coming off the production line in October.

For Tweddle to do it is one thing. She has long since proved herself a one-off, a genuinely world-class British talent from a generation where she was alone in meriting that description, now operating as the leading light in a team of them.

For the British men's team to produce silver and bronze in a World Championships, without the help of their world silver medallist from 2009 - not to mention qualifying in fourth place for the men's team final, the first they have ever reached, having been 15th three years ago - is off the gymnastics radar. Few, if any, teams have matched that stratospheric rise in gymnastics history.

Not only that, what was effectively a 'B' team was dispatched to the Commonwealth Games, where some of the younger talents saw off more experienced Australian rivals, the same Australians now competing for world medals in the Netherlands.

Imogen Cairns graduated from double Commonwealth glory to the British women's team at the Worlds, and prodigious talents like and Reiss Beckford are waiting in the wings on the men's side. Oldham will certainly compete in this event next year.

The reasons why this strength has emerged, and in such numbers, are manifold: a change in the way British Gymnastics is structured, a change in coaching strategies, Tweddle's game-changing foray into the medals at world events, and even the gradual weakening of other nations (witness the slow decline of Romania and other former Eastern Bloc nations, such as the Ukraine and Belarus).

All play a part in the rise of the British gymnast, and I wrote a blog focusing on Britain's sudden emergence in the aftermath of their European success.ÌýBut the likes of Tweddle and Smith will not be dwelling on what got them here as they move on from Rotterdam; they will be plotting where they go next, and how they convert World Championship success into Olympic medals in two years' time.

When it comes down to determining who wins those medals, scoring in gymnastics is based on two factors - difficulty and execution.

It doesn't matter how well you perform, and how high your execution score subsequently is,Ìýyour routine must be of sufficient difficulty, because the two scores are added together for your final total.

In order to compete with the best in the world, Britain's finest are therefore engaged in a constant search for new manoeuvres, grips, flips and tricks which will up that difficulty score (as decided by the judges) and boost their overall tally.

However, the reverse also applies. It's pointless having a high difficulty score if your routine proves so difficult, you can't actually do it.

So there is a fine balance to strike, but it's one the British seem to be broadly getting right - to the point where Tweddle, the new uneven bars world champion, and pommel horse silver medallist Smith are keeping their best stuff in the locker for 2012.

They are refusing to let anyone see their ultimate routines until there's an Olympic medal on the line.

"I pushed up the difficulty here but I'm saving some of my top-secret stuff for the Olympic Games," 21-year-old Smith, who brims with confidence even when he hasn't just stepped off the world podium, told me.

"There's no point me doing my hardest routine now - I'll increase it next year, then by 2012 I'll have a massive start score. I can do it now but I don't want to do it too early, otherwise people will be able to copy it and beat me."

Smith's nemesis is Hungarian , a 25-year-old who has had the Huntingdon gymnast's number since they first started competing together. Once again it was Berki frustrating Smith in Rotterdam, winning the gold by a tenth of a mark.

"When I hit my routine and finished I was praying to be in first place, I've never been able to pip Berki," said Smith.

"But in two years' time we'll all be smashing out bigger, better routines and hopefully getting more medals."

Cynical observers may argue that Tweddle was handed her gold medal on a plate as two Chinese gymnasts, both of them not so much nailed-on for medals as welded to them, engaged in what gymnastics fans are inclined to call a "splatfest".

First, top qualifer - easily the favourite - fell from the bars, and she was joinedÌýmoments later by compatriot Huang Qiushuang, in the gymnastics equivalent of both Manchester United and Chelsea being relegated.

That left the path clear for Tweddle, who first won this title in 2006 (and won the floor title in 2009), to take the gold medal. Which makes it sound easy, but you still have to produce one of the best routines in the world to do it in an eight-woman final.

However, Tweddle isn't satisfied despite the gold medal and still has more up her sleeve, having chosen to stick to the "easy" routine this week.

"I decided before I came out here that I wasn't going to put the new dismount out," she told me, referring to the end of her bars routine, where she can choose from easier or harder finishes.

"I had a week's illness before I got here and that lost a bit of training for me. It was easier to play safe and luckily it paid off.

"There are skills that I'm working on back home which weren't quite ready, like the dismount, and maybe a couple of other combinations. I'll probably take some time to get those new connections ready for next year.

"But if you start putting too many new things in it affects the consistency, and that's one thing I feel like I have on my side. For this year I haven't upgraded my routine, but by 2012, there will definitely be an upgrade."

Tweddle knows that upgrade is vital. It's impossible to say where the gold medal would have gone had both He and Huang remained on the bars, but few observers would have been able to look beyond them, and Tweddle is well aware. Having failed so utterly with so much at stake, the Chinese duo will come back with even more firepower next time, and the Liverpudlian must prepare for that. She cannot rely on lightning striking twice in 2012.

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Video: Beth Tweddle's guide to the uneven bars

While one or two elements may materialise for 2011, that is why you will have to wait until 2012 to see Tweddle, Smith and their team-mates truly push the envelope. Meanwhile, all these new components will be fine-tuned behind closed doors - Smith joked about banning video cameras from training at his base in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

But secret weapons can wait for another day. The rest of the weekend will be devoted to a celebration of their achievements in Rotterdam, judging by the smiles on show as the team were interviewed, medals around their necks.

Paul Hall, the men's coach responsible for masterminding the ascent of Smith and Keatings among others, returned to the mixed zone (where reporters are allowed to mingle with the gymnasts) after Tweddle's gold medal, even with none of his charges present, just to savour the atmosphere.

"It's getting better and better," he said. "On the men's side it's no longer just Louis and Daniel, it's Dan Purvis and the others, the stage is set for 2012. We're making slow, steady progress and getting some great results, we've just got to hold it together."

Tweddle added: "The team spirit is so good. I was trying to warm up at the same time as Louis was performing, but (fellow gymnast) Imogen Cairns was keeping me updated. Three-two-one, you can't ask for more than that."

It's down to Cairns to sound a warning. She knows full well that upping your difficulty can be, well, difficult. After finishing last in the women's vault final, she heads back to the drawing board in a different frame of mind.

"As soon as I get back in the gym I've got to up my vaults, they're too easy now," said the 21-year-old.

"It's not like we haven't been trying to up them. We have for a couple of years, it's hard. But we've got to push now."

Tweddle, Smith and Cairns are under no illusions. They all need to push, because you can guarantee every other gymnast here - not least the two Chinese gymnasts who fell from the bars and were then sent, tears streaming, through the mixed zone - is going home determined to come up with something better.

By the time we reach July 2012 everyone will reveal their secrets, but only one (in each event, at least) will turn out to have the secret to success.