Wimgym helps children love movement

No, her grand passion is for running, jumping, climbing and hanging, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Every Sunday morning, my wife, daughter and I pile into the car, wait an inordinate amount of time to turn south on St. Charles Boulevard at the exit off Highway 20 and exit in front of an old Canadian Tire store at the quiet end of Beaconsfield Shopping Centre.

Our destination is Wimgym, and it’s a trek generations of parents before me have been lucky enough to have made for their kids, and it’s one I’m eternally grateful I chose to make for my little girl.

Every week, for 45 minutes, my little one bounces, climbs, hops, twirls, crawls and flips her way to a red face and a big smile. The best part? It’s something she looks forward to every week, with an excited yell and two raised arms.

She’s not yet three, so she’s too young for the kindergym format, but week after week, she and daddy make their way into the Munchkins class where her new hero, also known as Coach Erin, runs the kids through a circuit of gymnastic activities before we start the most difficult — for parents, anyway — portion of the class, which involves sitting in a circle.

Both parents and kids are asked to get up and down several times off the floor during the co-operative aspect of the circle games

‘Sounds tough,’ you’re muttering to yourself. ‘Sitting in a circle. Sure.’

You say that, but until you’re a thirtysomething ex-football player with bad knees and arthritis, you have no idea.

So give it a rest, OK, honey? Women can be so difficult.

From this cloud of pain for dad, however, emerges the silver lining of my kid learning to love exercise, movement and everything else that goes along with it. After the initial socialization process in the circle, the kids and their parents are allowed off on their own for the last 25 minutes of class, with the kids having the run of Wimgym’s back gym and its plethora of trampolines, springboards, rings, bars and apparatuses. It’s a dream come true for kids — and even for some parents, because Coach Erin reminds everybody that parents are forbidden to use the equipment while their kids are playing with it.

Fair enough, but I still maintain that I jumped off the uneven bars into the pit full of foam by accident and there was no en-joyment in it for me at all.

At the end of the class, my daughter is sufficiently jazzed by the whole process that, as we’re getting dressed to leave, she imme-diately inquires as to the time and date of her next visit.

‘We haven’t even left yet. We’re still at Wimgym.’

In all seriousness, though, the Wimgym experience is one more kids should get to enjoy. The place is a kid’s dream, with mats, springboards, vaults and other awesomely cool contraptions that immediately make adults’ joints ache by the mere thought alone.

Maybe if more parents were to show their kids exactly how much fun all that movement can be, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic among the country’s children. Basically, it’s the anti-video game, and the more users there are, the better off they’ll be.쇓