Monday 17 December 2018

Gymnastics (and the gym)

For the past two years, Mulan and Miya have been attending a gymnastics class for homeschoolers at our local YMCA.  It has been brilliant for them, and I highly recommend it.

Recently, the teacher pulled me aside and suggested that Mulan has outgrown the class.  (The class is theoretically for up to 12-year-olds, but even Miya is one of the biggest there.)  The teacher was very nice about it, and suggested that Mulan do an after-school class.

Unfortunately, our after school times are almost completely booked up with ballet these days.  I don't want to add another after school activity.

So, I checked out the North Harbour Gymnastics website, and happily they have a class at one of our few remaining free times -- Sunday mornings.  Their final class of the year was yesterday morning, so we all went along to check it out.  It looks really good, so we have booked Mulan in to start there in term 1 of next year.

(Our main comment was that some of the coaches look so young -- one boy's voice hadn't even broken yet.  While they may be good gymnasts, we doubted the teaching experience of some.  I could see that sometimes the coaches weren't following up on students who weren't as involved, so my advice to Mulan was that she will need to be somewhat proactive in taking charge of her own learning.)

Miya will continue next year with the homeschooler class at the YMCA (another few terms and she will get a free T-shirt for attending 100 lessons!).

So, our next question was what could Mulan do while Miya is in her YMCA gymnastics class.

Out of curiosity, I asked about the minimum age for joining the gym at the YMCA.  And it's 11.  Perfect.  So, Mama and I cancelled our individual YMCA gym memberships, instead signing up for a family membership (at just $2 per week more).  When Miya is doing the gymnastics, Mulan can join me in the gym!

We met up with Laura, the wonderful YMCA gym manager/trainer, and she is making a training programme for each of us (Mama's and mine were ready to be updated).  Laura even said that Miya could do a bit in the gym with us, too!  We'll meet with Laura tomorrow to go through our new programmes.

We had been wondering what exercise activities to do over summer, with all our term-based activities (ballet, gymnastics, swimming, athletics) finishing.  And this fills the gap perfectly!

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