[VIDEO] My First Gym | Teaching Our Kids How to Live a Happy & Healthy Lifestyle

By Shannon Edwards // Place Bulimba

With over 20 years’ experience in the fitness industry, owning and operating facilities all over the world, Dan Newton from Alliance Wellness Group is opening a brand new gym in Brisbane.

Located at Hawthorne, right next to the well-known Morningside AFL club, this facility isn’t your average gym.

What sets this gym apart is its focus on children’s fitness and training programs.

My First Gym provides a safe and fun place for our kids to play, move around, and get active!

We checked out the construction site which is soon to be a bouncy space ready to get your kids moving!

We caught up with Dan where he answered all our questions about Australia’s first, My First Gym.

How did My First Gym come about?

My First Gym Global is an organisation that started about 12 months ago in Christchurch, New Zealand.

From our first gym we had plans to open franchises all over Australia and New Zealand, and now we’re opening our very first here in Brisbane.

The reason for opening the children’s gyms came from a rising problem in child obesity.

Sadly, the childhood obesity crisis in Australia and New Zealand is constantly increasing, having now reached an epidemic stage.

This means that 9 out of 10 children are not getting enough exercise – so we wanted to do something about this!

We’ve taken the best we’ve learnt from the adult fitness sector, and applied some of those core principles to teaching young children.

We’re very excited about starting the new venture which focusses on getting children active and helping them find a love for fitness from an early age.

How do you think the people of Hawthorne will respond to the gym?

The surrounding suburbs of the club have a large population of young families.

It is a goal of ours to become a go-to destination for these families, when the parents think ‘what can do we this weekend?’

We want to create a great offering for parents as a place where they can drop their kids off, know they’re completely safe, having fun, and doing something healthy.

We’re creating a place where parents love to stay, and kids love to play

With comfortable lounge space, it’s also a destination where parents can socialise, catch up with their friends and meet other parents from the neighbourhood.

What will kids get out of the gym?

Our number one goal is to get our kids active, and of course have fun!

It is our hopes that My First Gym will imbed a love for fitness in the children from an early age which will keep them healthy in the years to come.

We call ourselves a ‘swim school out of water’ because when you think about the benefits of a swim school, there’s curricular, there’s a structure and there’s progression.

That’s what we’re trying to do with this gym – have a course with an action plan where the kids have an end goal.

When the kids finish their session they understand their movement, the skills they’re developing, and their parents can walk away knowing they’re kids are learning and improving.

What makes the gym unique?

My First Gym will offer parents a revolutionary system called ‘My Movement Buddy.’

My Movement Buddy is an electronic wristband which allows parents to track their child’s movement progress.

Each of our little members will have their very own My First Gym account and through a simple movement tracking system they will be encouraged to reach daily, weekly and monthly movement goals.

Through this system we aim to create an entirely new offering to parents, giving them peace of mind and valuable insight into their child’s physical development, while keeping the fun in being active.