Our Blog

If you’ve ever attended one of our sessions, visited one of our gyms, or looked at any of our content online, then you’ll probably have a fair idea that we are not only passionate about gymnastics, but genuinely wish to champion it. Gymnastics is a sport that encompasses a wide variety of physical activities, including balancing, jumping, swinging, climbing, tumbling, ...

Second child syndrome is a phrase that we hear tossed around a lot, usually with quite a negative implication. It’s often used as a stand-in for explaining bad behaviour or an excuse for what is usually a pretty normal developmental stage. But these uses aren’t really accurate or fair to the children it is aimed at, so in this blog ...

For this blog post, we’re going to do something a little bit different. We usually highlight a topic or theme of importance to us that we feel will resonate with our readers but without an overly personal angle. This time, however, we would like to share the direct experiences of a client of Gym Bubbas with you all. The reason ...

It’s that time of year again when the nights have drawn in, the weather seems to be in a permanently bad mood, and we’re all playing who can leave the heating off the longest. As the shorter and darker days set in, it’s not uncommon to feel the changing of the seasons a bit harder than at other times of ...

One of the most significant parts of a child’s growth and development is their hand-eye coordination. This underpins a child’s ability to do so many other things in their lives, yet a lot of the time it isn’t really discussed, or if it is then only certain aspects are mentioned (such as pincer grip). But if a child’s hand-eye coordination ...

Learning must be one of the most complicated simple things in our lives. Just think about it for a moment; literally everything you think or do is something that you’ve learned at some point, in some way and usually from some person. But can you remember the who, what, when, where, why or how for the overwhelming majority of them? ...

One of the questions we get asked quite frequently is “How on earth can babies do gymnastics?” And from the outside looking in, it’s a perfectly valid observation. Afterall, Gymnastics is a sport commonly associated with vastly complex movements and highly refined balancing. Clearly all skills completely outside the abilities of babies. On the other end of the scale, it ...

The Winter Olympics might not seem like the most obvious subject for a gymnastics blog, and we can categorically assure you there is not now, nor has there ever been, a gymnastics event at any of the Winter Olympics. No frozen pole vault, no floor routines in mittens and the pommel horse can keep its winter jacket on as gymnastics ...

We all know what the last 18 months have been like, so we’re not going to start this blog post with the cliched “The last 18 months have been hard on us all…” type of statement covering the internet at present. Everyone has been through it but now is a time of hope, recovery, and introspection, not further doom and ...

Out of the doom and gloom that was 2020, it’s been hard to find any degree of positivity or joy in the wider world. However, we were certainly given one right in the middle of everything and now that we’re up and running again with all of our wonderful families once again visiting the gyms, now feels like the perfect ...

Well, the festive season has been and gone. So has January, and February for that matter… 2020 has fizzled out with a whimper and we’ve strode bravely into 2021 only to wide up back where we were for large swathes of 2020. But whilst the last few weeks may feel like we’re back to square one, 2021 is going to ...

Seemingly against all the odds, the year is drawing to a close. Like so many of you, at Gym Bubbas we like to celebrate the holiday season and are intending to make the most of the small break. There was some conversation about using our Christmas blog post to say something profound and stirring to instil hope and positivity after ...

For the third and final post in our small series looking at the effects of the pandemic on child wellbeing and general family mental health, we’re going to wrap up some of the topics we’ve been discussing and take a quick look at one final area – additional needs. Once again, if you have not read our previous posts on ...

In our previous blog post, we briefly touched on the subject of child safeguarding and the vitally important work of the Pubic Health Nursing team and other agencies. If you haven’t already read that one, then it would definitely be worth checking it out before diving into this post as there will be some elements that build upon things mentioned ...

No one could have foreseen how 2020 has played out for any of us. It has undoubtedly been one of the strangest and most unsettled years any of us have ever experienced (and with any luck ever will experience). But it can be very easy to overlook how the mess that has been this year affects our children and the ...

Well, we’ve made it through the lockdown closures and have finally been able to open our doors again. Starting from the 27th of July, Gym Bubbas gyms are officially back open for business and of course, we’re eager to welcome everyone back. But we’re aware that not everyone is going to be ready to rejoin us and plenty of you ...

For most of us, it has probably been a very long and strange few months. The lockdown has undoubtedly changed most aspects of our lives in ways that we couldn’t have fathomed even six months ago, and yet here we are. But there is some light at the end of the tunnel at last as the country attempts to get ...

It’s obviously no secret that the world is a truly mad and uncertain place at the moment. Only last week we made the difficult decision to close all of our gyms for the interim in an effort to keep our staff and customers safe. Whilst we hope you’re following us on Facebook and watching our staff slowly go mad, we ...

One of the biggest challenges that we all face as parents is getting our children to eat healthy. Never mind the sleepless nights, the imaginary money trees, or not being able to remember what it’s like to go to the toilet on your own; it’s the endless quest for healthy eating that really takes it out of you.  Apparently, it ...

It’s pretty easy to see how encouraging children to participate in gymnastics and other activities that promote movement from a young age can be of benefit. We’re constantly being bombarded with messages and warnings about unhealthy lifestyle choices; with exercise and diet being the two biggest issues. So of course moving around more and developing a link between sporting activities ...

Ah, Valentine’s Day… it’s that time of year where most people across the nation are panicking, either because they’ve only just remembered, or because they’re petrified that perhaps their gift isn’t quite good enough. Certainly, it’s a wonderful time of year where couples can remind one another of just how lucky they are. For other brave souls it’s the day ...

It is quite a commonly accepted fact that it takes an average adult around 20 or so hours to learn a new skill with any degree of competency. But as adults, we have an advantage. We have already done a lot of background learning that we are instinctively applying to learning new skills. These are usually small things that we ...

As discussed in our previous post, children’s gymnastics bring a wealth of physical health benefits, but there are so many wider benefits to gymnastics and sport in general; particularly from a mental health perspective. Talking about mental health in children is an unfortunate reality that is becoming more relevant by the day.  The rise of social media and the societal ...

New year, new you, right?  But what about our little ones?  We all make such an effort in January to cut out the fatty foods & alcohol and get more exercise in an attempt to better ourselves; but what about our toddlers?  Are they getting enough exercise?  Hopefully the answer to that is yes, as toddlers seem to have an unending ...