This is where your child will train

What to look for in a kids’ gym floor

Most parents visiting a children’s gym for the first time are not sure what they are supposed to be judging. These are the things that actually matter, and they are all visible in the photos above.

• Padded flooring, wall to wall. Children work barefoot on it. Nothing here has a hard edge at landing height, which is why the younger bands can be taught to jump and land properly rather than told not to jump.
• Equipment scaled to the age band. The two- to four-year-olds use soft-play and low apparatus only. The beam a nine-year-old balances on is not the beam a three-year-old meets.
• Sight lines across the whole floor. A coach running a station can still see the rest of the room. Open layout is a supervision decision, not a design one.
• Somewhere for you to sit. On a free trial we expect you to stay and watch the full session, so there is space at the side to do that without being in the way.
• Murals and colour that are for the children. The room is decorated at a child’s eye level. It reads as a place they are allowed to be, which does a surprising amount of the settling-in work.

Both centres — Greater Noida West and Lucknow — are set up the same way. If you want to see the room before booking anything, come to a free trial and watch a real class from the side.