“They run around at school” — is that enough?
Most parents assume the school covers it. Some schools do. But the arithmetic is worth doing honestly, because the gap is usually larger than it feels.
Do the arithmetic
Take a normal week. How many periods of genuine physical activity does your child get at school — not assembly, not a games period that became a revision period, but time actually moving? For many children in urban India the honest answer is one or two, of perhaps forty minutes, of which a good portion is queuing, changing and being organised.
Now add whatever happens at home. In a high-rise, that is often a society park for a while in the evening, weather and homework permitting, with more standing and talking than moving as children get older.
It adds up to considerably less than it feels like from the outside.
Running around is not the same as developing
There is a second issue, and it is subtler. Unstructured running around maintains fitness. It does not necessarily build capability.
A child left to their own devices in a park will do the things they are already comfortable with, and avoid the things they are not. The child who finds climbing hard will simply not climb. Free play, left alone, tends to reinforce a child's existing strengths and quietly consolidate their avoidances.
Structured sessions do the opposite. A coach notices what a child avoids and builds a gentle path into it, which is exactly what unstructured play cannot do.
Signs the balance is off
- Reluctance to try physical things in front of others, framed as boredom
- Getting winded much faster than peers of the same age
- Preferring seated activities almost every time a choice is offered
- Complaints of aches after mild activity
- Trouble settling to sleep despite seeming tired
- The phrase “I am not good at sports” appearing before age eight
That last one is the one to take most seriously. It is rarely a statement of fact. It is usually a conclusion a child has drawn from a small number of experiences, and once drawn it becomes self-fulfilling for years.
What “enough” looks like in practice
You are aiming for a mix, not a total: some sustained aerobic movement, some strength and body-weight work, some coordination and balance, and some of it social. School may cover one of those. Free play may cover another. The gap is usually strength, coordination and body awareness — which is precisely what a structured gymnastics session is built around.
One class a week is not a token
Parents sometimes dismiss a weekly class as too little to matter. In our experience it is the opposite: a single consistent, properly structured 75-minute session, attended across a term, changes more than three sporadic bursts of activity. Consistency is what builds capability, and capability is what makes a child choose to be active on the days nobody organised anything.
If you are unsure where your child sits, book a free trial and ask the coaches directly. They watch children move for a living and will tell you honestly.