The hall is hot, even at this early hour, as Karlee Wilson-Birks leads the gymnasts through their paces. A high-energy song blasts from the stereo while they circuit between the trampoline and the rest of the colourful equipment arranged in a ring around the tumbling mat. 

The high-energy music? A chaotic and catchy version of Old MacDonald. 

The gymnasts? Babies. Bouncing babies, to be precise.

This isn’t the first time that Wilson-Birks and the Jasper Gymnastics Club have offered a chance for the extremely young among us to get a tumbling start on bipedalism, but this year, the option is very popular.

With 30 children under the age of three enrolled, Wilson-Birks is benefitting from what she describes as a recent baby boom in town.

“There’s so many babies in town now that it’s just taking off,” she said. 

The baby session is open to children (with a parent in tow) from the age of six to 24 months. Although having a baby or toddler program is common to most gymnastic clubs, not many will offer it to such young babies, Wilson-Birks said, adding that the coaches are trained to deal with babies and have extensive experience with similar programs from their previous clubs.

People who enroll their child into the baby gymnastics session should be witness to some remarkable developments.

“I always tell people that if you don’t want their kids crawling and walking, then don’t bring them to the program,” Wilson-Birks said. “It’s also good for babies who might be slow walkers, to get them going.”

 The entire experience is an opportunity for the miniature participants to grow.

“It’s just a really great way to stimulate your baby. We do that through music, movement, different pieces of colorful equipment. It’s a good program to get them interacting with other children and working on motor skills,” she said.

Bringing up babies in the gymnastics way will give them a head start for any sport they might eventually take part in, and might even help them stay safe while horsing around.

While the youngest in the program focus on crawling and walking through the soft-edged obstacle course, as the children progress they will learn the basics of jumping and safe landings.

“They learn how to jump and how to land properly when they jump off higher things. Kids like to do that anyway, so they might as well learn to do it safely,” said Wilson-Birks.

The range of skills that participants develop are essential elements of other organized sports like hockey, too, she said.

“It’s still a good set of skills and if you put them in hockey they’ll know how to fall and have balance and flexibility.”

Some parents and burgeoning gym rats decide to stick with gymnastics, and Wilson-Birks is happy to keep working with the kids that dream of being the next Kyle Shewfelt.

“Now we’ve got a lot of potential in our club because they started when they were babies,” she said. Some of her young charges are busy preparing for their first competition of the season, in fact. The girls team will be travelling to Sherwood Park early in February for an invitational meet. The six members of the team, ranging in age from 10-to-13-years-old, train longer and harder than their recreational counterparts. The club as a whole boasts between 80 and 100 members during any given session and has simply outgrown the space it has to train and operate in the Activity Centre.

“We are in the process right now of looking for our own space,” said Wilson-Birks, who sent a letter to the town asking that the gymnastics club be considered in any decision to renovate, re-size or reduce the multi-purpose hall as the municipality moves forward with their plans for the Activty Centre as a whole. That said, the club would be in better shape if they didn’t have to share their practice space.

“We are still looking for a permanent facility,” she said. “We are in the gym 36 hours a week; we set up and take down six days a week and that is a lot of work.”

In the meantime, Wilson-Birks encourages anyone and everyone interested in any level of gymnastics to contact her at 852-5250, as space remains available in all programs. The “Bouncing Babies” and “Terriffic Twos and Threes” sessions run once weekly until May, at a cost of $120 for the entire session. For older gymnasts, there is an all-boys program available, as well as space in both the recreational and competitive groups.