I started teaching kids’ classes almost by accident — a favour for a friend, one Saturday morning, a hall full of eight-year-olds and no plan. I left that first session more exhausted and more taught than any coaching course had ever managed. The children, it turned out, were running a masterclass.
Adults arrive at a class already braced. They’ve rehearsed the apology, decided what they’re bad at, and packed a quiet hope that you won’t make them look foolish. Kids skip all of that. They show up loud, honest, and entirely unconvinced that you’re worth listening to — which means you have to actually earn the room. That earning taught me everything.
A child won’t pretend a session was good to be polite. That honesty is the most useful coaching feedback there is.
They can’t be bored into change
You cannot lecture a nine-year-old into a good squat. They simply leave — mentally, then physically, then literally toward the window. So you make it a game, a story, a challenge they want to win. And then one day you notice the adults are exactly the same; they just hide their leaving better. The bored adult doesn’t walk out. She just stops coming back.
What the kids kept teaching
Strip it back and the lessons are almost embarrassingly simple. I now use every one of them with grown adults who pay me to take them seriously:
- Attention beats authority. Nobody cares what you know until they’re sure you’re watching them, specifically, right now.
- Name the small win out loud. A child lights up when you notice. So does a 45-year-old rebuilding after injury. We never grow out of that.
- Make the next step obvious and tiny. “Try just this bit” works on everyone. Overwhelm is the real reason people quit.
- Let it be fun without apology. Enjoyment isn’t the opposite of serious work — it’s what makes the work survivable.
The best thing you can do for a child’s relationship with movement is to let them see you enjoy yours. They learn far more from watching you than from anything I say in a hall on a Saturday.
The same human, every time
Somewhere between the kids’ hall and the women’s class, I stopped believing in two different jobs. There’s one job: pay close attention to a person, make the next step feel possible, and make it worth coming back for. Eight or eighty, that never changes.
I still teach the kids’ classes. Not as a favour anymore — as my ongoing training. They keep me honest in a way no qualification ever could.
