Adult Gymnastics

The classes at 5280 Gymnastics in Wheat Ridge are even crazier than the ones at Awaken. Awaken is more about a fitness regimen whereas the 5280 class is all tumbles, somersaults, cartwheels and flips. The gymnasts call it “play time for adults.”

“Sixty Minutes of Dizziness,” it ought to be called. The 5280 gym is replete—hell, Olympians train here. There’s at least two trampolines, lots of spring boards, plus three foam pits. Foam pits are heaven. You feel 13 again. You can do any move you want into a foam pit—a flip, a cannonball, a belly-flop, a Tebow, a plank, a Taylor Swift, a Faith Hill, a Moonwalk—and you will not get hurt.

Most of the gymnasts at 5280 have modest goals. One is working on a backflip to eventually pull it out as a party trick. Another is using the trampoline as a way to improve his snowboard tricks.

Ask anyone in the class their age, and they’ll tell you a number that is 10 years above the age they appear. Maybe acting young makes you look young. Sometimes the adult classes at 5280 overlap with the kids classes. Class participant Al Perez says it’s humbling to be shown proper form on a gymnastics move by a 6 year old.

“Gymnastics is becoming more and more of a fitness fad,” says 5280 teacher Megan Carey, 33. More and more adults are participating. And she sees the results when all this fun turns into results: sinewy, graceful bodies. “These guys have biceps for days,” she says.

For sure, these adult gymnastics dudes have more biceps than your average gymnastics participant, whose biceps are less visible because they are covered by the ruffles of a Disney princess dress.

But the days are over when fun and fitness were non-overlapping magistery. Just watch these gymnasts at Awaken through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Toned, taut, strong adults are bouncing, jumping, rolling and swinging. They may exercise the way children play, but they are turning themselves into very fit adults.