The club formally known as Charnwood Artistic Gymnastics club has been established for the past 18 or so years. Based at Charnwood leisure centre, training twice a week, the club was predominantly a recreational based club that offered general and women’s artistic gymnastics club. Membership generally ranged from 40-50 members. Director of coaching was Julie Armstrong who was keen to offer more to her gymnasts and with help of university coaches, began to offer sports acrobatics for the members.

Sports Acrobatics was introduced in 1998, and shortly after that, due to maternity leave, Julie handed over director of coaching to Kathryn Lacey. Gradually the sports acro element progressed and the gymnasts began to become more competitive, membership rose as did the waiting list. The club continued to offer general and women’s artistic gymnastics, but in order for it to develop, needed someone to head, so Emma Rosamond began to develop that side of things. The club now was about 70% Sports acro and 30% artistic.

In 2002 the club wrote a letter of support for the development of a new state of the art gymnastics facility to be built at Loughborough University, with the hope that one day their members would be able to have access to such resources. From then on the club achieved their first regional medal in the 2003 at the regional championships, Bronze in women’s pairs.

In February 2004, the clubs dreams came true and were finally able to access better facilities at Loughborough University. With the facilities being predominantly for research for elite gymnasts, the club was happy to be allocated any time. The club has now managed to establish three training slots at the university facilities, but has managed to secure three other training slots and more hours in the new sports hall across the road at the Radmoor Centre.

The change to training times, venues and the increase in coaches has proved to make all the difference. The club made the decision to specialise as a Acrobatics Gymnastics club in December 2004, feeling that they would stand a better chance at excelling in one discipline rather than just being average at a few. This proved to be the right decision as in the 2005 regional championships the club obtained 21 tumbling and acro medals as well as getting 9 gymnasts through to their first national championships across 5 different categories or levels. Only 3 years later the club won all but two of the pair and group categories they entered in the 2008 regional championships with 20 gymnasts going through to national finals, and have won 7 national medals and now have gymnasts performing at FIG standard.

Despite the club being a voluntary run organisation, we offer an extremely professional service, being one of the first clubs in the East midlands to gain their Gym Mark accreditation, and with 10 qualified coaches and a strong committee behind the scenes, the club is open six days a week and has a thriving membership.