- April 25, 2024
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The Little Gym of Port Orange lives by a mantra—to be the springboard for life’s adventures.
With over 300 locations worldwide in 29 countries, Little Gym has done well to succeed at that as a franchise. Here in Port Orange, Eric Lancing is the owner of Little Gym and has been for three years.
He started going to Little Gym with his daughter Kayla around eight years ago when she was three years old. The curriculum, culture and look of the gym is different than any normal gymnasium, and it’s not a gymnastics studio either.
“What we do is a difficult explanation. What’s a little gym?” Eric Lancing said. “We’re different from a gymnastics or sports program.
We’re actually using gymnastics and sports to teach kids instead of teaching kids gymnastics and sports.
Eric Lancing, Little Gym of Port Orange owner
Lancing and his staff of seven are encouraging personal development in the lives of little kids. Little Gym holds classes that are 45 to 50 minutes long during a 40-week season with several different age groups.
The company has bugs (4-10 months), birds (10-19 months) and beasts (19 months-3 years) age groups and the classes consist of practicing basic gymnastics exercises with a personal parent and child dynamic.
The teacher of the class will typically play music from a Little Gym playlist of original songs to get the kids into it and implement shakers, parachutes and more to be able to give proper attention and get exercise without even knowing it.
“It’s really about drinking the Little Gym Kool-Aid,” said Chelsey Godbey, assistant program director with Little Gym of Port Orange. “Little Gym International always has lesson plans that they’re sending down and it’s really neat. I’ve never worked somewhere like this before.”
Godbey’s passion comes from kids. After earning her bachelor’s degree from UCF in exercise science, she was a preschool teacher in Thailand for a time, and then also was a preschool teacher in Ormond Beach, where she currently resides.
As a former manager of an electrical wholesale distribution branch, Lancing can’t be doing a much more different job than what he had before, but that’s why he loves it.
He works for himself, he gets to see kids smile every day and knows that he has established a solid foundation for families to go.
“Our internal mission and culture is to be a resource for families in the Port Orange area,” Lancing said. “For families new to the area who don’t know where to meet friends or other moms, this is a great place for them.”
