3Lions Academy

We offer a gymnastics, free running and martial arts based discipline, however students are invited to use and combine this with their own expressive arts

The concept of the 3lions freestyle academy was born with myself, around 3 years ago. I found myself coaching general gymnastics with my wife, a high level national gymnast with over 20 years coaching experience at all levels of gymnastics.

After starting to coach at basic level i started to train in gymnastics myself. With 20 years previous involvement in training in different disciplines, including rugby league and union, boxing, kickboxing (freestyle, mui tai and K1), martial arts (lau gar kung fu, jujitsu, tai kwon-do), 6 years military (infantry, parachute preparation training) to name only a small few, gymnastics very quickly became my most exciting and most challenging discipline i had trained.

very quickly it became apparent i was not a "natural" gymnast. Flexibilty sand grace were alien to me. After training only a few months a new discipline was made aware to me by the unbelievable Damien Walters. This was called freestyle gymnastics. This discipline combined martial arts, parkour and free running with gymnastics.

After taking 10 of our experienced male gymnasts aged between 8-12 we launched our freestyle gymnastics class. Instantly it became very popular with the boys and they began to progress very quickly. Its been described as being back in the playground. Naturally with the students encouraged to apply their own style to their training we soon started to develop a certain style.

After a year of the class being established i was extremely fortunate enough to meet a very good friend, Sebastian Foucan. Sebastian stared in the opening scene of James Bond, Casino Royal and is accredited as being the founder, creator, and inventor of free running.

After countless trial sessions and our little free lions bringing their own touch of individuality we have found ourselves running an extremely successful and enjoyable programme.

We have students working on their parkour skills, tricks and fluid movement to combine with their existing skills in gymnastics.
We have a student combining musical instruments and gymnastics for an exciting concept in performance arts.
We also have a new direction a few of our students are embracing, competing in open martial arts competitions. Its a fairly new chapter yet the progressions made in such a short time have been outstanding.

I would encourage anybody, male or female of any age and any ability to give our academy a try. Each students individual programme will be designed in conjunction to their individual abilities and goals and with the various skilled coaches we have offering their services in such a wide range of disciplines, we know we can offer you a programme you'll not only get the most from, but is the most fun you can have whilst training.