Jennifer Hood, BA BEd
CEO & Founder
Jennifer Hood (she/her) is the CEO & Founder of Jump Gymnastics and she has over 20 years experience working in six different gymnastics organizations across Canada. She has developed recreational programming for young children, and is a certified teacher, specializing in primary education.
Jennifer is also a mother of three very active daughters! She loves to hit the slopes in the winter and spend time in her garden in the warm months.
Why did Jennifer Hood open Jump Gymnastics?
All of her experience has led her to one important conclusion: when it comes to our children’s physical activity, we can do better. Conventional approaches to children’s sports have a vocabulary that includes words like early specialization, burnout, boredom, over-scheduling, dropout, intimidating, overly competitive, stressful, too late, and unfortunately, too often, childhood obesity.
Children are more likely to remain active if they are involved in something they enjoy. The problem? We do not know what our children will be interested in as they grow, and we certainly can’t enroll them in everything to ensure they don’t “miss out” later. Fortunately, this is a problem with an answer.
For many years Jennifer had a vision for a program that gives our children the basic building blocks of physical movement. A program that would ensure that they have the skills and self-confidence to thrive in all sports, no matter what sport they choose and no matter whether their goal is recreation or excellence. Following the birth of her second child, she decided to make her vision a reality.
We first opened in Yaletown in 2008
Jump Gymnastics opened its doors on September 2nd, 2008 and quickly became a destination for parents from across Vancouver. Her three daughters, all graduated from our enriched gymnastics program and went on to compete in and continue to enjoy a variety of sports.
In 2015, Jennifer partnered with Kids Physio Group founder, Laura Patrick to open a joint facility in North Vancouver. Following this model, a second joint location was opened in 2019 in the heart of Vancouver and another location in 2022 in Richmond.
“This isn’t about training gymnasts,” says Jennifer, “this is about using gymnastics – the sport that offers the best opportunities to develop foundational movement skills – as a starting point to help our children develop the self-confidence and skills they need to thrive in all sports.
