Australia, 26 August 2020 | Vivienne Christie

While it’s arguably never been more important for kids to keep active, it’s equally clear that movement has never been so much fun.

Sports app Elanation is making it both easy and engaging for kids to make activity a part of their daily life, through thousands of video lessons on a range of sports.

Tennis is at the forefront of the movement revolution as talented coaches and players deliver energising lessons that help kids get the most from the sport.

Elanation co-founders Aimee Atkins and Katherine Pace were happy to relate that tennis was the most-engaged sport throughout July and August, followed by soccer and dance.

“Tennis has been received really well,” said Elanation COO Atkins. “We’ve been doing weekly interviews with the coaches and feedback has been positive. We can also see the uptake of skills inside the app.”

The most popular tennis videos – Mission Possible, Half Court versus Full Court and the Tram Tracks Slice – demonstrated the many activities that kids can easily undertake to learn new skills in the game.

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For many young enthusiasts, Elanation is a complement to their usual coach. A pilot program delivered as part of a Tennis Australia partnership has so far seen 29 coaches nationally signing up to Elanation, with many other coaches also utilising the app.

“The coaches are doing a great job in terms of a weekly rhythm,” said Atkins. “Each week they focus on a particular skill – whether it’s a forehand, backhand, backhand volley – and then what they’re doing is they’re implementing one of the skills from Elanation in that lesson. As part of that cycle they go home and practice in Elanation.”

And while kids learn from videos through Elanation, they can also create and upload their own videos too. This provides an opportunity for many coaches to measure progress from week to week.

“When they go back to their lesson the following week it’s easy for their coach to have reference points for feedback, because there’s been the progression over the last seven days.”

There’s also the element of fun, with the user-generated videos creating the opportunity for kids to challenge their friends.

“They upload their video like they normally do and then they use the challenge button to push it out to their friends with a bit of a note saying (for example) that ‘Sponge Bob is challenging you to Tram Track’,” Atkins said.

The fun and easy engagement is a key to Elanation’s success. Pace, the CEO, related that videos (which are no more than three minutes in length) are created so kids can undertake activities at any time or in virtually any place.

“As a majority, it can be played by yourself independently in a small area with very low to no equipment,” she said.

> Related: Sports Techy Brekky with Elanation

With Elanation ranking in the top 10 apps for kids in both Australian and US app stores, Atkins and Pace can be confident that they’re delivering on the objective that was it’s driving force: to keep more kids moving each day.

“One of the major stats is that 70 per cent of kids drop out of organised sport by age 13 and that’s because it’s not fun anymore. It’s become too competitive,” said Pace.

“And Generation Alpha, who are about 10 years old today, they were born the same year as the iPad. So how they play and engage with friends and family is completely different to how all of us were brought up. And so that means we need to start defining new ways of play which align with the new reality for them.”

The growing number of Elanation users highlights the success in achieving that goal – thanks in part, to the contrasting yet complimentary professions that Atkins and Pace (close friends who first met at a wedding) enjoyed before the app was born.

Atkins is familiar to many as a children’s entertainer, with past roles including Dorothy the Dinosaur in The Wiggles, and Amy in Bananas in Pyjamas. Pace has a background in industrial design and engineering.

And having utilised their experience to launch Elanation, the co-founders are excited to build on its success.

“Right now, we’re trying to interview as many kids and families as possible,” said Pace, explaining an eagerness to learn what sports, skills and features users are keen to see introduced into Elanation.

“For us right now it’s just about getting to know our community really well and better understanding what they want to see next.”

> You can download the Elanation app from the  Apple store or Google Play. 

> Visit elanation.com for further information.