Hopes for a UK gym

London- If you’ve been struggling to stay active, there’s a trend that one gym chain hopes will make working out feel more like a game.

“Welcome to Kidulting! Come in, come in!” trainer Rachel Dennis said recently as she greeted people coming through the door of the David Lloyd gym in Enfield, north London.

“We’re going to play ‘stuck in the mud,'” he announced. Screams and laughter quickly filled the room as tagged players stood frozen like statues until others crawled between their legs to “free” them and run again.

Kidulting’s fitness class aims to channel your inner child and the atmosphere is fun, even silly.

“How’s that heart rate? Do we feel a little warmer?” -Dennis asked as the pace quickened.

At David Lloyd clubs in the UK, members can relive their younger years with classes organized around the playground and PE class games, an effort to take the “work” out of training.

Pran Varatharajan cheered as he held the legs of another classmate and pushed her in a wheelbarrow race.

The pace is fast and the kidulters quickly moved on to the next game.

“Who remembers the parachute?” Dennis asked, holding up the huge piece of colorful fabric. “If you are yellow, you will be… will we be a banana?” he said, assigning teams.

The classes bring back a variety of childhood favorites—games that most people haven’t played since elementary school.

After running back and forth across the fabric, it was time for a quick round of “popcorn,” with the adults huffing and puffing to keep the colorful balls bouncing off the parachute.

During a brief break, class member Sophie Doe told News themezone her heart was pounding. He especially enjoyed parachute and said he hadn’t played some of the games since he was seven or eight years old.

“It’s the joy of being a kid, like an adult,” David Lloyd Enfield’s personal trainer Kielan Edwards explained of the prank trend, while letting the News themezone correspondent try out the “Joyride,” a stationary bike transformed to look like an iconic Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.

“Many people find it very hard to get used to exercise before they make it a habit. But that’s because they’re forgetting the fun element of it,” he said. “We’re trying to replicate those memories you might have had when you were younger here, in a more gym-like environment.”

“What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” Dennis called his class.

“Suppertime!” They shouted in response, running across the ground.

“I think it gives you a chance to remember, it also gives you a chance to revisit that period of your life that you thought had passed and that you weren’t going to get back,” Varatharajan said.

Trainers say kidulting works because being a kid never gets old, and scientists seem to agree, with research showing that when exercise is fun, people are much more likely to make it a habit.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health says that adults who participate in play and childhood activities report better cognitive function and memory as they age.