How Jumptwist Ninja Built a Thriving Community Gym With WellnessLiving

Last Updated on 3 September, 2026

Jumptwist Ninja, a Ninja Warrior training gym in Boca Raton, Florida, went from a $100 Facebook ad and a packed soft opening to a seven-year success story — and is now launching a franchise. Owner Christina Gambino built the business from the ground up after competing on American Ninja Warrior, and WellnessLiving has been part of the journey from day one.

This is the story of how a former collegiate gymnast turned a passion into a community institution, survived a global pandemic, and found in WellnessLiving the operational backbone to scale confidently.

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“Whatever I want to do, I can make it happen with WellnessLiving. Other softwares I couldn’t do that.” — Christina Gambino, Owner, Jumptwist Ninja

The Origin Story: From Ninja Warrior Competitor to Gym Owner

Starting gymnastics at the age of two, Christina competed collegiately, and then faced the question every elite athlete eventually confronts: what comes next? A friend suggested Ninja Warrior. She applied to American Ninja Warrior in 2016, submitted some training videos, and got picked.

Christina showed up to the competition with no dedicated training facility, a crowd of twenty supporters, and a lot of heart. She fell on the very first obstacle.

“The producers came up to me and said, ‘We want you back. Just train.'”

That moment sparked everything. With almost no Ninja gyms in Palm Beach County, Christina did something remarkable: she moved into an RV and traveled the country visiting the handful of ninja gyms that existed at the time, learning the business while training as an athlete. After two loops around America, she landed back in Boca Raton — and decided that’s where her gym would be.

In 2019, she found her space, chose WellnessLiving as her software, sourced her obstacles, and opened her doors. Her soft opening sold out on a single $100 Facebook ad.

Becoming an American Ninja Warrior was a multi-year journey for Christina. Through neck injuries and painful setbacks, she trained alongside her community and blew the crowd away on her 4th attempt at the show. You can see clips of her incredible success on her Instagram.

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Surviving COVID: How WellnessLiving Kept Members Enrolled

Eleven months after opening, the world shut down.

For a brand-new gym built around in-person physical training, that could have been the end. But WellnessLiving’s rapid Zoom integration allowed Jumptwist Ninja to pivot to virtual classes almost immediately, keeping the majority of members enrolled and supporting the gym through the pandemic.

“You guys actually integrated with Zoom immediately, which really helped — we just went virtual. We were able to keep most of our members enrolled and doing classes at home.”

Christina had the same choice every small business owner faced in 2020: quit or fight. Ninja, she says, had already taught her the answer.

“I know how to fall and fail and get back up. I could have quit and said I failed. But I didn’t.”

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Building Confident Kids, One Obstacle at a Time

Jumptwist Ninja isn’t just a gym. It’s a character development program with climbing walls.

The business serves kids, adults, and families, with a competitive adult team that travels to world championships and has appeared on American Ninja Warrior. But the heart of the business is what happens with younger members, particularly beginners who walk in overwhelmed.

Christina’s philosophy is intentionally designed to fight comparison culture. Challenges are timed individually: students race against their own previous time, not each other. Obstacles are fully adjustable, so courses can be built to the student rather than expecting every student to meet the same bar.

The gym’s tagline — be strong and courageous — is baked into a 15-level progression system that tracks not just physical skills but character traits: focus, discipline, resilience, honesty, humility. Every level has its own character theme. Level one simply requires showing up. The black band requires humility.

“We celebrate small improvements. It doesn’t matter who was faster — it’s that you improved.”

Parents notice the difference. Christina regularly hears from families that their kids are more confident, that they’re the star of the playground, that they handle failure differently. At a recent Ninja Night competition, a child fell on the wall obstacle ten times in a row. Christina had him stop, breathe, reset — and then he made it. The whole room erupted.

“Everyone was cheering and his dad was like, ‘You see, buddy — you never give up.’ That’s why I do what I do.”

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The WellnessLiving Features That Run the Business

Christina has been a WellnessLiving customer since 2019 and describes herself — with good reason — as a power user. Here are the features that matter most to her day-to-day:

Belt Rankings and Class Restrictions As Jumptwist Ninja’s membership grew and students advanced in skill, putting beginners and seasoned ninjas in the same class stopped working. WellnessLiving’s belt ranking system allowed Christina to create level-based classes with built-in booking restrictions. Free trials are automatically limited to Level 1–3 classes. No phone calls required — it’s all handled by the system.

“The system will restrict level ones from going into my level eight plus class. It’s just built in.”

Two-Way Texting When attendance is low in a morning class, Christina or her team can pull up last week’s class list, filter out students already signed up, and send a targeted text in minutes — right from the app. Classes fill. The whole process takes a few messages.

“I can literally fill a class with a couple text messages from the app.”

Rewards Points Christina modeled her rewards program on credit card points: simple, scalable, and something customers actually get excited about. Members earn points for booking online, attending multiple times per week, booking private sessions, leaving reviews, and referring friends. Points convert to dollar-value discounts at checkout.

“At checkout it shows, ‘Would you like to apply your $10?’ And they’re like, ‘What? Yeah, great.'”

Task Management From facility maintenance (“order more coffee”) to client follow-ups, the task system keeps the whole team aligned. Staff on one shift can leave notes for the next, with client details, timing, and context all in one place.

Forms Birthday parties at a Ninja gym come with a lot of parental enthusiasm and, occasionally, a lack of boundaries. Christina replaced email-based rule explanations (which nobody read) with forms that require an initial after every rule. Problem solved.

Google-Integrated Reviews After every class, members can be automatically prompted to leave a review. Those reviews flow through to Google, directly boosting Jumptwist Ninja’s search visibility.

“Google will show the reviews that come from WellnessLiving and they count toward your score.”

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What’s Next: Expansion and Franchising

Seven years in, Jumptwist Ninja is outgrowing its space, and Christina has no plans to slow down.

She’s building a steel mezzanine to create a third gym area: a Ninja Nursery for the youngest members, a Mini Gym for developing skills, and the existing Mighty Gym for advanced training. The nursery will include a free baby area for parents with infants, so families with multiple kids can all be in the building at once.

More significantly, Jumptwist Ninja launched its franchise program this year. Christina is in active discovery conversations with around ten prospective franchisees, with Franchise Disclosure Documents already out for review.

WellnessLiving’s franchise-ready infrastructure, the ability to push purchase options to multiple locations, standardize processes, and hand franchisees a ready-to-operate playbook, is central to how she plans to scale.

“Part of the reason people choose franchising is so they don’t have to figure it out themselves. I can give them the playbook through WellnessLiving. Open your doors tomorrow — let’s go!”

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Jumptwist Ninja is proof that a fitness business built on genuine community, smart systems, and a refusal to quit can become something much bigger than a gym. If you’re running a kids’ fitness, martial arts, or activity-based business and want the software that can grow with you, from soft opening to franchising, WellnessLiving can help.

Ready to see what WellnessLiving can do for your business? Book a free demo today.

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