When you think of Calisthenics, you normally think of Australia. I’ve probably said ‘it’s an Australian only sport, like AFL,’ a hundred times when trying to explain what I spend 20+ hours a week doing in my free time. 

However, this isn’t true! For the past 10 years, Jess Wahlstrom has been cultivating the sport of Calisthenics in New Zealand, bringing cali to a new demographic of participants and spreading the love of the sport internationally. Thanks to the incredible powers of the internet, I was able to sit down ‘face to face’ with Jess, despite being approximately 3,250 kms apart. 

Jess was introduced to Calisthenics early, starting as a kid in Victoria, Australia. “I started when I was 2.5 at Ceres in Victoria, and I was there until I was maybe 8 or 9. Then my family moved to the Gold Coast and I joined Helensvale Calisthenics, and was with them until I was probably a senior. I did one more year at Rosemore, and then moved to New Zealand.”

Jess moved to New Zealand in 2013, to start a new life with her Kiwi husband, whom she met on the Gold Coast in QLD. 

“When I left Australia, I felt like, as lots of coaches or people involved in the sport do, you kind of commit to the year ahead before the current year is even finished. So when I was moving, I think I moved to NZ in July, so I couldn’t commit to anything for that period. So I was like ‘I’ll either get here and love it, love that I’ve got this freedom or I’ll get here and miss it.’”

And miss it she did. “The Nationals had just been on, and I was in tears because it was a Saturday and I didn’t have any solos to do or anything like that. So I missed it majorly from the get go.” Having studied other forms of dance in Australia, she still felt as if there was something missing, and didn’t pursue the multitude of dance sports that you can find in New Zealand. 

“Nothing is the same as Calisthenics and you just can’t find that experience anywhere else.”

Then, fate brought a new and crazy idea to her mind. One day, while she was in the office, a colleague brought their daughter in. She was attempting cartwheels down the hallways, and something sparked within her. “I was like *gasps* ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to go help her with my cartwheels’. And she was the very first girl that I started working with, just one-on-one, and then she brought her neighbour, who brought the cousin, and that’s just kind of how it started.” 

So why Calisthenics? Why start a new sport in a country where there was no foundation, rather than continue with other similar dance sports that are already prevalent in New Zealand? Jess comments on the uniqueness of the sport. “I just don’t think you can find another environment where you can be as creative as you can in Calisthenics. So we’ve got, especially when you get older, all your music, your different options, you can do costumes, you can do props, it’s just such a creative outlet. And the performing side – you just can’t beat that. I just think that there’s so many different things that you can do in Calisthenics. Seeing the Jazz, Musical Theatre; it’s all the best elements of dance put into its own genre.”

Being the only club in the country comes with drawbacks, in particular the lack of support from like-minded individuals who are experienced with Calisthenics as a sport. “Some of [my support team] have dancing backgrounds, but we know that Cali is very unique. There’s a lot of strange or traditional things that we do and people are like ‘Why do you do it like that?’ and I just go, ‘I don’t know, that’s just how we’ve always done it – that’s just how it is’.”

Juggling work, family, life, and Calisthenics is a feat we can all relate to, and it is multiplied by being the sole coach and administrator of your sport in the country. “I do everything. And even if I delegate, it comes with me writing or fully explaining how to do that, which I’m happy to do, but it’s a lot.” 

With three children and an unfortunate flooding at the beginning of 2023 came additional challenges, only exacerbated by the growing number of participants in the club. “It’s quite challenging because my club is so junior and we start them so little and then they filter through. This year I had close to 30 Tinies, so coming up with [choreography for] Cubs which is our 2-4 year olds, Tinies, and Subbies choreography for two groups, is really hard. You know, if you teach Subbies and Inters you have versatility in the choreography and you can do more challenging stuff, but with the younger ones, there’s only so many ways you can do a forward raise.” Although it is sometimes a challenge, Jess is excited that she has so many students who are active participants in the club, and that they are consistently growing. “This year [2023] I had 55 [students] and then next year, based on our expression of interest and all our new people we have 72. [In 2024] we’ll have cubs, tinies, subbies, and we’ll have juniors for the first time. We also have 8 girls going to compete at Cali Unite, so that’ll be our first international trip for solos which is so exciting.”

Roar Calisthenics works off of a three term structure, which gives the students a chance to relax in Term 4 and return in February reinvigorated for the year ahead. Jess normally has most of her music and administration organised by January, so by February she can get straight into teaching. “I’ve based [Term One] off the traditional ACF Calisthenics Skills program; some traditional movements so the girls can learn the fundamentals. Once they’ve mastered them they can move onto the next level of complexity for their movements. Term One is all about the testing, and that gives me an indication as to how complex I can make the choreography and if I can give different choreography to some of the students, but most of my choreography is set before classes start.”

“Then over the Easter holidays I film all of that choreography, and I put it all up privately on YouTube so they can practise. And then Term Two and Term Three we’re just practising, and then we have our showcase. The last two years we’ve had our showcase in October purely because of babies and being pregnant and stuff like that, and it’s worked quite well for our club, just operating for those three terms, because Term Four is nuts. So we operate over those three terms, we have a photo day in there, we have our actual showcase day, and then a social catchup as well.” 

Roar Calisthenics is celebrating their tenth year of operation in 2024. When asked about the best moments over the past ten years, a few options spring to mind for Jess. “There was this one girl who would come into the club. She would never let go of her mum’s leg, she would never say a word to me, she was so shy. And she got on the stage last year at a showcase all by herself without her parents being close. It’s things like that, those little milestones.”

“Another example is the fundamentals. I’ve been teaching some dance at my daughter’s school and I’ve got quite a few girls from her group, and they were all doing hopscotch on the way back to the classroom. And the other kids were doing hopscotch with their arms flailing about and then all of my girls had their hands on their hips as they did their hopscotch down the line. I was like ‘that’s it, they’re learning those fundamentals and they don’t even realise that they’re learning them.’”

Jess was also the host and organiser of the New Zealand Calisthenics Competition, held in Auckland in 2019. As the organiser of the first ever international solo competition for Calisthenics, this event was something that she will never forget. 

“I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I had elite performers from Australia performing five minutes from my house. It was just the most incredible thing.”

When asked how it came about, it all started with a bid to host the ACF Nationals in 2019. “The feedback that I got was that we probably wouldn’t get many people interested in travelling.” Part of the reason the competition went ahead was to gauge interest for an international competition, but also, selfishly for Jess, to be amongst that exhilarating environment that isn’t present in New Zealand.

With seventeen sections and dozens of competitors from all across Australia, the inaugural competition was a huge success. Jess could not believe the support that was received from the wider Calisthenics community in Australia, and the whole experience made her heart soar. I was just so proud of the whole event and just how well [it was received]. I always knew that it would happen, I didn’t doubt my ability to pull it off, but it was just so incredible watching these performers from the side stage – it was magic, the whole weekend was just magic. I just loved it so much.”

When asked about her plans for the future, Jess’ mind is already looking far ahead. With so many ideas in mind, I began to get excited for the members of her club, and for the wider Calisthenics community. “The 2024 focus is to take some girls to Australia, and then I would love to get a team to go over [to Australia]]. I think there’s obviously a lot of new territory that Australian Calisthenics is working through at the moment, but it’s always been the plan.

Jess is still dreaming big, hoping to one day host a national competition in New Zealand. “I think that that would be a really cool experience to give people that travel opportunity. I think people are willing to travel for Calisthenics. You look at Cali Unite, my comp that I did. People want to travel; they want to experience something more than just the theatre, right? They want to see something more. So that is definitely something that I’m working towards. My family life has been very hectic this year; it’s been just survival. But 100% it’s always something that’s in the back of my mind.”

Jess also has ideas to take the sport to further places, hoping to bring Calisthenics to the wider international community. “[New Zealand] is such a beautiful place, and I’ve even thought about like, every second year, taking it to a different place in the country, I’ve also looked at other international venues to make a holiday, like a real holiday out of it, so it’s always something that I’m thinking about and Googling and writing in my notes, all these ideas.” 

When asked about the future of Roar in their tenth year and beyond, Jess has similarly big ideas and plans. “We’ve got our trip planned for this year for Cali Unite. [There’s] definitely potential for some teams to travel. Another thing I would love to introduce at Roar is a Theatre division which would open up an opportunity for our girls to explore some acting and some singing in a little bit more detail. But from a Cali perspective it’s just to keep growing the club as much as I can, and ideally find some people that would be interested in becoming cadets, so that we could build up a bit more of a coaching group.”

After ten years, there are things you are proud of, and things you may do a little differently if you had the opportunity to start over. When asked whether there were any regrets or things that Jess would have changed if she time travelled back to 2013, she initially shook her head. Reflecting on the question more, however, gave her a single, important response: to trust in herself and the sport, and to worry less about others when making decisions about how to introduce Calisthenics to New Zealand. “I was always really worried that people wouldn’t like Calisthenics. Or they’d be like ‘oh that’s so weird’. There’s so many times where I’ll be like, ‘oh this is actually a really weird sport’; you know there’s a lot of bizarre things about it but it’s just normal to us because we’ve been around it for so long. But I [didn’t introduce clubs initially] because I feel like the kids wouldn’t like it. So I was just kind of watering it down a little bit. But since I’ve had my two youngest kids, I’m a bit more time poor. So I’ve been like ‘I’m going to do it the way that I want to do it’. And since I’ve done that I’ve had more, and more, and more people enquire about it. So I think just watering it down, I wouldn’t do that if I started again, I’d just go full-on cali mode from the get go.”

As a younger coach who is still learning so much every single day, and also has aspirations to do big things in the Calisthenics community, I was so inspired chatting with Jess. You could tell that each answer was coming from a place of love and care for her students and her club, and she was extremely passionate about the development of the sport as a whole. I asked her what advice she would give someone like me, who was hoping to build the sport as she did and try new things that might be a little outside of the traditional Calisthenics box. 

“I think as long as you are true to yourself, and your club is an extension of you and your passion for the sport and your love for the sport, you will be fine. People don’t come to Roar to learn freearm, they come to Roar because of me and because of my passion and because of how much I love it and how much I can pour back into the children. I think if you want to do it then do it, and just let all of your enthusiasm pour out into your pupils and you will be so successful.”

If anybody has any family in NZ that has been exposed to Calisthenics, in particular Auckland, then Jess would love to connect and get people involved. Jess is also keen to connect with coaches and clubs from Australia, to foster a relationship with her students and also help inspire her students who are ready for a challenge. “I’ve got some girls who are learning or ready to learn some more difficult moves, so if there are people out there who can provide little video snippets [or similar]. If anybody has those resources or the ability to help, things like that are always so appreciated, because I’m effectively teaching with a blank canvas. There’s no seniors to inspire our girls. Just having those relationships back in Australia are always so valued and so useful. We’re just like another state over here, really. Just like Tasmania, but a bit further away.” 

If you’d like to get in touch with Jess, or you live in New Zealand and would love to be a part of this incredible journey, you can find her here: