Jack Payne is a former competitive cheerleader and tumbler who figured out that doing gravity-defying flips on the internet pays a lot better than cheering at games. His channel is high-energy, visually impressive, and completely exhausting to watch if you're the person paying for the household's emergency room co-pays. It’s wall-to-wall acrobatics, exaggerated YouTube drama, and physical challenges that are virtually guaranteed to make your kid want to vault over the living room furniture.
TL;DR: Jack Payne runs a massive stunt and gymnastics channel built around insane flips, physical challenges, and clickbait drama. It’s highly entertaining and genuinely impressive, but it requires a rock-solid "we do not try this at home" rule before your kid decides the staircase is a parkour course.
If you want to understand why your kid is glued to this channel, you have to look at it through the lens of a 9-year-old: Jack Payne basically has superpowers.
Kids are naturally drawn to physical competence and extreme kinetic energy. Jack isn't just doing a standard gymnastics floor routine; he’s doing double backflips over moving golf carts, battling dancers to see who is stronger, and turning entire houses into trampoline parks. He knows exactly what his audience wants: real-life video game physics. When he does a video trying to recreate stunts from the Super Mario Galaxy movie, it’s basically catnip for the elementary school crowd.
The appeal is simple. It’s fast, it’s loud, and it features a guy doing things that look physically impossible.
The primary friction point with Jack Payne isn't bad language or mature themes—the channel is actually very clean on that front. The issue is purely physical imitation.
Jack is a highly trained professional who knows how to fall, how to bail out of a bad flip, and how to land safely. Your kid, launching themselves off the armrest of the couch, does not.
This matters because of how kids consume this stuff. According to Screenwise community data, 42% of kids on YouTube are watching solo, while 38% watch supervised. If your kid is in that solo camp, you need to know that YouTube’s algorithm loves escalating stunts. They might start with Jack doing a simple backflip tutorial and end up watching extreme parkour creators jumping between rooftops.
The other thing to know is that the channel leans heavily into classic YouTube reality-TV tropes. You’ll see videos with titles like "I Exposed the World's Most EVIL Gymnastics Coach!" or exaggerated rivalries with other creators. It’s scripted, mid-tier acting designed to keep the watch time up. Kids usually buy into the drama completely; it’s worth a quick conversation to remind them that YouTube is a TV show, and the "drama" is just part of the script.
If your kid is hyped up after watching a Jack Payne video, don't just tell them to sit still—give them a place to put that energy.
- Take it to the gym: If they are genuinely interested in tumbling, look up a local gymnastics center or parkour gym that offers open gym time or beginner classes. Let them learn how to flip into a foam pit instead of onto your coffee table.
- Set location rules: You can't turn off their desire to move, but you can draw boundaries. "Flips are for the trampoline or the grass, not the living room."
- Talk about the invisible work: Ask them how many times they think Jack failed a trick before he landed it for the camera. It’s a great way to talk about editing, practice, and the reality that what they see on screen is the 50th take, not the first.
If they love the physical challenges and high-energy stunts, here are a few other options that scratch the same itch with slightly different vibes:
- Dude Perfect: The gold standard for YouTube physical challenges. It’s trick shots, stereotypes, and friendly competition, but with a much lower risk of your kid breaking their neck trying to copy it.
- Ninja Kidz TV: A family of actual martial artists and gymnasts who do superhero challenges and physical stunts. It’s very kid-centric and heavily focused on athletic skill.
- American Ninja Warrior: Move them off YouTube and onto a highly produced, structured athletic competition. It highlights the training and the failures just as much as the successes.
- Rocket League: If they just love the physics of things flying through the air and hitting exact targets, this game (soccer with rocket-powered cars) is a great digital outlet for that specific spatial-reasoning itch.
Q: What age is Jack Payne appropriate for? The sweet spot is ages 7-12. The content is generally clean—no swearing or mature themes—but the stunts are highly imitable, which is the main friction point for younger viewers who lack impulse control.
Q: Is Jack Payne actually a professional gymnast? Yes. He was a highly competitive cheerleader and tumbler before pivoting to YouTube full-time. The athletic skills are completely real, even if the drama in the videos is staged.
Q: How do I stop my kid from copying YouTube stunts? You don't stop the movement, you redirect it. Set firm physical boundaries for the house, and if they really want to learn, get them into a beginner tumbling or parkour class where they can learn to fail safely on padded mats.
Q: Does YouTube Kids filter out stunt videos? Not reliably. Stunt and gymnastics videos are generally considered family-friendly by the algorithm, so they will easily populate on restricted accounts. If you want to lock it down, check out our guide on how to set up YouTube parental controls.
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about managing YouTube stunt phases. - For a comprehensive look at what’s actually worth watching, check out our best YouTube channels for kids list.
- Navigating the algorithm with a 4th grader? See our digital guide for elementary school.