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Obstacle Courses Made Easy
OakleyOriginals on flickr
Q: What’s the key to putting together a fun obstacle course for the kids in the backyard? Where do I start?
A: This is not as hard as it sounds, really. Kids like to move and need to move. All directions and at all speeds. Creating a fun and developmentally sound obstacle course involves nothing more than that—building it so that it involves fun movement and incorporates various directions and speeds. Keep three general principles in mind and you can’t go wrong:
- The best way to design a course is to first establish a shape, like a triangle, square or octagon.
- Each straight line represents a different movement. One can be forward, the next sideways, the next backwards, etc.
- Now just fill in the blanks in terms of which movements. For instance, run, jump, skip, crawl, throw, kick and hop.
Brian Grasso is the founder and CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association. Learn more at iyca.org.
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