WORKOUT 4 KIDS - pushups & burpees - Crazy baseball

Equipment needed:

• 4-8(+) friends!

• 'spots' / 'ab mats' / anything flat with a little weight to it - one per participant

• 4-8 cones or 'markers' for bases

Warm-up game:

Pizza game

Movements you use to get back into the game should be simple ones, that children are familiar with and pose low injury risk e.g.:

• Air squats x5

• Jumping jacks x5

• Mountain climbers x10

• Running on the spot for a count of 10 etc.

Make sure you 'sell' the movements children do when their pizza's are knocked down - it is important to build a positive association with exercise. These movements are not 'penalties', exercise is never used as a 'punishment', these movements are 'buy ins' to get back into the fun game they want to play!

Stretching:

• Quads / hip flexors (squats / squat hold)

• Hamstrings (inchworms without pushups / downward dogs etc.)

• All over (perfect Stretch)

Skill:

Work on perfect form and finding the right scale for each individual on the following movements:

• Push up (RX / Scale1-from the knees / Scale2-using a bench/Scale3-using a wall)

• Burpee (RX / Scale1-no push-up)

When form is corrected / the correct scale is found for individuals, you can challenge them to do max reps in 1min, to get a 'benchmark' level for where their fitness is currently, which they can aim to improve on over the coming weeks/months.

Workout:

Crazy baseball! - AMRAP until children are too tired/for as long as it remains fun!

Make one or two baseball diamonds using your cones/markers, depending on number of participants. Ideally you would have 2 diamonds, and two teams of a minimum of 4 (8 total) to compete against each other.

1. From starting/home base do walking lunges to Base1

2. At Base1 do 3x push-ups (use your scale! Form over ego!)

3. Bear crawl from Base1 to Base2.

4. At Base2 do 3x burpees (use your scale! Form over ego!)

5. Crab walk from Base2 to Base3.

6. At Base3 do 6x mountain climbers

7. Sprint from Base3 to Home base and count a run for your team!

Depending on the age of the children, you can rename these movements however you want to make them more 'fun' e.g. walking lunges can become 'giant steps', or burpees could be 'bear growls' (jump up, show your claws and growl!)!

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Disclaimer: The author of this blog is not a trained fitness professional. While the workouts for kids blogged about here are specifically designed with low risk movements and little to no weight, they are designed to be administered by people with some knowledge/experience of the movements being described. The example videos alone are not enough to understand and coach the movement safely and anyone wishing to teach these movements to children should have had some training before doing so. Any form of workout comes with inherent risk of injury and anyone undertaking the workouts blogged about here does so at their own risk and cannot hold the author of this blog responsible for any resultant injury that may occur. The workouts blogged about here are based on workouts which are commonly prescribed by the Crossfit Kids coaching community and have at times been modified by the author of this blog, usually to require less equipment.