WORKOUT 4 KIDS - Sit-ups - Sitting WOD

Equipment needed:

• 4-8(+) friends!

• Ab matts if you have them

• Resistance bands if you have them

• Something with a little weight / size to pass around. A 3kg medicine ball works well, or a giant beach-ball.

Warm-up game:

Janken Evolution

1. One or two kids start the session as the king/queen, sitting on a chair (or wall / anything).

2. All other kids start life in the plank position and have to 'rove' (roving plank) to another planking child and play janken (rock, paper, scissors) against them. The winner evolves into a crab and moves around in a crab walk to find another crab and play janken against them.

3. This continues with kids going through the following evolution list: 1.Plank, 2.Crab, 3.Bear - bear crawl, 4.Gorilla - move around in the squat position, 5.Lunging human - walking lunges. Each time they play janken, they either evolve (if they win), or stay at their current level (if they lose) and have to find another child of the same 'species' as them to play janken against again.

4. When they win at janken against another lunging human they can then play janken against the king/queen. The winner of this game is the king/queen, the loser returns to being a plank!

5. Play for a designated amount of time (for as long as it is fun). At the end of the time, the winner is whoever is king/queen!

Stretching:

• Lying on back, legs at 90, feet on ground, swivel hips to each side to touch knees to ground both sides x10 total

• Supermen (on your belly core hold/stretch) x 5

• Deadbugs (on your back core hold/stretch) x 5

• Downward dog into cobra stretch.

• Quad couch stretch

Skill:

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

• Sit-ups

Ab matts are best to use for this movement, but not essential. For children that don't have the core strength yet to sit-up, they may need to use a resistance band wrapped around a post / tree to hold onto. Alternatively an adult/friend can sit in front of them, hold their hands and offer just enough pull to help them up, while still making them work for the sit-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:

Sitting WOD! - To be done for time (how fast can you go?) or played against another team to try to finish first!

Spend some time teaching the wall-sit and making sure children have the correct form.

This WOD is designed to be played around the perimeter of a rectangular playing field (roughly 30m x 20m, but a little smaller / bigger is fine) which has a wall along one side.

1. Teams start by performing a wall-sits next to each-other, against the walled side of the playing field.

2. Give one child at the end of this line, the medicine ball or beach ball.

3. On the "Go!" signal they pass the ball along the line of wall-sitting children.

4. As soon as the ball leaves a child's hands, they run to the other side of the wall-sitting children and get back into a wall-sit to extend the line and keep the ball moving.

5. This continues until they reach the end of the wall.

6. At the end of the wall, the entire team crab walks down the second side of the rectangular playing field, finding a way to either carry the ball on one of their stomachs (taking turns) or rolling the ball along with them.

7. When they all reach the the third side of the rectangular playing field they form a line, lying on their backs on the floor, head to toe.

8. The person at the start of this line should be holding the ball over their head and needs to sit-up to pass the ball into the next person's hands.

9. As soon as the ball leaves a child's hands, they run to the other side of the line of children and lie down to extend the line and keep the ball moving.

10. When they all reach the fourth and final side of the rectangular playing field, the entire team bear crawls down this side, finding a way to either carry the ball on one of their backs (taking turns) or rolling the ball along with them.

11. When they reach the place they started the time can be stopped, or if playing in two teams, they start on opposite sides (e.g. one team starts at wall-sits and the other starts at sit-ups) and the winning team is the one to return to their original position first.

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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.