Today I took my daughter and a friend to one of the CrossFit Kids classes that CrossFit Impavidus held to start prepping for the summer session. They had opened it up to all members’ kids, so why not tire my kids out on a Sunday morning.  I had read about what CF Kids was all about, but I was curious to see it put into action.

Coach Lori and Coach Jerry started off with gathering the kids in a circle and talking to them a bit about what was on tap for the session. What I liked about that was they talked to them in kids speak so they could understand what’s going to happen. They went over some of the other skills the kids would have to use when doing the exercises and then into the warmup they went. This session was more geared towards the 5-8 year olds than the older kids.

They did some general stretching and then began to get ready for the Lego Game.

In teams of 2, each partner has to do broad jumps to one wall to earn 3 lego pieces – then with lego pieces in hand, they run back alternating for 6minutes. They can earn 3 more lego pieces if individually they decide to do 3 burpees right after their broad jump. The team that can construct the  highest lego structure within 5 mins of time being called wins.  What I loved about this was i combined exercise with learning to work as a team and then use your brain to figure out how to get the tallest structure.

After they did a quick clean up of their lego pieces, the gang headed outside to play a game of tag with a twist. One person is it – once they tag someone, everyone freezes —

and those 2 (tagger and taggee) have to do 3 reps of the exercise that the coach calls out. For this game it was squats, push ups, and tuck jumps. So the 1st tagger/taggee had to do 3 squats. Everyone unfreezes and the taggee becomes the tagger and goes after someone else — doing the 3 push ups and so on. … The kids were well run after this was over —

Then they regathered in the circle for a wrap up and afterwards were able to look around and try out a few exercises on their own if they wanted — like push ups, pull ups, box jumps and ropes.

I love that these games are designed to be fun and active and also engages their mind. They learn strategy, teamwork, and patience!  My daughter loved it!