Ninja Warrior Day

​Challenge yourself through the ninja warrior courses set up in our gym environment.
The biggest obstacle to conducting a Ninja Warrior Day in your Vacation Care Centre is having the equipment required to set up the challenges. The second problem faced by centres is monitoring children’s safety. Thirdly, not understanding what base level skills and strength is required for gruelling activities prevents children from enjoying this amazing fun at their own level. So let’s make that easy for you. 

The Equipment Kit

​You need your centre to be versatile to arrange a wide range of activities. You can’t rebuild the basketball court into a padded swinging zone with high bars, ropes and obstacles over a swimming pool.
Modifying our equipment to cater for children makes it easy to provide age appropriate challenges where children can improve strength, balance and live the excitement of a Ninja Warrior Day at your own Vacation Care. No expensive bus trips, no travel arrangements and time wasting. Bringing our gear into your zone and setting it up for you eliminates boring time and increases children’s action time.
We have swinging, balancing, bouncing, rolling, jumping and some things that are there purely because they are so much fun we can’t bear to leave them behind. From the moment we start, you will see children relax, smile and get very, very excited by what is set up for them.
Swinging Ninja Warriors Safely

​Ninja Warriors who fly through the sky on Sydney's Cockatoo Island in the All-Australian challenge, they are highly skilled, supremely fit and very strong athletes. 
​Watch this ex gymnast from Victoria smash the course

Children love watching and getting involved in activities where they are doing, rather than watching. It is easy for caregivers to monitor children watching videos, playing team sport or during creative art classes. Developing safety rules for children undertaking strong action skills is a more challenging task. Trained coaches are skilled in developing the Ninja Warrior sub-skills, monitoring safety and adapting to the Vacation Cares children’s abilities. 

It is easy for an unskilled person to challenge children in a way that results in them being injured. Risk of injury at a Ninja Day is mitigated by a clear understanding of what the results of children attempting things for which they do not have the base level skill to complete the challenge. A good example is swinging skills. Children who commence swinging activities, must know how to land and more importantly have the grip strength to carry their body weight. Without these testing these to core elements during the warm up games and lead up activities, children try to keep up with their peers, even if they are not able to.
Understanding the base level Ninja Warrior skills
Children don’t want to spend time on basics. The moment they see mini trampolines they want to attempt Aerial Salts.  This complex skill set has many lead up skills that can be taught in such a way that they are great fun. Children learn to trust their coach, pay attention to their own limitations and watch others attempts. 

Some of the skill progressions for an Aerial Salto are really basic: forward rolling, landing safely and maintaining core stability. Watch how we teach the basics < Gymanstics4Hire.  Without paying attention to the fundamental skill, teaching the landing and core control, even something so basic may cause injuries; which are in fact 100% preventable with the correct progressions. 

​The Ninja Warrior Day is especially designed to use children’s current skills and abilities and turn them into apprentice Ninja Warriors. The best outcome from such a day is to see children using playground equipment to apply the skills they have learned during the course of your Vacation Care centre’s activities on their own. With a child’s imagination, it is a very small step for a few friends to organise their own Ninja Warrior activities and games. 

​ About the Author
Wally Salinger has 30 years experience as an Australian Physical Educator. He has taught 2 million children Australia-wide and in the 3rd World. His passion for movement education is lived every day as a physically active, mentally challenging Mindset Coach. The Alpha Potential. He believes every child should participate in high quality physical education within their education curriculum on a daily basis. 
He loves gymnastics, swimming, yoga and travel, currently based in Sri Lanka.