Building an adult obstacle course la Tough Mudder or Spartan Race or Ninja Warrior is a noble goal, but not everyone wants to spend their weekend building a complex network of structures. Mixed with lots of wood fill your backyard. You can buy prefabricated adult play structures or hire companies if you want to go that route. If you’re handy, you can do it yourself, but again, it’s going to take a lot of time. I’m more interested in building adult obstacle courses using simple objects you may already have lying around or can easily get at a Home Depot. The average person can achieve a little that way.
Ideas for an adult obstacle course
The beauty of these types of obstacles is that they are constantly modular. You can adjust the composition, bringing the jumps closer together or further apart as you progress in skill and strength. You can take them to the park or the beach and set up a barricade anywhere you want. Your creativity flourishes. It can be a different course each time. Here are some supplies that I recommend you get started with and what you can create with them.
Beam balance
Long logs are relatively inexpensive and easy to transport balance bars. You can attach support pads underneath at either end running perpendicular to lift the bar off the ground and provide more stability, but you don’t really need to. Simply placing the pieces directly on the ground also works. It’s also safer, since you don’t “drop” anything.
- 2×4 if you don’t feel comfortable sitting on the stabilizer bar
- 2 × 3 if you are
- 1 × 2 if you really want to learn how to balance
You can use them for leveling beams. You can use them to crawl — bears crawling along a 2×4 are a great exercise and a good change of pace for an obstacle course.
River stones for the path of balance
Every time you spend a day in a creek or river, grab a few large flat rocks and take them home. After a dozen hits, you’ll have enough. Or just head down to the landscaping supply store and fill your truck/cart with some decent sized stones.
Then create a walking path using the stones that the player must traverse. It is important to get stones that are flat enough that you can stand on them but can also cause them to wobble. They should be wobbly but relatively safe, are a great way to traverse uneven, non-linear “ground” and activate all the muscles and connective tissue in your lower body (and balance the neurons in your brain).
You can also jump from one rock to another, as if you were in a creek. For added difficulty, spray them down first.
Exercise / yoga ball
Yoga balls receive a lot of attention in the “functional fitness” community. They don’t deserve it. Definitely, I don’t recommend doing squats on them or presses from above. That is silly and dangerous. What I recommend is to bury it halfway in the sand or dirt to use as a small trampoline.
Take 4 or 5 of them spread out in a row and bounce in your direction. Advanced movers can even do flips, though you won’t see me doing that any time soon.
Rope
If you have a tree in your backyard, you can hang a rope from it. What can you do with a rope?
- Climb it- Great endurance training and a mainstay on the toughest obstacle courses.
- Swing from it- Just like Tarzan, scream at will.
- Jump and grab it- Stand on a chair, rock or anything tall and jump up to grab the rope. How far can you do this safely? Four legs? Six feet? Self check.
Logs or railway relations
Something long, heavy, and wooden is a great addition to an adult obstacle course. You can ask the player to lift the log and take it to the next station. You can ask them to do a series of overhead presses, dumbbells or log squats, with one end on the ground or both ends on the ground.
Bucket full of gravel or sand
Spend $30 on 4 buckets and a few bags of gravel or sand from the homeware store and you’ve got yourself a nice set of takeaways. You can carry the bucket by the handle. You can hug it to your body. You can even carry them on your head. They’re awkward, messy, and gross, and that’s the problem. Whatever the course designer asks, the player must do.
The beauty of the gravel bucket is that you can adjust the weight to suit the player. Fill the bucket with gravel and it weighs about 75 pounds. Two of them will be quite heavy. Fill it in half and it becomes more manageable for younger, smaller players.
Pieces of light wood placed between two boxes or two chairs
This may be the most important factor of all. By placing light bars or pieces of wood on boxes or chairs, you can create barriers to jump over or get under. You can even chain them to create a tunnel to crawl through, or an alternating sequence of jumps and crawls.
Tennis ball on string
Punch holes in tennis balls and tie strings to them, then hang them on something overhead like a truss, tree, or gazebo. Create a series of tennis balls at different heights that the contestants must dodge and knit without touching. Wind will make it harder. Intentionally pushing them to sway a little will make it even harder.
If desired, you can coat tennis balls in coal dust so that they leave a mark as evidence of being touched (or not).
Cone
Small cones (like you use in soccer practice) are great for creating paths that you have to weave back and forth. Creating a path makes things more “official” and people are bound to overcome more obstacles if you have a predetermined path—a journey for them to complete. It’s a small thing but it’s very important.
Throw element
Every obstacle should have a throwing element. In the Spartan Race, the contestants must throw a javelin at a target. You can do that—they even sell javelins on Amazon—or you can have upright sticks and a pile of rocks that you have to use to knock them over. You can use a dart board, throwing knife or axe.
The aim is to introduce an element of correct throwing on the course. You don’t want things to be brute force.
tight element
I still like to separate the wooden rings. Takes me back to my childhood in Maine. And there is no better exercise than doing a functional activity. In fact, one study showed that cutting wood triggers a higher testosterone response than an equally intense workout.
If you don’t want to do the log split, you can get a sledgehammer and some old tires and ask the contestants to do some hammering. The goal is to lift a heavy object with a handle and knock it down with purpose and intensity.
Remember to get creative
Take all the ideas above and then put them together. There is a balance beam running through the tunnel. Smash a buried yoga ball onto the balance bar. Carry buckets of gravel while crossing the zigzag river rocks. Swing on the yoga ball court. You get the idea.
The most important thing is to fully introduce the elements of human movement: speed, balance, strength (upper body, lower body, full body), skill, dexterity, accurate throwing, cardiac fitness circuit, standing upright, grounding (sliding), jumping, landing. Oh, and fun.
Now I want to hear from you. How will you overcome adult obstacles together?
Information about the Authors
If you want to add an avatar for all your comments, click here!
