Instant Activity

This warm-up idea is designed to get students engaged in running and building cardiovascular endurance without them even knowing it. With today’s emergence of video games it immediately catches the student’s attention. You really don’t need much equipment for this and the students seem to love it.

In the gym, get students into 8 groups of 3. Two students of the group are at one end of the gym and the other student is at the other end of the gym. (See diagram below if needed).

S= student C= Cone

S S ----(run)---- C -----(run)-------- S
S S ----(run)---- C -----(run)-------- S
S S ----(run)---- C -----(run)-------- S

Pass out a football to the 1st student in the line of the 2 students. On the teachers go or whistle, the student with the ball will run as fast as he or she can to the other end of the gym to the next student in line. But before they get there, they will perform a football or video game football move at the cone. Students can “juke”, stutter-step, spin, hurdle, hesitate and go, high knee, etc. and then hand the ball off to the student at the end of their line. Once that student has the ball, he or she immediately runs down to the other end (staying in their line) and does the same thing but picks their own video game move. Once that student gets to the other end, the process just repeats and students are continuously running but still getting a little break in between.

Encourage students to hand the ball off correctly and try not to fumble it. Try to mix up their moves, watch others and maybe learn from someone else’s move.

You can do this for a set number of minutes and increase every time you do it. The students don’t realize they are building cardiovascular endurance and sprinting because it’s so much fun!