Me and the kids are really into ANW when it comes on during the summer, so I said we could build a few of the obstacles in the back yard for them to work on (ages 9 and 12…the 12 year-old is very athletic and gymnastic-oriented).
Of course they want the warped wall…but I have no idea how to build it safely or even how to measure it out so I can cut and build it.
There are a lot of places online offering to sell me “plans” but I don’t really trust that I’m going to get what I pay for there, so I thought I would turn tot he dope for some advice on building a wall or 2 that are accessible to the kids while still challenging them.
Building the warped wall? It’s like 14 feet high. A fall or slip from that height can easily break an ankle or leg. Just the run up to the wall when you plant if done incorrectly can cause injury.
There is a gym near my house that has the obstacles setup and when you run at the wall they have a spotter that goes with you when you are first learning. The thing is, as you are running up, some people tend to jump back off the wall instead of up. Doing so means when you fall you don’t slide down and instead just fall straight down. The spotter goes with you and if that happens slams you back into the wall so at least you are sliding down the curve. The one I saw had a wall that was a bit wider and had grips at 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 feet so you can get to dif levels.
Obviously with kids you make the wall shorter. You can also make it less steep.
Some other obstacles:
Ropes (maybe some bungeed) hanging from a 4x4. You can adjust difficulty by the distance between the ropes and the slope of the 4x4.
Quadruple/Quintuple steps shouldn’t be too hard (adjust distance for difficulty)
I saw that as well…but while I am handy with a saw and drill, I don’t completely understand the concepts I would need to scale that down to say, 10 feet. Got any tips for that?
