One of my favorite things to do as a coach is disguise work as fun. My new favorite game is called “Here, There and Everywhere”. We played this with a group of 25 gymnasts on a standard gymnastics floor and not only did they break a sweat, they kept asking to play it over and over! Here’s the run down on how to play.

What you need:

• A group of kids of any age - the game can be played with 1-100 kids
• An adult or older child to act as the “caller”
• A large enough area for kids to move - obviously the larger the group the larger the space you need. Can be played outdoors, on a sports court, gymnastics floor or even in the pool.

How to play:

• Define your play space and then identify 3 landmarks (a tree, a cone, a tape line, or any other visual) - name them “Here”, “There” and “Everywhere”
• Start all the kids on “Here”
• Then the caller gets creative! Caller says “Go there” and all the kids go to the spot identified as “There” - anyone who goes to the wrong place is out. The next command gets called - “Skip everywhere” and anyone who goes to the wrong place is out. Keep repeating with new ways to get here, there and everywhere until you declare a winner or everyone has had enough.

Command ideas:

• Go here
• Skip there
• Sit everywhere
• Stand everywhere
• Jump here
• Hop there
• Swim everywhere
• Spin here
• Bounce there
• Crawl everywhere

This game is guaranteed to make kids move and have fun doing it.

Rick at Gymnastics Coaching recently posted about a great resource for games like this one - the book, called No Standing Around in My Gym, is by J.D. Hughes and features more than 70 games plus variations that will keep even large groups of kids moving and having fun.

I have a few more games that are popular with the kids at our gym. I will try to write them up soon and share them here.