One of the trickier things that comes with designing a Ninja Setup for a client is providing a course that will cover a broad age range and skill level. The majority of people we are designing for have kids that range in age from 4 to 15. So, creativity becomes essential in the design process.
We have to consider 3 main things
- It must be fun and safe for the younger kids
- It must be fun, safe, yet challenging for the older kids
- The course must fit within the client budget
Of course, we could simply recommend a number of our obstacles to keep on hand to swap in and out on the Katana Frame. While it is nice to have additional obstacles so you can keep the course fresh, sometimes this does not work with the budget. So we have to constantly think of ways to be creative with obstacles so they may be used in a number of ways by different age groups.
With all of these thoughts in mind, we created the Hanging Disc obstacle. We wanted to see how we could transform our floating pole obstacle (which the young kids love) to something that the older kids would enjoy as well. Our Floating poles look like the image below:
This is a fun obstacle but there is only one way to use it. So, we decided to shorten the pole to about 15 inches and do a rope connection for the remaining length. This allows us to do the floating poles as well as the very challenging high floating discs. The below photos show the difference between the two:
Low Discs:
Then these low discs can easily be transformed to the high discs by eliminating the rope:
All of a sudden, this becomes one challenging Ninja obstacle! You get two obstacles in one and everybody is happy! You can see more of our sport obstacles here.
Email Brad@american-gymnast.com for any questions regarding Ninja or to see about our design services
Brad Thornton