Warm-up games for contact

The games are named after the animals that the body positions are like, because I mainly use these games with children, however they are perfect for adults so feel free to change the name or not use a name.

The area will depend on the amount of players you have, their age, ability and fitness. As an example I would typically use the area between the two 10m lines and the two 15m lines in the centre of the pitch for a game for 15x 14 year olds. But feel free to adapt to what you feel is appropriate for your players.

Spiders

For the purpose of these games, the ‘spider position’ is: crawling on hands and feet with chest facing the ground and the back facing up.

Organisation/rules:

• Start with everyone as spiders
• All spiders to have a ball (spherical balls work best, rugby balls will provide additional challenge) under their body that they must move around
• It’s up to you on whether you allow the players to kick other players’ balls away, depending on their maturity and how safe you feel they’ll be doing it

Aims:

• Players must look after their ball and keep it under their bodies
• Players aim to knock other players’ balls out of the area (for an extra challenge you can change this to just the ball leaving the area under their body)
• Players are “out” if the players ball leaves the area (change as appropriate if you adjust the above bullet point)
• Players who are “out” continue trying to knock others ball out of the area
• The winner is the last player with a ball under their body