Lockdown is here. Again. Once more the kids are off school and yet again we are left working from home and stuck indoors looking for ways to entertain ourselves. Luckily, there are loads of sporting challenges and games you can have a go at to stop yourself from going mad. They help to get that important exercise in too.
Raising your heart rate, or simply challenging yourself in a variety of ways, can make the time fly, so to help you out we have come up with our five favourite unusual sporting activities that you can try at home.
Swingball
Genuinely, how did something so simple become so brilliant. An absolute classic. With swingball sets available online from around £20, this cheap and easy game can provide hours of fun and you can even play on your own if necessary! First invented in 1974, swingball is proof that the simplest games are usually the best, and with a bat, and a ball attached to a pole by string, the hours can be whittled away.
Take on your housemates, family members, or just play by yourself. We find this game to be the perfect stressbuster as you can hit the ball as hard as possible and, unlike tennis, you don’t even have to retrieve it. Perfection.
Plank Challenge/Press-Up Challenge
This one again is simple, but could have long-term benefits. Let’s start with press-ups. If you can’t manage to do a single press-up then start on your knees until you can manage one. From there, every single day add another rep to your tally. By the 30th day you should be pumping out 30 push-ups and feeling much better about yourself!
If you fancy testing your core while you’re at it, try the same but with a plank. Instead of adding a repetition, begin with a 10-second plank and try to add five seconds every single day. You will soon be planking for over a minute and have a rock-hard core to boot. We’ve got time to waste, let’s use it!
The Dance-Along
Okay, you might not be a natural dancer but hear us out. Simply put on your favourite dance music video on YouTube and just try to copy the dance moves with as much energy as possible. It is as simple as that. You don’t even have to be any good, just enthusiastic and energetic. We recommend this is probably best done alone, in a clear and empty room as those arms will be flailing around and this workout is sure to get you sweating.
Create your own Cube
We love ITV’s hit game show The Cube. The beauty of it is that most of the challenges there can be made at home, albeit without host Phillip Schofield. From trying to walk over obstacles blindfolded to throwing an orange onto a plate and trying to keep it there, anything can be done at home.
Make yourself a list of challenges and see how much fake money you can win without losing your nine lives. Remember, you can even add a ‘simplify’ to make one of the challenges easier if you just can’t beat it.
Toilet Roll Challenge
This one is taken from the first lockdown, when the world went crazy for the toilet roll keepy-uppy challenge. Almost every footballer across the globe got involved in this viral trend as Lionel Messi, Joao Felix and Jerome Boateng all shared their efforts on social media.
With toilet rolls now a little easier to get hold off, why not have a go and copy the world’s best footballers in seeing how many keepy-uppies you can do with that precious toilet roll. If you get really good at it, you could claim to be better than Leo!
