Categories
When to use:
- During rest breaks within workouts (minute on/minute off, or between rounds in Fight Gone Bad)
Benefits:
- improve Executive functions (a collection of cognitive processes. Generating answers is challenging on its own, but the frontal lobe has to decide which answers “fit” before the athlete speaks them as “final answers”. Because memory retrieval is automatic, the frontal lobe acts as a funnel or filter to find the most appropriate response. Thought organization is essential for optimal executive functioning.)
Equipment:
- category ideas, pen and post-it notes for each athlete.
How to play:
- – Athletes record as many items as they can recall from a given category.
Category Ideas:
| Flowers–Sports TeamsMusic/genres/songs/artists–Type of Ships–Furniture–Animals-Ice cream flavors–Foods eaten by the slice–School supplies–Office supplies | -Cities, States, Provinces,Countries–Things made of glass– Books/authors–Restaurants–Christmas songs–Things that are (color) | –Words beginning with(letter)–Movies/Actors-Brand names– Colors |
Rules:
- athletes have one minute to record as many words as possible.
- plurals of the same word do not count.
Scoring:
- 1 point added to their workout score for each word
Variations:
- Use a different category each round