Welcome to the side of the internet where we have fun with fitness again as adults, and start adding in games and crafts just because we can! I’m so excited!
All of this stemmed from when I worked at a rec center and my coworker in charge of the kids program was coming up with crafts for them to do. It looked like so much fun!
And being in the health and fitness department, there was no reason for me to be creating crafts and having fun like that.
Until I decided that it was time!
In this blog, I’m sharing all of my favorite fitness games and crafts you can do with your group fitness class, by yourself or with some friends as a good bonding session.
You can look at these as a good finisher at the end of a class, a bonus workout for a gym bonding experience or make it the full focus of the day and edit to make it last.
So, if you’re ready for a new spin on fitness, then let’s dive in!
Games
Whether you’ve heard of these games before or not, they were always my favorite option to fall back on if I wasn’t able to put together something specific for my bootcamp class. Or, if there was a request because we hadn’t done them in awhile.
These are also great options if you constantly get bored of the same old routine in the gym and want something to spice things up! All you need to come up with are the exercises.
I’ll go over it more in the crafts section, but if you want over 100+ exercise ideas, you can grab my Fitness Craft Print Outs to use however you want.
All of these games, however, can be created on your own using a template on Canva easily. Literally, just search “bingo template”, “dice template” or any other games you can come up with and there will be options to easily edit.
Bingo
I was super proud of creating this template! Did I do it the complicated way back in 2016? Sure did!
But if you don’t have a Canva account or want a different way to create a bingo card, here’s how I did it. Again, not that this is better, but it’s another option.
I just opened a Word Doc, chose horizontal, and added a grip to the center. Then at the top, putting each letter of BINGO over each column. From there, you just choose 25 exercises you want to use and put one in each box.
Now, this is where it gets annoying, and again, I’m sure there’s better websites to easily create this or AI. But if you really want to just sit on your computer with a good playlist or podcast (might I recommend the Health and Hobbies Diary!?) then here’s what you’ll do.
Make a list of all the exercises you chose in order of the first sheet. And one at a time, rotate the starting point of that list on each copy. I made 20 just in case we had a big class, or to cycle through the different options.
So for example, say all the exercises below B were mountain climbers, crunches, twisted mountain climbers, high knees and fire hydrants. Then on the next sheet, starting under B, I would have squats (because this was at the bottom of the hypothetical list), mountain climbers, crunches, twisted mountain climbers, high knees, and under I, fire hydrants would be the first.
You just keep cycling through that until you’ve created however many versions of the BINGO cards you wanted.
Once those are created, just print them out and laminate to keep reusing them, and have everyone use a dry erase marker to cross off an exercise once they’ve gotten them.
And for getting the exercises, I’d print out the list of exercises, cut them into pieces so each exercise is on it’s own sheet and do one of 2 options.
Either you have the master list, shuffle them up and call them out until there’s a BINGO. Or, spread them around the room or gym you’re in, upside down, and have them walk around the room until someone gets a BINGO.
And this is where you can have fun with setting it up! I’ve had them spread around the room and had everyone just look for them. I’ve used the gymnasium and had them run or lunge down and back for each exercise. And then you can decide how many reps you want to do for the day.
If you want a quick game, it can be 10 reps of everything. Or if you’d like a longer game, then you could do 20+ reps for everything.
Once you’ve taken the time to create these, it’s such a fun and easy thing to have available to spice up the workouts.
Dice
Dice is another fun fitness game that I loved using as backup or for special themed days. This too, I also overcomplicated a little in creating.
I just found a free Dice printout option online, downloaded it and printed it out on colored cardstock paper. Then I made each color a certain body part or exercise equipment and wrote the exercises out on each side of the dice.
This is an easy one you can make multiple versions of on Canva and type them out. Then you don’t have to worry if other people can read them which, with my chicken scratch, took some time to get used to.
But examples of equipment could be purple being slider exercises, green being dumbbell exercises, pink is the TRX, orange is bodyweight, etc.
Breaking each color into body parts instead could be red is legs, blue is arms, green is core, orange is chest, purple is back, etc.
From there, all you’d need to decide is how many reps you want for each exercise or dice.
I would either choose a rep count for the day. Like 15 reps no matter what exercise you land on.
Or you could focus on heavier weights and lighter reps for upper body exercises, and lighter weight with more reps for lower body exercise. Or however you want to focus on the day.
Cards
The card game I found out about at the very first gym I worked at. An obviously popular and beloved trainer would do it as the finisher for his clients and, depending on the clients abilities, would race them to see who could get the most cards done.
I never did that with my group classes, but I did love bringing the cards out for classes almost monthly.
This one is nice and simple, because all you need to do is pick 4 exercises you want to focus on for the day. Depending on the class, I might do 2 rounds with different exercises for each round. Or you could pair cards with another game or craft for the day.
My older ladies would take longer than my younger ones, so whichever group got done first, I’d have them run or walk laps around the gym until everyone else was done. Again, up to you how you’d like to structure this!
But I would pair everyone up, or have them pick partners. Each person chooses a card from the top, and the other person picks the next card.
Whatever number and suit they get, that’s how many reps they’d have to do. I always marked face cards as 10, and aces were 11.
So a 7 of hearts could be 7 squats.
While a king of spades could be 10 pushups.
Check out my Partner Workout Ideas for more card game examples
Just be aware of cheaters! I found one of my ladies would put the face cards back and pick another when no one was looking. No one wanted to be her partner after that. (laugh emoji?)
The only thing you’d need is as many decks of cards as you’d expect people in the class.
If you’re doing this yourself or with a friend, one deck will be fine. But if classes could get up to 20 people, then you’d want at least 10 decks of cards.
I always go to the Dollar Tree to get cheap cards. You don’t need anything fancy!
Just make sure to shuffle them up and you’re good to go!
Name Workout
I’ll be honest, I don’t like this game, but I’ll add in it if you want.
2 reasons I don’t like this game.
- If you have a long name, you’re stuck with a longer workout. So George has a longer workout than Tia. And adding last names!? Good luck!
- The name game we had at my rec center had CRAZY rep schemes! It would range from 10 reps of one exercise to 30 reps of another, for no reason!
So if you’re going to do the name game, here’s how I’d recommend it. If you’re going to choose full name or even just first name with people having a longer workout than others, have a part 2 for those who get done faster.
Whether that’s a craft from the list down below, working on a skill or exercise you never have time for (like helping people work on pull ups as an example) or have them start again until the person with the longest name is done.
But you can do this however you’d like! There’s plenty of ready-made versions of this that you can print out and hand out to everyone. Or use a white board and write everything out. The choice is yours!
Crafts
I LOVE doing crafts for workout finishers, and as I stated at the beginning, this is where everything stemmed from.
It started with holiday crafts, and you can check out specific ones for Halloween and Christmas, but here are some fun fitness crafts that you can do no matter the season!
All of these will be based on simple paper crafts that require you to make a list of exercises that you can print off, cut up and create the craft.
I actually have my Fitness Craft Print Outs with over 100+ exercise ideas based on 4 workout variations, that you can grab for $5 if you’d like to skip that step. All you’ll have to do instead is download them and choose the paper you want to print them out on.
And if you want more ideas for crafts, I just go on Pinterest and look up ‘paper craft ideas’, and figure out how I can make them work.
Otherwise, let’s dive in!
Paper Chains
This one is the easiest paper craft to start with, and can work no matter the season.
All you have to do is print out 1-3 copies of your list of exercises. It all really depends on how many people you have in the class. Then, similar to the BINGO card, I would spread out all the different exercises on one side of the room, make everyone lunge to pick one up, lunge back to their starting point and then do the exercise. They’d repeat that until they hit the timeframe I set, for example 8 minutes, or until they had done X number of exercises.
You can check out the video at the top of this blog post for a better break down of how to do each craft.
At the end, I’d either bring around tape for them to create their chains, or a stapler to piece it all together.
Then I’d keep them and slowly hang them up around the gym. Connecting each class together until the day was done.
Easy way to decorate your gym for cheap as well!
Paper Flowers
Word to the wise, the more complicated your craft or activity, the more confused people you will have. And not that this is a complicated craft! But I’ve found anything outside of a chain, can be hard for people to understand.
So I would always show the end results of the craft we’re going to do, but explain putting it together AFTER they’ve collected their paper pieces.
The flower can be set up similar to the chain as far as getting each piece of paper. For this one, they need 8 pieces of paper, so that’s 8 exercises they have to do.
Once they’re done with their exercises, put them all together, fold them in half, and then one side of the half fold down to the middle and staple the paper together.
Once they’re all stapled together, you’re going to glue each piece of paper to the center.
You will need a lot of glue sticks or a lot of sharing to get this done, but it’s an easy way to get people to cool down and connect with each other as they try to figure out how to do this.
Again, it’s super simple once you get going, but it’s the getting going that will take some time for people.
Paper Characters
This one was super fun to do! I personally had a lot of fun creating the example snake to show people. This craft does have a bit more extras to put together at the end, but it’s still the simplest craft to put together as it’s just a chain.
I’d recommend 9 links or exercises to create the snake to make the head and tail sit right. Once they’ve gotten all the links together, either with tape or staples, then you’ll want to create the tail and head.
You can either prep these ahead of time, or hand out extra paper to each person to cut out their own tail and head. This one is up to you and how much you trust your class or trust their ability to follow directions.
The tail is simple enough as it’s cutting corner to corner on a piece of paper, wide in the middle and shorter at the ends. Then you just connect it to one end but tape/staple the tail flat rather than in a circle.
The head can be a little more tricky. I just lightly folded the extra piece of paper in half, cut a circle on the ends and made a smaller connector where the paper was folded. Then, without cutting the folded end, do the same thing in reverse until you’ve got two circles connected. This too will be taped/stapled flat and can have eyes drawn on or googly eyes added. Last is cutting out a tongue and that can be up to the designer how that looks.
Again, this is a super simple fitness craft to do, I’m just explaining the final product poorly. Definitely check out the YouTube video for a walk through example to better see it.
Bonus Ideas
In case you want more ways of how to use the Fitness Craft Print Outs, this is one of my clients came up with!
She cut all the exercises up for the Bootcamp list, divided them out into body parts, and put them in ziplock bags. She just keeps these in her gym bag and if she can’t think of anything to do or doesn’t like her current plan, she just blindly picks out a couple exercises of each and does that for her workout.
Again, fitness doesn’t have to be boring, complicated, or follow a specific plan. The goal is to make it sustainable and flexible so that no matter where you are in life, you can still find a way to keep moving. In whatever way that is!
So whether that be with crafts, or trying out my Fitness Series with different workouts to follow. The goal is to make it work for you.
And if you still struggle with that, check out The Best Workout for You to see different options and ideas.
However, if you’re struggling with fitness in general and feel burn out from it, check out What Counts As Exercise? A Better Way to Think About Movement.
Then book a 1:1 call with me so we can figure out what’s keeping you stuck and create a simple plan for you to actually move forward and start seeing progress.
Otherwise, once you’ve tried these out, be sure to let me know what you think by responding to one of my Newsletter emails after you’ve joined! I love seeing what people decide to create and how much fun they had with them.
Can’t wait to chat then and happy crafting!
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