obstacle course

Our Ninja Warrior Obstacle Course!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love that Jordan (my Carpenter) is such an imaginative, spontaneous, and creative guy!  He puts his mind to something and it happens!  One of his favorite shows is America Ninja Warrior.  He loves that people put so much dedication into training and have so much to show for it in the end.  That they accomplish these crazy extreme obstacles based mostly on upper body strength.  Jordan has become very educated on food and diet and exercise (through hours of podcasts each day) and it's transformed the way we take care of ourselves around here... mostly by eating a low-sugar diet. And he's also become more passionate about weight-lifting.  With the last season of America Ninja Warrior in swing, Jordan started work on our very own warrior course!  First things first, he brought home a swing set someone had offered him to be used for the main support system.  

And.... he brought it to the backyard with the lawn mower!  

Here's the free play set in all of it's glory!  (Stay tuned.... next summer we'll be painting it up so it's more attractive!)

Next, more frame pieces.... 

The height of this structure is 13ft.

Next, some beams to connect the two together.  He also added holes for the pegs (like a peg wall), a salmon ladder, and some rings!  The rings are adjustable so the whole family can benefit from them.

Jordan took the balls from our bocce ball set and drilled holes through them.  Can you guess what these are for?!

 And he's always figuring out better ways to do things: He hooked up this hook part onto his drill to more easily spin and set the balls into place.

See what I mean?  (Imagine the drill is spinning and the hook is twisting the eye bolt into place. Pure genius!)

Cannonballs!!

We bought rope and braided it ourselves with a strange kind of braid, a speed rope braid.

Jordan added more height to the salmon ladder since he quickly mastered it and needed more of a challenge.  

(Next year we plan to set the tramp into the ground)

 Jordan added many more holes on the peg wall so that he can work on his stamina of going up, across, down and even down/up the angled boards to the far side.

And then there are the monkey/pull up bars!  Easy peasy, right?!  Not for me, they TWIST!   There are also straps lining the opposite of the cannonballs.

It's a bit camouflaged so hopefully it's not an eyesore to the neighbors!

So far, our obstacle course has peg walls, a 12 ft rope, rings, salmon ladder, monkey/pull up bars, straps, and cannonballs.  We hope to add a rock wall for the kids next spring, a slack line, and also a warped wall, of course!  If you have an obstacle course yourself, we'd love to see it!  There isn't much inspiration out there for this kind of thing outside of a gym!  What do you think?!