The Awesomeness of Adventure Challenge Courses

Activity: Adventure Challenge course

Target participant group: This activity is great because it can be adapted to fit the needs of your participants and the goals that your trying to achieve.

Therapeutic potential of this activity: This activity can help build trust, self-confidence, communication, cooperation and leadership. It can help individuals build up strength and endurance; increase their fine and gross motor skill.

Groups that may benefit from this: Adventure Challenge course can be of benefit to many individuals. This could be youth at risk, individuals overcoming addictions, intellectual and physical disabilities.

 

 

Groups it may not be appropriate for:  For the elderly population this activity may not be as appropriate.

Activity description: Adventure challenge course is a course that provides challenges for individuals to work through physical and mental situations. Challenge course allows for team building skills, problem solving skills, leadership skills and to learn about them self’s.

Resources needed: For this activity you’re going to need a facility that has a challenge course that is accessible to your participants. Make sure there are trained and certified instructors and safety gear at the facility.

Best leadership style for this activity: The best leadership style for this activity is a combination of laissez-faire and democratic. Depending on the needs of your participants you may want to use one style more than the other. It is important to make sure individuals are safe and to encourage them while at the same time allow them to develop the skill that adventure challenge courses are designed to do.

Where did you find this activity? http://www.nycgovparks.org/programs/rangers/adventure-course

Where can others find more information on this activity?

The following link is to an interesting article about universal challenge courses. It talks about making challenge course accessible to individuals with disabilities.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1145/is_3_35/ai_61793380/?tag=content;col1

The link below is to another adventure challenge course.

http://www.northernlightsvt.com/nlri/

The following link is to a study that was done on the effectiveness of a challenge course. The study was to see the impact it would have on leadership and work efficacy among college students. Even though not everything applies from this study the article does talk about some great things.

http://juptrr.asp.radford.edu/Volume_1/Challenge_Course_Effectiveness.pdf