A movement game: Tap the knee
NOTE - This post was originally written for our 'weekly warble' segment in a few Facebook groups for the community local to our gym.
Welcome to the weekly warble here at Ideanthro Movement!
In this week's warble I'm going to share with you a roughhousing style game that can be played between adults, but is great fun to play with kids to get them moving, building strength and developing an awareness of balance, control etc. We use this style of game with quite a few of the children in our program for children living with autism. It's particularly good for kids who don't necessarily want the structure of traditional fitness, sports or martial arts, but do enjoy the opportunity to be a bit rough and tumble.
This game that I'm going to explain to you is called 'tap the knee', and it's played often in martial arts schools. It is typically played between two people, although there are versions for more than two players. As the name suggests, the aim is to tap the other person's knee. When you do, you score a point.
The rules are pretty simple. You can be either standing or kneeling. Striking (i.e. punching and kicking) is not allowed; nor is contact with the face or groin. However holding of limbs and wrestling is. You can decide on how rough you want to allow that wrestling to be, depending on who's playing. You may wish to disallow takedowns (i.e. tacking the other person to the ground) to help to avoid the game becoming too rough.
When the game begins, what tends to happen is that both players start standing and there is an initial battle for grip of the other person's arms. Whoever gets better grips on the other person develops an advantage that can lead to a tap of the other person's knee. In this respect the game has distinct similarities to grappling martial arts like wrestling and brazxillian jiu jitsu, and can give an introduction to some of the fundamentals of these arts.
If you're looking to draw movement lessons out of this, then here's something that you might like to show the person that you're playing with. Let's say we start and I manage to grip each of your wrists with my hands (my left hand on your right wrist, and my right hand on your left wrist). I now have some control over you, because I'm controlling your arms, and you have very little control over me. It is therefore in your best interest to find a way to break my grip on your wrists. Moving your arm in a circular motion is one way to do this. However, if you just stop there, then I'll just try and grab your wrist again. Therefore once you have broken my grip, you should try and establish your own grip on me. And so the game progresses until someone establishes enough control over the other person to attempt to tap their knee.
From a safety point of view, definitely play this on a soft surface, and make sure that there is nothing hard or damageable nearby that you could either hurt yourself on, or break. If two people of very different sizes or strengths are playing then you may wish to apply limitations to the stronger person so as to even the playing field. One option is to have the stronger person play standing on only one leg so as to limit their balance and hence their ability to apply force.
And that's it for this week's warble. Something a bit different, but a heap of fun for adults and kids alike. Just be aware of the limits of everyone playing and make decisions that keep everyone safe!
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