Beach Ball Bop gets participants moving around, working together, planning, communicating and adapting all in one fun and fast-paced game!

What You’ll Need:

• a flat, grassy area, big enough for the members of your group to move around.  Size of space is dependent on the size of your group.
• an inflated beach ball.

Setup:

• Have everyone stand in a circle and introduce the rules of the game.
• After the game begins, participants can move about to work their plan.

Rules:

• Everyone in the group must participate.
• The group is trying to tap the beach ball as many consecutive times as possible without dropping the ball.
• No “double taps” – each person can only tap the ball one time before someone else hits the ball.
• The ball must stay above the waist.
• The ball must remain in motion.
• If the ball hits the ground, you must start over.

I use this fun activity as a warm-up before getting into more intense problem-solving and communication-focused team building initiatives. Beach Ball Bop introduces components of good teamwork, while remaining fairly relaxed and requiring little trust from the members of the group.

ColourBlind

• Have the group sit down and put on blindfolds.
• Explain the objective and rules of the activity – answer any questions.
• pass out items – I use 5 sets of 5 wooden toys, with 3 or 4 of them missing.
• Ask the group to pass each toy around the circle until every toy is handed out, and everyone has at least one toy.
• Remind the team that their goal is to identify each set of toys, how many toys are in each set, and which toys are missing from the sets.
• Chaos!
• Let the team go on without making a plan for a few minutes – experience the frustration and the confusion of not having a leader or a plan.
• If the team does not redirect their efforts towards selecting a leader and a plan, then give them a little prompt.
• Watch as things begin to fall into place, and the team begins to work together.
• Debrief – “What happened?” “Describe the process” “How is this like life?” etc.

For many groups, this activity erupts into a lengthy discussion about the challenges of working together, the need for strong leadership, and more.

Very powerful tool!

Here’s a picture from a recent ropes course program

So, if you are getting ready to try mountain biking for the first time, here is my first rule of mountain biking mastery.

Number One Rule – Ride with Confidence

Whether you call it being cautious, nervous or afraid, the hesitation that inevitably follows can give new (and experienced) mountain bikers trouble. The first and last thing I tell new students when they get ready to hit the trails is the importance of being confident. Mountain biking is extremely dynamic. Tight turns, hill climbs, steep descents, rocks and logs – the varied terrain of a typical single-track course means you need to be ready for anything. Split second decisions followed by immediate action/reaction makes the difference between a good day and a bad day on the trail. Get it in your head that you are “a gnarly MTB ninja, who knows all and fears nothing.” Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter – if you believe it, you can become it – and at the very least you will ride with confidence.

Benefits of Riding with Confidence:

• When you are confident, you remove the trepidation that can cloud judgment. You anticipate the obstacle that is just around the bend, and you act/react more quickly.
• Confidence frees us up to ride faster, which makes the rocks less bumpy, creating a more comfortable riding experience.
• Confidence makes us more likely to try new things, overcome bigger obstacles, and ultimately improve our riding skill.
• Confidence makes mountain biking more fun!

If you ride with confidence, you WILL BE a better rider.

Remember – “You are a gnarly MTB ninja, who knows all and fears nothing!”

See you on the trail.

Here you will find a variety of downloadable forms to help you prepare for your teambuilding or adventure instruction program. Please feel free to contact us with questions, or if you are having trouble with your downloads.
Thanks again, and we look forward to working with your group!

Downloadable Forms (PDFs):

GO-NEXTeams Waiver

What to Bring – Team Building

What to Bring – Adventure Instruction

Teambuilding Forms

Adventure Challenge Sample Itinerary

Portable Team Challenge Sample Itinerary

ROPES Challenge Sample Itinerary

Team Project Event Sample Itinerary

RACE Day Sample Itinerary

NEXTeams Team Development Sample Itinerary

Adventure Instruction Forms

Introduction to Caving Sample Itinerary

Introduction to Mountain Biking Sample Itinerary

Introduction to Rock Climbing Sample Itinerary

Introduction to Wilderness Skills Sample Itinerary

The Adventure Team Challenge was created for teams whose goals are recreational team building with a small budget. The program works best with teams who already work well together or who are just coming together for the first time. If you are adding a few staff and you want to achieve instant buy-in without the need for deeper team development, then the Adventure Team Challenge is a great fit. Getting ready to begin a new school year, and want an energizer? The Adventure Team Challenge is the team building option that will fit the bill.

The PORTABLE Team Challenge brings the team building to your location or to a park or retreat center near you. The Portable Team Challenge is a facilitated team building experience – our expert facilitators will sequence activities that are not only fun and challenging, but relevant to your goals, needs and group dynamics. Following most activities, your facilitator will lead the team in a debrief that relates the lessons learned in the activity back to the ‘real world’ of work dynamics and interpersonal relationships.

The ROPES Challenge combines the facilitated team building of the Portable Team Challenge (getting-to-know-you activities, problem-solving initiatives and trust-building exercises) with the individual challenge of the high elements (challenging climbing, traversing or leaping activities that take place up to 40 feet in the air) to create a uniquely powerful team building experience. The accomplishment of the high element portion of the day is often the most memorable and individually satisfying component.

The NEXTeams Process begins where traditional team building programs end. Designed for teams whose goal is to get to the root of organizational dysfunction and build a foundation of trust that will foster commitment, innovation and higher performance, the NEXTeams Process bridges the gap between team building and ‘teams working’. NEXTeams is “The NEXT Step” in team development. Check out our other professional facilitation services at The NEXTeams Companies website: www.nexteams.com.

Learn more about our different Team Building options…

The greatest challenge I have faced is finding the method that delivers the initial contact with relatively little investment of time or money – the tool that will spread my message to potential clients.

Here are a few of the tools that I currently employ:

• Facebook – I have a Facebook Page where I post pictures and videos of our wonderful clients.
• Twitter – Our Twitter account shares links to other resources that we find of interest, in addition to sharing our blog posts, status updates and the occasional humorous anecdote or observation.
• Blogging – We not only have our own GO-Adventures Blog, but also occasionally write guest blogs for friends and associates.
• Article Submission – We have recently begun submitting our blog articles to different websites.
• Online Profiles – In addition to Facebook and Twitter, there are other online profiles that we have tried out, including:
  • About.me
  • Manta
  • Google Places and Maps
  • and most recently we featured our Teambuilding and Adventure Instruction programs on Thumbtack.com…

There are undoubtedly hundreds more social networking tools that can help spread the word about our programs, and we’d love to hear from anyone who has had good experience with any of them.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section

Here is a short video of a few of the activities – enjoy!

Learn more about our ROPES Challenge team builder.

Building a foundation of trust has lasting benefit, long beyond the teambuilding experience.  Trust leads to cohesion, cohesion leads to an environment where team members are willing to take a chance with their ideas and suggestions.  Those fresh ideas often lead to innovation, and an environment that supports innovation is more likely to breed success.  It all begins with trust.

Here’s an activity that doesn’t require much in the way of expert facilitation.  I run it with nearly every group whose main focus is building trust.  The activity  is almost always received positively, and often leads to a rapid gain in vulnerability-based trust.

My Favorite Scar -

Find a quiet place for a discussion.  Frame the activity as a trust activity, and one that should be taken relatively seriously.  Ask your group to select and share a story about one of the following topics:

• Your favorite scar – where is it and how it happened
• A funny childhood story
• The coolest thing that ever happened to you
• The scariest thing that ever happened to you
• Something people would be surprised to learn about you

This is not meant to be a therapy session, but the activity does give the group an opportunity to share stories that they might not normally share with their fellow team members.

I always hold a short debrief, often asking quite simply, “what is the value of an activity like this?” and then follow with a quick, fun, moving activity.  For many of my corporate groups, this simple trust activity has been one of the highlights of the day.

Hope it works for you!

Little Brown Bats stricken with White Nose Syndrome

In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. Hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery.

“We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from Vermont to Virginia. In some hibernaculum, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying.”

Spread of "White Nose Syndrome"

While they are in the hibernaculum, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. Recent identification of a cold-loving fungus could be a step toward an answer.

———————————————————————————-

On April 14th, 2009, we were contacted by members of the National Speleological Society in regards to the White Nose Syndrome, and the passage of a moratorium on guided caving excursions until further research can be conducted, and an answer can be found to the question of “What is killing the bats?” At this point, experts agree that human interactions with the bat population may be part of the problem, and it is not known whether the White Nose Syndrome has negative effects on humans.

In response to the moratorium request, we discontinued caving programs throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia for the next 17 months. Sadly, we have since learned that many of the other guides and outfitters in the area did not…

We have decided to continue the moratorium until further notice, with the exception of trips to Whiting’s Neck Cave, Martinsburg, WV, which has no bat population.

We hope that scientists will find a cure for the White Nose Syndrome that is killing the bats, and that the bat population will make a speedy recovery.

Thank you for your attention to this unfortunate situation, and we hope to provide service to your group through one of our other team building or adventure instruction activities:

Rock Climbing
Mountain Biking
Wilderness Skills
Multi-sport Adventures
ROPES Challenge Course
Portable Team Challenge
RACE Day Teambuilder

Adventure Gift Certificates are available in a variety of denominations:

Choose from $20, $25, $40, $50, $95, $200, $380 and up!

Private Guiding – Valued at $200, this certificate entitles the bearer to a one-day privately guided course, to take your skills to the next level. Courses include: Intermediate to Advanced Rock Climbing, Caving, Mountain Biking or Wilderness Survival.

Adventure for Four – Valued at $380, this certificate entitles the bearer to a one-day adventure instruction program for four (4) participants in one of the following activities: Rock Climbing, Caving, Mountain Biking, Wilderness Skills

Rock Climbing – top-roping courses teach the basics of the simplest and most popular form of rock climbing – knots, belaying, anchors, and movement.

Mountain Biking – learn the basics of trail-riding, or push yourself through challenging single-track with our expert riders.

Caving – beginners and experts alike will be challenged as we explore the wild caves of West Virginia.

Wilderness Skills – orienteering, building fires, finding water, making a shelter etc… Learn valuable outdoor survival skills with our wilderness expert.

To Purchase or Redeem a Gift Certificate, please contact Eriq Powers

Eriq Powers
(240) 603-4150
email:  info@go-adventures.com
facebook:  www.facebook.com/go.adventures
twitter:  www.twitter.com/go_adventures

Learn more about Gift Certificates for Adventure…