Friendship Circle Fitness Program for Special Needs

The Friendship Circle is a non-profit organization that brings together children, teens and young adults with and without special needs for a wide range of educational and social programs in a Jewish environment. One of the many programs run by the Friendship Circle is FC Fitness, an engaging and athletic program that helps keep participants active and social during the long winter months.

This year’s FC Fitness was especially exciting with all the new equipment donated from S&S Worldwide:

FC Fitness is structured as four rotating stations, and all participants are placed in a team and given a corresponding color pinnie. Each team then made their way through all the exciting centers, practicing and developing different skills at each one.

Station 1: At the first center, they practiced passing balls to each other. Participants learned the overhead pass, the chest pass and how to bounce pass, using a flat hoop as a guide of where to bounce the ball.

friendship circle fitness

Station 2: The second station was for practicing dribbling. Participants were timed on their dribbling and challenged to dribble through rows of cones without touching any of them.

friendship circle fitness program

Station 3: This station involved a lot work and sweat! There were a range of exercises to choose from, from pushups to lunges to jumping jacks depending on the card being picked from a jumbo card deck which also determined how many of each exercise would be done by the group.

Station 4: The last stations was for practicing shooting in the traditional way, with basketballs and hoops, as well as in an innovative and fun way, using the atomic jumpball shootout.

friendship circle basketball

Cool-Downs: We also used the donated equipment for cool-downs, and had relay races involving various props, like the balance disc and inflatable jumbo bowling set.

FC fitness was quite a hit among all ages and abilities. As was put by one of our volunteers, Amber R., “FC fitness gives us the initiative to stay active and have fun regardless of how skilled we are at that activity and we can all come together regardless of ability”.

Thank you S&S for your generosity and making this all possible!

Submitted By: Shaina Posner, Friendship Circle

More Great Blog Posts



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *