Get Up to 40% OFF New-Season Styles * Limited time only.

8 Indoor Team-Building Activities Young Athletes Will Love

It’s always a good idea to have a few indoor team building games and exercises in your back pocket so your team can still get the most out of practice without being held back by inclement weather or extreme temperatures.

Stay safe and sound inside with these fun team bonding games!

For more ways to boost your youth team’s morale, check out our specific team-building tips for high school teams as well as basketball teams, or learn about how custom uniform colors can inspire your team’s spirit.

1. Blanket Volleyball

Divide your group into teams of two. Have each member of each team take hold of part of a standard bed sheet. Have the serving team launch the ball over to the other team by pulling the sheet tight to serve the ball over the net. This game requires both groups to clearly communicate and plan where to move as a unit without (literally) dropping the ball.

2. Fishbowl

Fishbowl is like Charades and Taboo in one. Have everyone write three-five phrases and toss them into a large bowl. Divide into two teams and get ready to play three different rounds.

  • Round 1: Taboo! The first team will have thirty seconds to pass the bowl around and take turns helping the team guess what’s on each card drawn.
  • Round 2: Now it’s time for Charades! No words, just actions.
  • Round 3: One word. Yep! That’s all the player with the bowl can reveal to help their team guess what’s on their card.

Alternate back and forth between teams every 30 seconds for each round until all the cards have been used.

3. Human Knot

In this exercise, participants stand facing one another in a circle. Each participant grabs another person’s hand across the circle, taking another person’s hand after everyone has first linked one set of hands. Then the group must work together to unravel human knot they’ve created. Untangling the human knot helps kids learn to work together, get silly, and get comfortable with one another.

4. Scavenger Hunts

Brain-teasers are just as critical to your team’s performance as their physical conditioning. Games that test their critical thinking helps your youth learn to solve problems both individually and together in small groups. Setting up a scavenger hunt is a fairly simple activity and works well for helping teams work towards a common goal.

5. Minefield

Place random objects like bats, balls, and other sports gear across the gym. Have the kids pair off with one person on each team blindfolded. The blindfolded person isn’t allowed to speak, and the non-blindfolded partner must stand outside the “minefield” and direct their teammate safely across. 

6. Perfect Square

Have your team circle up holding a piece of rope. Each participant will set the rope down at their feet, blindfold themselves, and take several steps back from the circle. Now, instruct them to form a square out of the rope while blindfolded. Set a time limit for completing the task of no more than 30 minutes, depending on how difficult this exercise is for your particular group. If this is too easy for your team, try a variation where they aren’t allowed to verbally instruct one another.

7. Salt ‘n’ Pepper

Use name tags and markers and start making sets of word pairings. For example: yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly, sun and moon, salt and pepper, etc.

Tape a word to the back of each participant without letting them see their word. Now, the goal is to figure out the word on their back by asking “yes or no” questions in order to find their partner. The first team to find one another wins.

8. Stranded

This is another fun game that requires your team to build trust and think outside of the box. This can be done as one large group in several smaller groups. Set the stage with a quicks story about how the team has ended up stranded on a deserted island together. Now, their task is to select 12 commonplace items from around the gym, school, or house and rank them from the least to most important based on how useful they could be as tools to help the team survive being stranded.

While team building games from brain teasers like “stranded” to complex physical challenges like “the human knot” are a great way to spend an indoor session, don’t forget to just get out and have some fun with your team every now and then.

If you’re looking to order custom sublimated uniforms for your sports team, from basketball or football to volleyball and more, Imperial Point has you covered. Learn more about our sublimated uniforms, or contact us today for a quote!

This article was written or reviewed by Robert Fazioli, owner of Imperial Point, to ensure its accuracy.

Share this post

Leave a Reply

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