School playtime is the perfect time to encourage children to be active and exercise. This will help to ensure that they burn off excess energy while also helping them to maintain a healthy weight and is a key aspect in tackling childhood obesity. There are many ways schools can add outdoor Adventure Trail equipment to their playgrounds that not only make exercise fun for children, but which also seamlessly integrates the equipment with their current playground equipment. The key to adding outdoor Trim Trail equipment successfully to your playground is ensuring you add the right equipment that fits in with your outdoor space and is suitable for the children who will be using the equipment.

If you are planning on adding fitness equipment to your playground these tips will help.

Available outdoor space

A major consideration to factor when choosing fitness equipment for your playground is the size of available outdoor space you have. If you have a large outdoor area you can consider installing equipment such as Individual Adventure Trail Units, that are spread out over a large area. Alternatively, if your outdoor space is limited you can linked continuous trim trail which combine many units all linked, that don’t take up a lot of space but still encourage children to be active.

Age of children

The age of the children using the Trim Trail equipment will have a huge impact on the type of equipment that is installed. Young children will need equipment with a low fall height and which only needs simple movements, skills and abilities to use. Older children, however, will benefit from equipment that requires a much higher skill and ability level. As well as this, older children are more independent, so they would also benefit from being able to play sports unsupervised, for example having goal post available to use for football games.

Safety factors

Safety is an important factor for installing Trim Trail equipment into playgrounds for all age groups. In recent years outdoor gym equipment has become popular for use in parks, however the vast majority of these are only suitable for adults and should not be installed in school playgrounds. Instead it is vital to ensure that the equipment installed is suitable to be used by children to ensure their safety. This doesn’t just mean the fall height of the equipment, but also the mechanics of the equipment being installed, as it is important to remember children have smaller hands, fingers and feet, meaning that they can easily get trapped in equipment that isn’t suitable for child use.

Fun equipment

Children will only use the Trim Trail equipment they find fun to use. Incorporating your Trim Trail equipment into your playground equipment will encourage children to use it during their breaks and for them to view exercise as something that can easily be added to their daily routine. The equipment children usually find most fun are those that encourage positive social interactions, such as working together, as well as those that challenge their fitness or abilities but in a way that they can still successfully use the equipment.