Home Olympics: Get the Gold Medal in Your Personal Olympics Game!

Get the Olympics right in your own home – and not just on the TV! Invite your friends and organise your own competition for the gold medal in your Home Olympics!

Are you interested in the Olympic Games or would you like to be an athlete yourself? Do you follow the battles for the medals together spellbound and dream of bronze, silver or even gold yourself? Who needs the IOC – the International Olympic Committee – to organise an Olympic Games?

With these 10 disciplines, your home Olympics will be one of the most varied party games for adults.

Preparing for the Home Olympics

For this Olympiad game, you will need 1 to 2 hours of time, motivated comrades-in-arms – the athletes -, enough space in the house or flat and a number of household items and foodstuffs. The following material checklist is ideal for an Olympics game with 4 – 6 players or athletes. With more players, you should increase the number of Olympic equipment accordingly.

The order of the Olympic disciplines is up to you. In our experience, it is advisable to alternate strenuous and quiet games.

Materials Checklist for the Home Olympics

• Stopwatch
• 1 kitchen towel
• 4 -6 books
• 2 – 4 bowls
• 2 laundry baskets
• 1 pack of cotton wool
• 1 pack of cherries
• 2 sheets
• 1 iron
• 1 ironing board
• 2 trays of the same size
• 20 apples
• About 10 champagne corks
• A large quantity of ice cubes
• A very large quantity of foam kisses

Important tip: Even with the most beautiful leisure activities, you will get thirsty at some point. So make sure you have cold drinks ready, because just like at the real summer games, you’ll quickly break out in a sweat at the Olympics game.

10 Disciplines for Your Home Olympics

Home Olympics – Discipline 1: Cotton Wool Throw

• Location: Longest possible hallway or corridor.
• Target: Who will throw the farthest?

The name says it all: In the 1st discipline the aim is to throw cotton wool as far as possible. Everyone reaches into a cotton wool pack with one hand, takes as much cotton wool as they want and forms a ball or throwing object out of it. You set a baseline that cannot be crossed and off you go! Each athlete may throw 3 times. So that each throw can be clearly assigned to the right athlete at the end, you assign a colour to each player and mark the cotton wool projectiles with coloured sharpie before the competition. This way, even after several throws and many athletes, you can clearly determine who is the winner and has thrown the farthest.

Ranking: The best, i.e. farthest throw of each athlete counts. The winner is the athlete who has thrown his marked cotton ball the furthest. If two cotton wools are close together, the tape measure decides to the millimetre!

Home Olympics – Discipline 2: Balancing Books

• Location: staircase.
• Objective: Balance a book on your head.

For the 2nd discipline of your Home Olympics you need at least one book and concentration. Choose one or more books beforehand that are allowed to fall down and are not too heavy or clunky. To make this difficult discipline easier, you can allow the athletes to tie a kitchen towel around their head to create a nest on their head to give the book more support. Then you determine the length of the course, e.g. two books have to balance once up the stairs and then back down again.

scoring: The time needed by each athlete to cover the distance is measured. Add one minute for each time the book falls down. Whoever needed the least time at the end is the winner of this discipline of the Olympics game..

Tip: Advanced players should try playing this discipline with a pile of 2, 3 or more books – it’s worth it! 😉

Home Olympics – Discipline 3: Cherry Pit Cannonade

• Location: garden, bathroom or kitchen.
• Aim: Spit as many cherry pits as possible into a bucket, sink or large pot.

For the 3rd discipline, each Olympian first gets 10 cherries of ammunition. This is because the aim here is to show one’s skill as a cherry pitter. So each athlete tries to spit the pits into the specified target vessel at a specified distance (2-3 m). In this discipline, you need a stopwatch or a smartphone app to time the event.

Ranking: The winner is the one who is most accurate and spits the most cores into the target. You determine this simply by counting the hits in the jar when all the ammunition has been shot. In the event of a tie, the stopwatch decides who the winner is: the athlete who took less time wins.

Olympics Game – Discipline 4: Apple Relay

• Location: garden, hallway or staircase.
• Aim: Transport trays with apples as fast as possible without them falling down..

Time for the first team discipline! In the 4th discipline, you form 2 teams (3 if there are 9 or more players) and compete against each other in a relay race. Each team now receives a tray with 10 apples. Each team should get the same number of apples so that no team has an advantage. Then you set the course and decide who will run first, who second and so on. You divide yourselves equally between the starting point A and the end of the route Band position yourselves there.

At the start signal from the smartphone, the first relay runners start running and balance the tray with the apples. If an apple rolls off the tray, they have to pick it up, go back to their starting point and start running again. At the other end of the track, the tray is handed over to the next athlete and so on until the final runner in the team team pushes the tray of apples back into the hand of the first player.

Valuation: The team whose final runner is the first to hand the tray to the first runner is the winner of the apple relay! In case of unequal teams, the 1st player of the smaller team has to run a second time and push it into the hand of the 2nd player to finish the relay race.

Tip: As an additional difficulty, you can specify that the runner may only carry and hand over the tray with one hand at a time.

Olympics Game – Discipline 5: Ironing Bed Sheets

• Location: Living room, household room.
• Aim: Ironing a completely wrinkled sheet smooth the fastest.

Before every start, the other athletes crumple and crumple a bed sheet as best they can. This is because in the 5th discipline the Olympians compete one after the other in the ironing competition. Especially in home Olympics with mixed genders, the men can expect some ridicule – or perhaps astonished recognition – in this discipline. An athlete gives the start signal and stops the time it takes for the athlete to iron out all the wrinkles.

Rating: When the athlete shouts ”done”, the others examine the sheet and tell him his time. There are 15 penalty seconds for each fold, which are added to this. The athlete with the best time is the winner.

Home Olympics – Discipline 6: Scoop Chain

• Location: garden or bathroom.
• Aim: To carry water with your hands.
• Clothing: Swimsuit and bikini recommended!

The 6th discipline of the Home Olympics is also a team discipline. Assemble teams with the same number of athletes and form a chain between two bowls. One bowl is filled with 2 litres of water, the other bowl is empty. Now you have to try to transfer as much water as possible from one bowl to the other with your bare hands. The first player scoops water from the bowl and pours it into the hands of the second and so on until the last link in the chain fills the water into the initially empty bowl..

Scoring: In the 6th discipline, time does not matter! The team that has transported the largest amount of water at the end is the winner. The best way to determine this is to weigh the amount of water transported.

Tip: The teams should consist of a maximum of 4 players, because if the chain gets too long, you can be sure that almost nothing will reach the second bowl… 😉

Home Olympics – Discipline 7: Lifting the Laundry Basket

• Location: Living room or household room.
• Aim: To lift a full laundry basket as long as possible.

In the 7th discipline it depends on your strength. In order to have a fair competition, you should load the laundry basket with different weights depending on your body weight and gender. You can also decide that particularly strong players can only lift with one hand, for example. You decide together which load will create a fair competition. Finally, Olympic weightlifting is also differentiated according to weight classes.

In official weightlifting, the winner is the one who lifts the heaviest weight in his weight class. For your home Olympics game, however, it is advisable to time how long a player can hold the laundry basket above his head with arms outstretched.

Ranking: The winner is the athlete who lifts the laundry basket the longest.

Olympics – Discipline 8: Ice Cube Lightning Thaw

• Location: garden, kitchen, bathroom.
• Objective: Defrost as many ice cubes as possible using your own body heat.

The 8th discipline can be played as an individual sport or in teams. I think it’s even more fun in teams. Each team gets the same amount of ice cubes (e.g. 20) and has to thaw as many of them as possible in a given time (e.g. 3 minutes) – by hand, i.e. by friction and body heat. Each team collects the melted water in a bowl of the same size. The team that collects more melted water is the winner.

On hot summer days, this discipline is best carried out in the garden. If you wear shorts or a swimming costume then, you can also press several ice cubes against your body and thus get more melted water faster.

Ranking: To determine the exact winner or winning team, pour the melted water into a bowl and weigh it. This way you can determine exactly who has collected the most meltwater.

Home Olympics – Discipline 9: Champagne Cork Slalom

• Location: Living room or dining room.
• Objective: Blow a champagne cork lid through a parkour of champagne corks in a slalom the fastest.

You need good lungs and skill for the 9th discipline of the Olympiad game. On a table or the floor, place 10 champagne corks in a row, about 8-10 cm apart. You will also need a champagne cork lid, which is the metal grid that closes a champagne bottle around the cork. This champagne cork lid is your game ball, which you have to blow through the slalom of corks as quickly as possible. Each athlete has 3 attempts, during which the time is stopped. During the slalom, the athlete must not touch either the champagne corks or the champagne cork lid – otherwise he or she must immediately start again.

But be careful: if you accidentally blow over one of the corks, you have to start again with the champagne cork lid at the beginning!

Scoring: It is advisable to note down the times. The slalom-puster with the best time is the winner. If 2 athletes were equally fast, the better second best attempt decides who has won!

Tip: Alternatively, you can introduce the rule that every athlete who blows over a cork must immediately drink a glass of champagne before continuing….

Home Olympics – Discipline 10: Foam Kiss Battle for Chocolate Gourmets

• Location: bathtub, garden & anywhere where stains are not a problem 😉
• Objective: Catch as many foam kisses with your mouth as possible.

The Olympic decathlon is almost over and one or two athletes are probably already feeling sick to their stomachs. All the better, because in the 10th and last discipline you train your chewing muscles above all! Okay, a little bit also your throwing hand….

Divide into teams of 2 and face each other at a fixed distance of 2 or 3 metres. Now take turns throwing a foam kiss to the other person, who must catch it with their mouth and consume it. Each team has a fixed number of foam kisses (e.g. a packet) at its disposal. If an athlete takes a bite and half of it falls off, the team only gets half a point. In this discipline, you all play at the same time. Bon appetit!

Scoring: Each team counts the foam kisses aloud that they catch. This fires up the competition and everyone gets to see how close they are to winning. One point is awarded for each foam kiss caught, and half a point for a bite. Finally, the team with the most points is the winner!

Tip: It’s best to put a clean plastic sheet underneath, or a base from which you would eat the fallen foam kisses again, because throwing away food is always a shame!

This Home Olympics with 10 disciplines was inspired by The Big Falcon Book of Game Ideas for Adults by Heike Baum:

Das große Falken Buch der Spielideen für Erwachsene.

19,80 EUR

On our ideas portal you will find many more indoor activities and general tips for activities with friends, with kids and with your partner.

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