How To Organize Fitness Fridays During Your Company Step Challenge?
As Company fitness challenges are getting more popular year by year, even month by month, it might get a bit more difficult to keep these inclusive after years. For that, we have also written a blog post with 52 wellness challenge ideas.
But if that's not enough, there's also a trend that we want to open with that blog post – Fitness Fridays.
Fitness Challenges Before the Weekend
There are two types of people in this world – the ones who switch off for the weekends and the other ones, who turn their activity button on. Both are good options depending on your lifestyle, but there is a way to connect all your employees – Fridays.
And to be clear, Fitness Fridays. These days are good opportunities to move together. Not that it is not good to move together daily, but when there are these specific days, people are focusing on extra moving.
So they either help your employees to set the base for an active weekend or give a good start for resting. Also, for people, who are not used to moving, have a social motivation to reach the goal of that day.
Also, it is proven that people are much more loyal to their employer if they feel that they get a positive impact on their lives from work. That might be a good reason to organize company fitness challenges, but what are the options you ask?
10 ideas for Fitness Fridays
Fitness Fridays can be done both individually and collectively. So here are some ideas for you:
- Step Challenge - The most popular one, but also the easiest to track. For example, set the goal to walk 10k steps a day and participants can choose by themselves how they want to reach the goal, by walking, running, or even just by gardening. For that challenge there is also no need for activity trackers, so all your employees, who at least have a smartphone, can participate. It also does not matter whether workers are walking in the same country or getting their legs tested on different continents. So it is easy for an organiser to get a friendly corporate fitness challenge going and analyze the data later.
- Yoga Class Challenge - It works better for your employees, who work from home, but totally doable for any collective. Just organize one yoga trainer to do an online class and everyone can do it from their homes. Or if you have a smaller collective, on one Friday, end your work day an hour early and go to the yoga studio with your team. Yoga is also doable for everyone so you do not have to worry about people who are not capable of doing it.
- Activity Formula Challenge - Activity formula consists of 3 components – steps, calories and intensity minutes. For Fitness Friday, it means a participant has to do at least 12k steps a day, collect 20 intensity minutes (which means for 20 minutes during the whole day, participants' heart rate has to be averagely at least 65% of his maximum heart rate, more you can read from our physical activity level calculator blog) and also burn calories, based on the participants' sex, age, height and weight.
- Stairs Challenge - On Fridays, elevators are “broken”. Again, a really easy challenge to track, but also excellent to create a habit to take stairs. It helps your employees to move a bit more during your work day, but also higher heart rate wakes up before sitting behind the table. So work will also have a better flow and the day goes quicker. And that is perfect when we are speaking of Friday, right?
- Walking Meetings Challenge - Who has stipulated that meetings must necessarily be conducted sitting around a table? Since we have been attending many meetings in our own beds lately, why not go for a walk at the same time? Or do 10 squats every 7 minutes? First, it helps to keep the body awake and focused, but it also adds a little extra movement.
- Charity Challenge - Charity Challenges are the most popular in December, but why not to do these in summer, as there is as much help needed as in December. Charity Challenges can also be done based on steps or activity formula for example.
- YuMuuv annual plan - Yep, we have it, and you don't have to worry about anything! All is prepared for you and inserting these goals will take a maximum of 10 minutes. 10 minutes and during the whole year you don't have to worry about it. Every challenge is justified and carefully placed. You can check out our example annual plan.
- Collective Goal Challenge - There are plenty of opportunities to measure individual achievements with colleagues, but you can also set a team-wide/company-wide goal and then work together to achieve it. For example, collect 50,000 burned calories in a month with a team and then draw some prizes between participants or, if the target is achieved, the company makes a donation to a pre-agreed organization.
- Burning Calories Challenges - Calorie challenges can be really fun if you want to! Basically, in YuMuuv you always see how many calories have burnt in a day/week/month or if your challenge is even longer than a month then during the whole challenge. A user even sees that have (s)he has burnt the needed amount of calories during the day based on users' age, height and weight. And if you have burnt a lot of calories, why not eat some of them back?! That's what we have heard some of our clients do. They burn thousands of calories and then have a fun lunch together to eat all the good stuff. Spirited time together!
- No Car Challenge - as you will start moving without a car, you suddenly realize how many different opportunities there are related to walking/running, cycling, public transportation, etc. You may notice that even if the challenge ends (as you count specific days people moved without the personal car), it may have sparked a new culture to hold.
Fitness Fridays With YuMuuv
All challenges mentioned above can be measured in YuMuuv, and in addition so much more! So if you are interested in upgrading your companys' wellness culture, we are here to support you! With YuMuuv you also do not have to worry about technical questions and users problems, because we have a support department there with you.
