DIY Corporate Health And Fitness Program
A really simple way to unify your team under the one flag, while promoting corporate, is to set company walking targets. Walking is the one form of exercise that (almost) anyone can take part in regardless of fitness levels. It is also something that your staff can do by themselves, in pairs or in larger groups and it doesn’t cost the participants anything. All you need to do as the business leader is to supply pedometers (the little device that counts your steps) and a large whiteboard, and you are ready to go!
Walking: Gentle and Effective Walking is incredibly gentle and yet it has the power to be really effective. It is also a form of exercise where you can easily keep a conversation going without interrupting your workout. Desktop workers usually walk around 3,000 steps in a day, but for health it’s advised to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. The best thing is that whatever steps you make at work count towards those 10,000 steps. Some have more active jobs, some are on their feet all day, and others are not. Thus some have to make time for an extra walk in the end of their day to make the 10,000.
Effortless Walking In our already busy days we don’t really want to think about taking more time to do that extra walk, so how can we get around it? Firstly I must say that people, who don’t find time for their own health and fitness, soon will have to find time for illness and injury. But to ease you and your team members into this new lifestyle, there are some tricks. Try to park your car further from your destination every time you go for a drive. Skip the escalator or elevator and take the stairs instead, or at least every other time. And finally, if you are not going that far, leave the car and walk.
Start Your Company Challenge Get your team together and propose to do a walkathon challenge, without pressuring anyone into participating. Grab a white board and put each employees name up there and hand out the pedometers, again, explaining that participation is optional. Then you get your team members to register each day or each week how many steps they have got, and to make it more interesting, set an interesting team goal to reach (samples below). I mean, to me it would be that much more fun trying to walk the whole Monaco Grand Prix rather than just counting steps. Engage your team and offer a reward if you reach a goal within the desired time frame. Just make sure it’s both realistic and challenging.
To get you started I have put together a list of suitable destinations. If you want to get your own ones, one kilometre is approximately 1320 steps:
Marathon 55,704 steps (42.2km) Iron Man Competition 298,452 steps (226.1km) Monaco Grand Prix 343,886 steps (260.52km) Melbourne to Sydney 1,152,360 steps (873km) Tour De France 4,752,000 steps (3,600km) Great Wall of China 8,448,000 steps (6,400km) Trans-Siberian Railway 12,272,040 steps (9,297km) Earth to the Moon 507,411,960 steps (384,403km)
Anders N W Lindgreen is a Certified Australian Fitness Specialist. Visit his website for free articles and e-books featuring the unbiased truth on Personal Fitness Training and Corporate Health and Fitness.