Submitted by Adele Honeyman, Health & Fitness Chair
Pre-season Fitness Challenge - Pink Phoenix Portland, Oregon USA
Pink Phoenix Portland Oregon USA has created a simple pre-season Fitness Challenge to encourage the team to get motivated and increase fitness levels and strength in preparation for the upcoming season.
Fitness Challenge Goal: Workout for 30 minutes, 3-5 times per week, over a 6-week period.
Team members are encouraged to get into the gym or at home and do a workout, which could include; strength training, yoga, aerobics class, Pilates, HIIT (high intensity interval training), brisk walk, jog, swim, bike/spin, bootcamp, YouTube fitness video, etc. A “workout” can also include shoveling snow, high intensity housework, walking for work, any activity that will get the heart rate up and your body moving.
Team members are asked to track their activity each week. Tracking is so important as this keeps individuals accountable and able to look back at their progress. Google forms is a great tool to create a survey/quiz format and at the end of each week, the link is sent out to the team to remind them to complete the survey. The survey has only three simple questions: name, email address, and how many times they worked out over the week; 3-4 times or 5+ times. This Google form will automatically track and create a spreadsheet to show who has responded. After the six weeks is up the spreadsheet serves as a summary of how many times each person has submitted their response.
There are prizes, too!
3 winners of a random drawing of participants will receive gift cards and bragging rights.
At the end of the 6 weeks, team members are entered based on the number of weeks they participated. If someone submitted the survey once over the six weeks, their name goes into the drawing once, if they worked out all six weeks, then their name goes in six times.
At the first practice of our season, three names will be selected and winners will get a $20 gift card from a local business.
It's been amazing how excited and competitive everyone seems to be about this
challenge. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised about the enthusiasm. This is a dragon boat team after all, full of very competitive and powerful women!
