Hi Everyone!
I’m writing this month to talk about our annual SparkAmerica challenge! This fitness minutes challenge feature is a fun way to stay motivated to reach your health and fitness goals.
Here are a few of my favorite points about the challenge:
First, anyone can participate in the challenge! Some challenges like this are set up to encourage a small group of people who average a high number of fitness minutes per day. SparkAmerica is different and instead encourages broad participation by work groups and individuals.
We do this to encourage everyone to get active, even in as little as 10 minutes per day. Our software rewards hitting a minimum of 10 minutes most days of the week AND encourages members to set an average minutes per day goal.
Here’s how this works in practice for me: Setting a 10-minute goal encourages me to be extremely consistent in getting physical activity. It is often what gets me started on my fitness for the day. This is one reason I have been so consistent in taking my dog for walks/hikes. I like to say that I’ve never regretted taking Flash for a hike nearly daily for the past 7 years.
The average minutes per day often encourage me to keep going. This motivates me to continue on my exercise bike for 10-20 extra minutes or take Flash on a longer hike.
Next, the SparkAmerica challenge involves both friendly competition and collaboration. You can compete to rank higher on your company’s leaderboard or an individual city leaderboard. But you also collaborate to help your company/organization win in a city. Finally, even though you are competing with other companies, you are collaborating with those companies to rank higher on the city leaderboard.
Finally, I always like sharing that SparkAmerica was a member-driven idea. Many years ago, a group of members started a message board where they posted their fitness minutes and a running total of minutes for the group. We ended up automating the math for the million fitness minutes challenge. Finally, some members of our team had the idea to make this a city campaign with a goal to transform the fitness & health of one city at a time by bringing together an alliance of individuals and partners to make a real impact. That’s what got us to today!
I hope you have fun with the challenge this year! We are in the initial stages of planning to add new software features to the challenge, including, ideally, making this a year-round challenge with different sub-challenges.
Here is my profile (you need to be logged in). I’d love to connect!
SparkCheers!
Chris “SparkGuy” Downie
PeopleOne Health Co-founder & Motivation Expert
