I organized a 30 Day Squat challenge at work a couple months ago and it ended up going great! A lot of people joined in, you’d find groups of staff and managers randomly squatting together, the residents thought it was hilarious and would count along with us, all in all, a success.
Everyone agreed they’d like another challenge but picking one ended up being the new challenge. A squat challenge is great because you can squat basically anywhere and you don’t have to touch anything. All the other challenges I thought of involved being on the ground ; ab challenge, plank challenge, push up challenge, and nobody was going to want to do those at work. Lay on the ground mid-shift? Uh, no thanks!
So instead of using a pre-existing challenge from the internet, like I usually do, I made up my own. It has a lot more flexibility than most of the 30 day fitness challenges out there, but that’s why I like it, it makes it more likely people will be willing to try.
What brought on this new challenge? Many people at work, myself included, keep talking about wanting to get back in to a workout routine but it just isn’t happening. There isn’t enough internal motivation to get you to follow through with the workout you planned when you’re exhausted by the end of your shift. Or there are errands that need to be run, or dinner to make for the family (that one doesn’t apply to me obviously lol), or ya know, just life stuff to contend with.
So the workout gets pushed back, thinking you’ll go tomorrow instead of today, or you’ll do something after dinner instead of before, or whatever lie you tell yourself to let you off the hook for the workout you were supposed to do that day.
This challenge isn’t about one specific fitness move, or one specific type of workout, this challenge is about working out in general.
The rules are simple!
(1) Set a goal for how often you want to workout over the next 30 days, you can calculate based on how many workouts per week, or for the span of the month, whatever works best for you.
(2) Write the goal on the tracker that is on the wall beside everybody else’s tracker, so we all know what each other is aiming for.
(3) A workout consists of any activity you classify as a workout as long as it is 30 minutes or longer. What are some examples? Yoga, gym session, dance party with the kids, walking, exercise dvd, running the stairs at work multiple times throughout the day, or anything else that gets your body moving and you feel is a workout.
(4) Track every time you workout on your tracker over the 30 days. Encourage your friends, have fun, share your workout tips, invite a friend to join you in the gym, or the dance party, or in whatever activity you are doing.
That is basically it. The whole challenge is based around getting us moving more over the next 30 days. Helping to encourage our flagging motivation and willpower to kick in and remind us why we feel better when we move more.
I thought I’d open the challenge up to you! I don’t have a tracker for you, but it is easy enough to make your own. I know you won’t have my work peeps to encourage you to keep going, but I’ll encourage you, and you can include your friends and family that you see in person so you can all encourage each other.
Why not, over the next 30 days, get a little more active, try a new type of workout, maybe even start to build the habit of moving more, so that eventually we don’t need a challenge to get our butts moving, instead we move because we want to. Wouldn’t that be an amazing reward to ourselves at the end of the 30 days?
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 