Wellness Challenge

Set up a Step Challenge with Friends, Family, Classmates, or Community members to encourage activity and incorporate awareness in your communities.

Engaging others in healthy physical competition is a great way to encourage wellness. Step challenges are especially practical because they don’t require people to take on a new hobby (like running), and because walking is something that employees do at work anyway. If you’re going to try to set up and design a step challenge, these tips will help you get the competition up off the ground.

1. Set up the structure. Before anyone can sign up for the challenge, you’ll need to answer questions about how the competition will work. Ask around and see who wants to participate and discuss the details and make up rules for the event. Find the answers to these questions:

   • Will they sign up by teams or will they sign up individually?

   • How large will the teams be?

   • When will the challenge begin and end? (pick a week if you are not sure)

   • Are the components of the challenge fair for everyone involved?

2. Raise awareness of the challenge. After finalizing the rules of the step challenge, you’ll need to raise awareness and build enthusiasm. Posters, emails and word of mouth are all effective ways of communicating with your group. To be doubly sure that your group knows what’s going on, make regular check in times, announcements at home or by email.

3. Encourage teamwork. Requiring teams to elect captains, designate mascots and create team names will force each team to get together and build a sense of camaraderie.

4. Post progress throughout challenge. Have all teams post their progress for the duration of the competition in a centralized location in your building. This will generate interest in the challenge and encourage teams to keep trying.

5. Make it rewarding. When the challenge is finally over, have an awards ceremony. Give rewards for categories like “best team score” and “best individual score.” To keep the event fun for everyone, distribute rewards for silly categories like “most enthusiasm,” “best team name,” and “best team mascot.” Find some way to make the awards ceremony entertaining for people who didn’t participate in the step challenge so that when the winners accept their awards, other people will see it happen. For example, try presenting the awards on a zoom or group Facetime event. Presenting the awards publicly can help generate interest in future step challenges.

The Wellness Challenge - This challenge includes many goals and activities that can help you improve on various aspects of wellness.

Other apps to help support fitness/wellness as a challenge:

The Health App Activity Club The Outbreak Challenge