Holiday Fitness Challenge

I think Halloween was announced in the stores sometime in July. Seems the holidays are upon us and with them challenges to staying active and lean. Sometimes setting a fitness goal within the parameters of a time limit helps people stay consistent. The most common attempt is the New Year’s resolution. But why not go against the stream? We’re sitting about eleven weeks out from New Year's when everyone else will start to focus on weight loss and fitness goals. Wouldn’t it be great to have already reached your goals by New Year’s Eve?

Consider having a holiday fitness challenge. Pick two holidays and see what you can accomplish between them. Last year we made such a contest available at Blue Springs Fitness where I work between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. About sixty people became involved and logged their workouts for those ten weeks. We rewarded participation to help people establish new habits and to navigate their way through the typical holiday eating frenzy. Every day people eagerly checked the leader board to see where they stood compared to the other gym members.

It was fun to do that with a big group but you don’t have to have an entire gym to do something similar. When my oldest children were still very small we started a tradition that we still do today. This is despite the fact that four of my six children are now old enough to vote. Since our family loves to follow the Olympics and I knew that that would involve a lot of sitting around watching T.V. I wanted a way to balance that with activity. So we instituted the Olympic Challenge.

Every Olympics from the time the torch is lit at the opening ceremony until it is extinguished at the closing ceremony our family competes to see who can do the most push-ups, jumps with a jump rope, and some agreed upon abdominal exercise.Some years as they have grown older we have also added miles run. We award gold, silver, and bronze in these individual events as well as an all-around award. We post our daily progress on the refrigerator so you always know where you stand. Those standings have motivated many a late night push-up that otherwise would never have occurred. Often I was the one doing them trying to keep up with a seven year old or a teenager.

So the take home message is fitness with a group is fun. A little friendly competition is motivating, and the time to do it is now.You don’t have to wait for New Years. Find your own excuse for a fitness celebration. With a little help from your family and friends you may need a different resolution this New Year because your fitness dreams may have already come true.