Challenge for Change - boosting activity in communities, with 7 tips for clubs, schools, and workplaces

Participating in the Challenge for Change can lead to increased community engagement, support for meaningful causes, and enhanced motivation and collaboration within the organization. It's a great way to promote physical activity, foster a sense of unity, and make a positive impact on the community. 🌟

You can take part in Challenge for Change as an individual, but it's much more fun, and you'll go much further if you take part with your club, school/college, or workplace.  

Find out more at ChallengeForChange.org.uk or read on to get 7 tips each for clubs, schools, and workplaces, and let us know your ideas to boost participation in the comments below...

The Daily Mile & Challenge for Change: How One Small Step at School Can Spark a Global Movement

How I helped my kids (and others) to move more and run around at school

Ten years ago, before the wonders of government recommended daily walks and Joe Wicks daily workouts (aka lockdown), I talked to the head teacher at my kids’ primary school about daily exercise.

I’d read an article about the Daily Mile, and heard about it in my health, fitness, and movement circles. In a nutshell, children get to run outside for 15 minutes once a day, not during breaks or lunch, but skipping part of a lesson. They behave and concentrate better, eat healthier lunches, and are also happier.

Challenge your members – to stay longer!

Once you’ve onboarded all your new members (and returning members) at the start of the year, you’ve hopefully looked at upselling, referrals, and rewards. By March, the motivation of some members will start to wane, so it’s time to challenge their fitness.

This is tip number 6 in a series to celebrate GGFit’s 15 years in business. Stay tuned for more

What makes a successful challenge?

A great challenge is one that most of your members take part in.

Contrary to what many fitness instructors think, a hard challenge is not a good challenge, since most of your members either won’t take part, or will, and then will never join a challenge again.

How to adapt your fitness challenges during Coronavirus

A lot of club-based fitness challenges aren’t feasible right now. Whether you’re in a country on lock-down, or your club is still open but practicing social distancing, you can’t reward members for attending the club or encourage them to visit more if they don’t want to. 

Here’s a handful of challenges that you can still set your members. Some will depend on your business model, systems and software. But you can adapt a lot of these, and as always, simplest is best.

LetsMove Challenge postponed to 5 October

Technogym have taken the difficult decision to postpone their Let's Move for a Better World campaign due to the restrictions in place around the world.

Let's Move is more than just a fitness challenge, it is a movement in the fight against inactivity, a community engagement campaign with clubs at the heart of the community. 2020 will be the 7th year of LetsMove, with over 500,000 people expected to take part in 1,600+ clubs across 46 countries, so we support and respect their decision to delay Let's Move until 5th October 2020.

mywellness challenge club: Love Group-X

Getting new (and existing or returning) members into the habit of visiting fitness classes is a great idea for February. There may be a few members who attend classes daily, but spot prizes, or a prize draw entry for everyone who does well can boost participation.

Be aware that this challenge only works if your members book classes through the mywellness app. If you use your front of house system instead, then you’ll have to re-think this one.

mywellness challenge club: Hi-Five Challenge Series

The Hi-Five series of challenges is designed to get your new members into the habit of joining and enjoying challenges. But existing members can join too.

It's a series of 5 challenges, where you must complete the first to join the second, and so on. You use mywellness groups to automatically invite members, so the challenges are otherwise hidden from view. The 'prize' for each challenge is entry to the next challenge, but if you have the budget to buy prizes for completion of all five challenges, a branded t-shirt would be a good idea.

New Member Challenges - Gym Owner Monthly Article

Gym challenges are a great way of boosting member engagement, giving members something to aim for and a sense of achievement, and giving instructors a (much needed) excuse to talk to members.

However, many fitness challenges are too challenging. They only motivate the kind of people who are already motivated. You don’t need to work hard for these members, it’s the quieter ones, or new members that need the boost. As fitness professionals we think it’s our job to push all members to the limit, but that will put many off (see my October 19 Gym Owner Monthly article about onboarding). You need to aim low to motivate the members that need it. 

Simple, Inclusive and Varied

The best challenges are simple, inclusive and varied. Sometimes, it’s worth dropping the word challenge, as this itself puts off some members. Events that allow you to “Donate your moves”, or “Join the 5% club” can be more appealing to the masses. Getting new members into the habit of joining challenges is a great way to build a connection.

mywellness challenge club: New Year Calorie Burner

If you already ran a calorie burner (pre-tox) in December, you might want to try something more varied for January, such as count of workouts. However, this is an old favourite, and always does well for all members, whether new or experienced.

Set a relatively easy target, and plenty of time to complete. You want lots of members to take part in the first challenge of the year, to get them in the habit, and get a massive total of calories burned across the whole club for the end of challenge announcement!

mywellness challenge club: Chase the Turkey

It's time to chase the turkey again this December. If you've not run this challenge before, it's great fun for members and staff alike, gets lots of people talking and running in the gym, and is great for social media and enagement with local businesses. 

The idea is that everyone signs up for a running challenge, one of your instructors or staff is The Turkey, and everyone who runs further than the turkey for the first 14 days of December enters the prize draw to win... a turkey (or equivalent).

If you can get a local butchers shop to donate a turkey, or hamper (in return for some publicity) this makes for a great prize, but a voucher for another local shop, or for a national retailer works too.

We want lots of people to be in the draw at the end of the challenge, so make sure the turkey doesn't run too far or too fast!

MAKE A MOVE CHALLENGE - for Technogym UK clubs

For clarity, the MAKE A MOVE CHALLENGE is a Technogym UK challenge, managed by Technogym UK for connected MyWellness clubs in the UK.

We've supported this over the last few years, with tips and advice for UK clubs to get the most from the challenge and to engage, motivate, and retain as many of their members as possible. You can read all the related posts here.

mywellness challenge club - Make a MOVE

"Make a MOVE" is a very popular Technogym UK challenge that pits club teams against each other to collect the most MOVEs. This article talks about the challenge that we're running for some clients, but you can find many more posts about Make a MOVE here on this blog.

Here's a 3 minute video explaining the Why, How and What of Make a MOVE:

mywellness challenge club - Row the Atlantic/Channel

Obviously, there's a big difference, but the aim is to get as many of your members to aim for a target and row that distance as a club/chain. This is not about competing, but all members and staff coming together as a team to achieve a common goal; the distance. With Sarah Thomas just swimming the Channel 4 times non-stop, this is a good current news story.

October Rowing Challenge

The Atlantic is 4,263km, the English Channel is 34km. Pick Australia to New Zealand, or Sydney to Hobart, Liverpool to Dublin, or any other local strait, and have all your members contribute to the target.

mywellness challenge club - Rugby World Cup Challenge

The Rugby World Cup (RWC) is a good excuse to run a long team challenge. This challenge can get a little complicated, so it’s up to you how far you go with this at your club.

(We're running this for a few clients; if you'd like us to set-up and manage it for you on your mywellness system(s), please email info@ggfit.com)

The basic premise is for members to join a RWC team, and then collect the most MOVEs. Some teams will have more members, so take average MOVEs per member per team.

Tour de France - inclusive and engaging mywellness challenge

Here’s one of the challenges we’re running in the mywellness challenge club this July. At first, it seems like a challenge for keen cyclists. But with a couple of simple twists, you can make it appealing to all members who visit your club. 

Le Tour is the biggest bike race in the world, and unless you have no bikes in your facility, you’d be missing a trick not to run a cycling challenge in July. It needs a little extra explanation if you include both twists, but it’s worth the extra interaction with members for the fun factor and social media exposure that you’ll get.

mywellness - challenges for June 2019

Members of the GGFit mywellness Challenge Club received this content earlier this week. If you would like regular challenge ideas, a 12-month planner template and example, plus lots of other free content, sign up at ggfit.com/challenge.

Burnie Summers

Burnie (calorie) challenges are always popular; they appeal to a lot of members, and educate too - showing members how many calories they burn on their average workout…

mywellness - challenges for May 2019

Members of the GGFit mywellness Challenge Club received this content earlier this week. If you would like regular challenge ideas, a 12-month planner template and example, plus lots of other free content, sign up at ggfit.com/challenge.

We’ve got a couple of challenge suggestions for you in May. One is from the calendar and is a stock ‘appeals to all members’ team challenge which will get your instructors really working hard, competing and having fun, and the other is a more specialist, but quick event-based challenge.

We usually only suggest one main challenge a month, and recommend you keep your challenges simple. But this is the challenge club, and we want to give you ideas to try out and feedback on, so we’re throwing caution to the wind! Chronologically the specialist challenge comes first, so if it’s not for you, skip down to the team challenge.

LetsMove - what's next? Ideas for your April Challenge

LetsMove 2019 has been the most successful Technogym Global Challenge to date. Keep up the momentum at your club with one of these follow-up challenges:

Quick Option: 

Easter Burnie

Type – Calories burned
Winners – Everyone who…

This is a quick challenge that you can run to boost your member’s activity over the Easter period. It’s a great follow-up to LetsMove as anyone can enter and everyone should be able to complete it.

LetsMove 2019 Review - Member Engagement key to successful challenge

Let’s Move 2019 has been another massive success for Technogym clubs all over the world. The annual global challenge has become a movement in the fight against inactivity, which now reaches out beyond the club walls.
We’ve interviewed the top 10 UK clubs; read on to learn how they did so well, and to find out how you should be celebrating, and what kind of challenges to do next.

Lets Move For A Better World works like this… Clubs participate by getting their members to pledge to donate their MOVEs to the cause. Each club has a leaderboard of members, there’s also a leaderboard of all the clubs in your country, and finally, a country leaderboard. Technogym provide equipment to winning clubs, which is then donated to a local school or charity. But for most, it’s a fun, way to engage more with members, guests, and the local community, and to promote activity.

Let's Move for a Better World 2017 - how to get 3 Million MOVEs

Technogym’s Let’s Move challenge is back again, running from 13-31 March. You can find all our previous tips & tricks here, but there are a few different prizes this year, and we’ve run some analysis to help you reach your club’s targets.

STOP THE PRESS - Registration deadline extended to Thurs 16th Feb!