10000 STEPS - TAKE THE CHALLENGE
One hundred and thirty-thousand people. That's the number of participants in this year's Global Corporate Challenge. It's not a Donald Trump or Survivor type challenge where teams of people try to out-back-stab each other in exotic locations, although exotic locations do feature. No, it's much better than that. This is a challenge where everyone wins simply by increasing their daily activity. No sweaty workouts required. All you have to do is form a team of seven, register online and wear a pedometer to record how many steps you take (or how far you cycle, swim or even push a wheelchair). Each member of the team records their steps and the daily total for the team is tallied. And here's the fun part. As the team's steps accumulate they take the team on a virtual tour across the world, which is where the exotic locations come in.
The aim is to get people moving, out of their chairs, up and down stairs, and onto their feet. Ten thousand steps a day is the gold standard to aim for. It can be quite a shock if you find that your normal daily step count is only a few thousand steps but the aim is to increase from your baseline what ever your baseline is.
I love some of the team names, some favourites include :- Sole Sisters, The Fat and the Furious, and The Walkie Talkies. The list of top twenty teams is posted daily and in amongst the well-known corporate giants is a team from Benalla Primary School. Go Benalla! (a smallish country town in the Australian state of Victoria).
The Global Challenge runs for 16 weeks from May to September. It's too late to enter now but the website has lots of useful information including the results of research on the health effects on participants. One study by Monash University found significant improvements in high blood pressure, waist measurement and waist/hip ratio at 4 mths after starting the challenge, an improvement which was still largely sustained at the 12 month mark. Check out the website at www.gettheworldmoving.com
If you missed out on The Global Corporate Challenge there are still plenty of ways to get the benefits of group motivation and help with increasing your activity by using a pedometer. You can register at www.10000steps.org.au any time. This is also a well researched and government funded program. This one is not a fundraiser but is free for anyone to participate. The site has lots of short health and exercise articles,Q&A Forums, and tips on buying and using a pedometer.
Pedometers are a great motivational tool. They clip onto your belt or waistband and record the number of steps you take. Less than 5000 per day is considered sedentary (a much kinder word than slothful), 10,000 is considered active and the desired amount for maintaining a healthy weight, while above 12500 is highly active. Sure you can cheat and attach it to the dog or jiggle in your seat to get the numbers up but that does somewhat defeat the purpose. I have found that just having that number ticking over and attached to your body where you can see it is an excellent prod to get the butt out of the chair.
So if you want a simple, low cost, motivating way to increase your physical activity level, hook up with other like-minded people and make your doctor very happy why not try the 10,000 steps approach. It's easy, and the research shows that it works.
