Group fitness challenges are a great way to improve teamwork within an organization. Not only are these challenges fun, but hosting social experiences also helps team members to communicate and interact with each other. Better yet, group fitness challenges can help remote workers interact with each other, and in-person team members.

Hosting a group fitness challenge activity can feel overwhelming, especially if you’ve never planned one before. Below are some tips and ideas to help you introduce your staff to the challenges.

Setting up a group fitness challenge

Most people join a gym with the goal of losing weight or improving their fitness, however, less than 50% actually go on a regular basis past the first few months. This is often due to a lack of motivation, and monotony. Hosting group fitness challenges encourages your employees to exercise while making it fun and allowing them to keep each other accountable. When setting up the fitness challenge, remember to include these details.

• Have a goal – Set your employees up for success by having a realistic goal for each challenge.
• Set an end date – Always set a clear end date for the challenge. Ensure it is long enough for employees to see results, but not so long that they get bored.
• Tools – Ensure your employees have the right tools to compete in the challenge. This could be access to an app, or time during each workday.
• Reward them – The best way to encourage participation and add motivation is by offering compensation. Be sure to announce the prize before the challenge begins.

Now that you know what to include in each challenge, here are some great group challenge ideas.

1. 30-Day Movement Challenge

This is a great starting challenge for any organization, as it just promotes movement over a particular exercise. To improve teamwork, encourage employees to create teams of 3-5 people to enter. Use an app like Pantheon so all employees can log their workouts, and movement statistics. Participants can then work together by creating lunchtime walking clubs, going on weekend hikes, or going to the gym together to boost their team ranking. If teams have an uneven amount of participants remember to take a weekly average for each team to ensure the competition is fair. Whichever team logs the most movement by the end of the 30 days wins.

2. Personal Best Challenge

This challenge targets the competitive nature of your employees while allowing them to work on their fitness how they want to. For example, they could try to improve their mile pace or increase their deadlift weight. Set up a spreadsheet, or use a group fitness app so that employees can log their current time/weight and record their progress each week. Consider a weekly call or meeting to check in with everyone's progress so employees can offer support and tips.

3. Stretching Challenge

This is an easy activity for employees to add into their workday. Additionally, the conscious slow movements of stretching can help employees focus better, thus be more productive. Consider hosting stretching classes once a day in the office and recording attendance or use an app like GroupBeast to create the stretching workouts. This allows remote workers to also participate and communicate with others.

4. Healthy Eating Challenge

Wellness is not just about exercising, in fact, nutrition is just as important. Challenge your employees to clean up their diet by reducing highly-processed foods, lowering their sugar intake, and trying new recipes. To help your employees, consider what food is available in the office and offer healthier alternatives like fruit and fresh vegetables. To help employees stay on track, host a healthy potluck lunch every few weeks so that employees can discover new recipes and discuss what is working and not working for them.

Encourage your employees to take control of their health and wellness by offering fitness challenges within your business. Use the ideas above to start, and then get input from your employees for future challenges. Remember to make all group fitness challenge activities fun and interactive to boost teamwork and morale.