What Is It?
A great way to build a sense of team spirit is through friendly competition. This staff contest is designed to help motivate physical activity in the winter months when the February blahs make activity challenging.
Here Is How It Works
Put up a sign up sheet in a common staff location. To encourage staff participation, give out an award at the end of the contest. The Silver Snowshoe trophy is a possible award. You can make your own trophy or purchase one.
Divide participants up into teams of equal number. Try to make the teams fair by dividing those who regularly exercise and those who don't as evenly as possible amongst all teams. To do this, ask staff participating approximately how many hours per week they exercise or are active.
Run the contest over a 4-week period during the months of January and or February. Place a master tracking sheet up on a bulletin board or in a common location. The tracking sheet shows all teams and all participants and provides space for staff to record their daily activity.
Staff try to accumulate as much physical activity as possible over the 4-week period, and record their minutes on the master sheet. Encourage staff to keep a running total of their minutes. You may also want to provide staff with a personal activity log. After 2 weeks of the contest, total the minutes so staff can see how their team is doing. At the end of the 4 week period the team with the highest total minutes wins.
You may want to restrict some of the activities that can be counted towards the total. Limit time spent in whole day activities such as skiing to 2 hours / day. Set a minimum time for all activities at 10 minutes to encourage people to participate in sustained exercise. You may want to allow time spent in vigorous household chores to count, or allow people to add a bonus hour to their daily total if they actually go snowshoeing!
Great Snow Shoe Contest Sample Activity Tracking Sheet
