How To Organize a Stair Climbing Challenge At Work?

How often do we mindlessly reach for the elevator button during a workday and simply ignore the stairs? The truth is our busy schedules often lead us to prioritize speed over physical activity.

The outcome is more and more busy professionals are getting diagnosed with chronic illness.

So, the need to practice moderate exercises regularly is the need of the hour. While there are multiple forms of exercise that employees can try, stair climbing is an activity that can make a big difference.

A study cites stair-climbing may improve the cardiovascular system and lower body muscular endurance. Another research report in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise mentions that a minimum of three 60-second bouts of stair climbing daily improved the participants' heart health.

This is something to consider as prolonged sitting (which most employees do) can weaken the lower body muscles eventually.

Are you worried about the same for your employees? Or are you interested in organizing stair-climbing challenges at work?

If so, then this blog will come in handy for you. We have curated everything you need to know about organizing stair climbing challenges at work.

The Benefits of Stair Climbing for Physical Fitness

In research, Dr. Sophie Paddock from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Foundation Trust found stair climbing can significantly improve heart health. It can be said that stair climbing is one of the most underrated and effective ways for busy professionals to stay fit.

Here are some more health benefits of taking the stairs:

• It strengthens your cardiovascular system.
• It improves leg and core muscle strength.
• It helps burn calories.

Moreover, going to work means carrying at least one bag. So, with that, climbing stairs turns out to be a "weighted step-up" workout. In a way, taking the stairs will help build strength, especially in the lower body.

Simply put, frequently taking a flight of stairs is a bonus to maintaining good health.

Let's look into the ways you can host stair-climbing challenge at work with a zing!

Steps To Organize a Stair Climbing Challenge at Work

Organizing stair-climbing challenges in the workplace requires the following steps:

1. Set the goal: Decide whether the challenge will last a week or a month, and whether it will be team-based or individual.

2. Track the progress: Once the goal is set, you must decide how to keep track of the participant's progress. For this, you can introduce fitness tracking apps such as Vantage Fit, which comes with an added fun element. Head over to the next pointer to find out!

3. Motivation Boosters: Keeping the participation spirit high is the real challenge. Humans get bored easily. To keep them engaged in a task, offering motivation boosters like incentives and social appreciation will do wonders. Create a leaderboard where participants can track their live score of the challenge.

Suggested reading: How To Set Up A Successful Step Challenge At Work?

Ideas for Stair-climbing challenge to increase employee participation at work

1. Stair Climbing Journey Challenge:

Start a "Famous landmark" stair-climbing challenge. In this challenge, teams or individual participants compete to reach iconic landmarks – all from the comfort of the office stairs!

For this challenge, include famous landmarks like Eiffel tower, Empire State Building, Great wall of China, Mount Kilimanjaro. Set a desirable number of steps for the landmarks that participants must complete during the challenge.

For instance, Eiffel tower = 1660 stairs to climb

Empire State Building = 3200 stairs to climb

How to begin with the challenge:

For a group challenge, you can make groups of at least six participants. If not a group, you can also run the challenge at an individual level. The duration for the same can be 4, 8, or 12 weeks. Here's a sample that you can apply:

2. Stairwell Takeovers:

Decorate stairwells with motivational quotes, facts about stair climbing benefits, or even team cheers. This brings a fun element to the initiative and encourages more stair use.

3. "Caught Climbing" Moments:

Have "spotters" hand out small prizes or healthy bites to employees caught climbing the stairs. The small prize can include coupons for healthy food joints or gym memberships.

4. "Master of the Stairs" Event:

Organize occasional lunchtime or after-work events where employees climb stairs together for a set period. Play upbeat music and offer healthy refreshments to create a fun atmosphere.

5. Social media shoutouts:

Encourage participants to share updates on social media. Create a dedicated hashtag for them to use along with the update. This creates a sense of community, which further helps with team collaboration at work.

Social Media Hashtag Ideas For Stair Climbing Challenge

Additional Incentive ideas:

Healthy Habit Integration: Offer rewards for participants who log healthy meals, participate in walking meetings, or complete a short office yoga routine while the challenge continues.

To keep track of such healthy habits, integrating wellness platforms like Vantage Fit will simplify the management's work.

Give away badges: In times when everything is digital, go "old school" and get physical badges, which employees can show off at work. Gift achievement badges to participants who achieve milestones. Badges are a fun and playful way to keep the participation spirits high.

Tips for Increasing Stair Climbing Endurance

Physically inactive individuals may struggle to take the stairs. They may feel breathless or tired quickly. Speaking from personal experience, there was a time when I used to get breathless after taking three flights of stairs. The reason for this was that I was physically inactive and led a sedentary lifestyle.

I somehow decided to join the CrossFit community, and within just a few weeks, I realized the breathlessness was gone.

P.S. If you have the same experience, it's time to take up an active lifestyle.

Until then, to participate in a stair climbing challenge, follow these tricks below:

• The first trick to increase endurance for stair climbing is taking the steps at a slow pace.
• Controlling the breathing rhythm while climbing will make the process a bit easier for the participant.
• Take a brief break in between the climbing if you feel too uneasy.
• Participants should wear comfortable shoes supporting their feet during the challenge. It will help prevent injuries from taking the stairs to complete the target.

The Environmental Impact of the Stair Climbing Challenge

Taking the stairs at work or anywhere else, without any doubt, has health benefits. This activity also contributes to a greener and more sustainable future. As part of the challenge, participants will be ditching elevators and taking the stairs to hit the goal.

As a result, the use of elevators is minimized, which means less electricity consumption. Now, this is something worth thinking about, isn't it? Also, given the current global warming concerns, the number of organizations embracing the green office concept is growing for the right reasons.

So, this is also a pointer that you can highlight among the participants to motivate their participation in the challenge.

Final Words

Incorporating wellness initiatives like stair climbing challenges at work may initially seem overwhelming for the management. But it's not impossible. For a grand success, add the elements of fun and motivation boosters, as mentioned above.

And there's this classic way of motivation wherein the seniors from the management equally join in the challenge. After all, the leaders lead the way in all cases!

And, if you wish to add more zing to the challenge, join hands with a wellness platform.

Wellness platforms like Vantage Fit have the feature of running virtual wellness challenges for users. These come packed with activity-tracking features, allowing the user to monitor their progress. Also, such platforms offer admins the liberty to customize the challenges as required.

Further, employers can view the ongoing progress of the participants and make use of this data to understand the current well-being status of their employees. Such data reports can help assist H.R.s and leaders in enforcing changes in the workplace for the better.

Want to level up the wellness game for your employees? Then, talk to our experts here and get a sneak peek of the platform.