The month of December is a tricky time of year if you want to stay focused on your health and wellness goals.  That is why Sassy Healthy Fit launched our first annual “31 Days of Fitness” challenge.  The concept was simple (modeled after the traditional holiday Advent Calendar): one rep of one move per day, each day adding on to the day before.  Seems simple enough right?  How hard is it to do ONE push-up?  Not very!  The goal was just as simple: motivate people to MOVE THEIR BODIES more every day in a way that was SIMPLE, SUSTAINABLE & FUN!  For those that wanted an extra challenge, we included a bonus activity each day.

Here’s how it worked.  Each day an e-mail went out with the “move of the day”.  The e-mail included a description of the move, how to perform it correctly, any modifications and why it was beneficial. There was a GIF of the move and also an audio recording telling you what the move was.  The audio recording proved especially helpful after about the 3rd day!  The extra challenge was included on each e-mail as well.  This was also posted to Facebook & Instagram daily to encourage as much participation as possible.

At SHF we know how valuable community is and we wanted to not only encourage participation, but active communication among challengers.  We set up a private Facebook group and asked challengers to post daily progress (ideally with a video or selfie of them doing the move).  We also created the hashtag #improveyoureflimage to create the same type of community on Instagram.  The community feel was motivating and it was great to see so many people engage with other challengers they didn’t know otherwise.

We were thrilled to see the type of participation that occurred throughout the month!  Challengers were doing their moves all over…at home, at stores, at parks, even at Disneyland!  We saw participants do the moves with their children, partners and even pets.  The amount of enthusiasm and feedback was truly inspirational.

While this challenge only lasted the month of December, it could easily be replicated at any time of year.  To perform all 31 moves, it only takes about 3-5 minutes.  This could be a great warm-up for any workout or just a great way to break up your day and be more active over all.

We look forward to hosting this challenge again in December of 2019 and look forward to even more participation than we had in its inaugural launch.