Twas the night before Christmas, except that it wasn’t, because it was actually December 1st and 8am in the morning. This time marked the beginning of BSP NOVA’s first Santa Around The World (SATW) competition and it was a blast. We started this competition with the hope to create a fun event for our members to participate in, but it became that and so much more. I mean, coach Greg actually worked out at BSP NOVA for the first time since his internship, and more than once at that. Now, you may be wondering what this magic challenge is that got ol’ Greg (AKA Grankles, Mocha Bear, Caramel King, etc.) to lift, so let me explain below.
The idea behind the challenge was based on Santa traveling around the world to various famous areas and events. We created four teams with four captains (the four coaches at BSP) and each of us started on the western part of the world in Alaska. We used different exercises in the gym to simulate something that may be done in that specific area of the world. For example, we started in Alaska where the famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race takes place, and we had our members pushing and pulling sleds for that event.
Now, they didn’t push and pull the exact number of miles because that would have been a bit much, so we used a conversion unit for most events to make it semi-reasonable. Every time a team completed the designated distance/reps for the event they moved onto the next one. In total there were 6 events to be completed to win the competition. To give you an idea of the ridiculousness of this all, a total of 112,000 sledge hammers strikes between all 4 teams were done to simulate driving spikes to build the Reading Railroad. In addition to these two events, we did step-ups for the Empire State Building, hung from a pull-up bar to simulate climbing up the Dolomites Mountains in Italy, crawled the Sahara Desert (don’t ask how Santa got in this predicament, he was having a rough Christmas), and farmers carried the length of the Great Wall of China.
All of that craziness amounted to THIS:
- 7.12 miles of sled pushing and pulling
- 112,000 sledgehammer strikes
- 12,608 feet of elevation in step-ups
- 8 hours of hanging
- 45.45 miles of crawling
- 98.48 miles
Read that again—those are not typos!
As I mentioned earlier in this post, we created this event as a fun competition for our members during the holiday season. What we didn’t anticipate is that the SATW competition created an opportunity for people to make new friends, showed people that they were able to make it to the gym more frequently, and showed them they were capable of doing more physically than they thought possible. I think one of our members Fancy Jen (AKA Cinnamon) summed it up best when she said to me:
“I loved the SATW challenge. It helped me realize I could get to the gym more consistently than I had been and showed me I am stronger than I thought. It also brought me closer to people I was already friends with as well as helped make new friendships.”
There’s something to be said about a group of people striving towards a worthwhile goal.
See, something was just said…
Anyways, bad joke aside, struggling towards a common goal as a team brought people together that would not have normally interacted with each other. We had members who typically lifted in the evenings come in during lunch time or during the morning and vice versa. Facebook message threads and emails were littered with friendly trash talk, memes, and GIFS galore.
In the gym, people pushed each other during each event to do a couple more sledgehammer strikes or to carry the Kettlebells one more trip. Rival teams were even cheering each other on during the events and the comradery was great to see. After finishing a crawling event, we had two members go to get a shot together. Forcing people to work together to knock out these huge events created a unique bonding experience that was amazing to see. In addition to bringing people closer together, the SATW competition showed people they were able to make it to the gym far more frequently than they realized.
Previously, some of our members who struggled at times with consistently making it to the gym were showing up more frequently than ever before. Maybe this was due to teammates pushing them to come in and help out, or because they simply didn’t want to let their teammates down. Or maybe it was due to having a fun goal to work towards and a reason to push themselves harder. Whatever the reason may have been, it was a light bulb moment for some of our members, because it caused them to trip over the truth that they could make it to the gym more than they thought.
It’s easy to think of fitting exercise into your busy schedule and get frustrated with how to make it happen. Some of us are full time students with a full time job, while others are single parents with two jobs. It’s easy to let things get in the way of the gym and our personal exercise routine. There is no judgment in that since those responsibilities are very real barriers to exercise at times, but, if we make exercise a priority, we can find ways to make it work. Having a supportive team that pushes us to come, and a big group goal to work towards can be a big help. In addition to the competition showing our members (and us coaches) they could make it to the gym more often, it also showed them they were capable of doing more physically than they thought possible.
One of our members, Linda Eddy, summed this up well when she said:
“For me, I did activities I’ve never done before—like striking a tire with a sledgehammer—and did more than I ever thought possible. A big part of it was motivation from my team.”
The idea of striking a tire 28,000 times as a team was a striking idea to most people for sure, and people got tired of hammering away at this event, but every team accomplished it. Numerous members mentioned to me how they didn’t think they could hang from a pull-up bar at all, let alone accumulate 5 plus minutes during their allotted 30 minutes to do the challenge each day. Another member said to me that they had set a goal of doing 20 carries in their first 15 minutes only to crush it by getting 25.
The SATW competition was a huge success for us and our members. It accomplished our goal of creating a fun event for our members during the holiday season, but it also brought people closer together, showed them they could make it to BSP more often, and gave them a reason to push themselves to do more physically than they thought possible.