This year, the SJ Running and Fitness teams collaborated to hold another Red January Challenge!
“RED January is a nationwide movement that exists to empower everyone to move for their mental wellbeing during the winter, a time of year where as a nation we tend to be less active, and experience low moods or increased depressive symptoms.”
Above is information on the nationwide movement throughout the month of January.
How our challenge worked?
A telegram group was set up with the participants. We chose aspects of the above movement, but we put our spin on it! Each morning the coordinators would send a challenge on the telegram group of what the participants had to complete for that day. Challenges varied daily from walking a certain number of steps or kms, to a HIIT routine, to doing exercises until failure!
Mid way during the month, they even got a cheeky rest day!
Throughout the month, once participants would complete a challenge, they would have to go on a spreadsheet and tick off that they did it. This was used as accountability as once the ladies did their challenge it would show as completed, and for those who didn’t manage to, it would show up as not completed. This served as motivation to ensure as many ‘completed’ challenges as possible!
During the course of the month, the ladies even got together to complete 5km walks together, including a Parkrun at Cassiobury Park!
It was a very successful challenge with a total of 152 sign ups, and it certainly was a brilliant way to start the year!
Some testimonials from the challenge:
“I have really enjoyed these challenges each day – thank you to the initiators and the encouragers.”
“Really enjoyed this whole month and the finale. Thank you for organising this and giving me a reason to get off the sofa”
“Great challenge . Need to sleep for a few hours now”
“This felt amazing… thank you for todays challenge”
“Just got home from my 5K walk. If it wasn’t for being so invested in this challenge, there is absolutely no way I would have ever chosen to walk for nearly an hour on a cold January night! Thanks to the coordinators for keeping us motivated so far this month! Looking forward to the final stretch!”
