Finding ways to motivate our members and ourselves during the lockdown has been not only fun and at times challenging but rewarding and emotional.
Everytime we have set a challenge for our ladies they have not only risen to it but absolutely exceeded it and done it in style.
Our challenges so far….
Picture Theme
Each group were set a “theme” for their photos and asked to submit their pictures on the days they would usually attend sessions. These were some of the themes we had the ladies finding…. something that smells – nice or nasty, out looking for something red, pretty churches, something round, a “seat with a view”, post boxes, spring flowers, favourite hills, sending in baby photos or family photos for guess the member, sea views and pouting pics.
7 7 Challenge
We have set them virtual team challenges like the 7 miles a day for 7 days, where as a virtual team of 4 the ladies have needed to complete 7 miles between them each day whether it was walking, running or cycling. They had to submit their mileage at the end of each day to one of our leaders Clare, without telling rest of club their distances. The pictures , collages and videos that were created by the teams were creative imaginative and heart warming to say the least. Prizes were awarded for furthest distance accumulated, best team name and then the winning team was picked at random from all the entries.
Bingo Bongo Bonkers!
We had 101 members take part in our Bingo challenge. Every member was sent a bingo card, they had to collect 2 numbers each day of the week and make sure they were in the photo with the number. They could join in at home if they were self isolating or in a daily walk, run or cycle. The number collecting was inspiring from road signs to bus stops from drain cover to vehicle registrations, from house numbers to padlocks and from numbers of fence panels to numerical painted sheep ! By the end of it everyone was obsessed with collecting numbers. A winner was chosen at random and another picked for best photo.
Live online workouts
Lesley one of our leader and qualified PT instructor takes an online live class every Thursday evening at 7pm and has various fancy dress theme each week so that even our littlest foxy cubs want to join in. We have seen families working out dressed as super heroes, colours of the rainbow and cowboys and Indians and TV characters. The strength and conditioning classes have been great at keeping the ladies on track with their fitness as well as the second offering of a class on a Saturday morning running by Julia, workouts have included strength bands, body weight classes and abs n butt blasters as well as using hand weights.
Indoor exercise challenges
Added into all the above, leaders and members have challenged each other with the following home workouts….
- “Bring Sally Up” squat / press up or tricep dip challenge
- “Your name” in exercises workout
- Cha Cha Slide plank routine
- Baby shark abs session
- Hold the Plank challenge
Plus loads more and more to come ….
We have also been providing informational videos including foam roller tips and techniques . A series of videos focusing on injuries with detailed hip injury advice and exercises and plantar fasciitis advice from our own Sarah Morriss. Sarah is a Foxy runner and sports therapist at the Sprint Injury Clinic https://www.facebook.com/SprintInjuryClinic/
Free virtual online sport injury clinic appointments with our leader and sports injury therapist Sinead Clayton. As soon as these were offered she was booked out solid with appointments for two days.
We are also doing one to one live interviews with members and their running stories.
With lockdown set to continue for at least the next three weeks we have much more in store for the ladies. The next challenge is called “Cluedo” and has just launched this week.
