A Little Friendly Competition Is All The Motivation You’ll Need To Stay Active

After my fourth Jawbone Up band bit the dust I made the switch over to FitBit. I’ve been using a FitBit Flex for about eight months now and there is one feature that I absolutely love in the App. That feature is Challenges with friends.

In a matter of seconds, any user can initiate a challenge with select friends. At first I didn’t think much about the feature and spent a great deal of time avoiding it. On a whim, I accepted a request one day and was entered into a Work Week Challenge. My competitive drive kicked in and before I knew it, I was obsessed with climbing up the ladder.

That initial group of friends have since become inactive and it has just been my wife and I challenging one another. To make things even more interesting, we added stakes of our own. The winner would have a dinner of their choice cooked by the loser. I also insisted on a favor to be named later be tacked onto the bet.

The challenges were fun for the first couple of weeks but things began to get a little stale with just the two of us competing. Since I’ve had a renewed drive to get healthy – and went on to pour my heart out about my rocky experience – I’ve had a few friends show interest in inspiring one another along the way.

This week I kicked off a brand new Work Week Hustle Challenge with that group of friends and already things are getting fierce. No one wants to lose. We’re walking, running, and hiking more often to increase our step counts. This morning I woke up to Jerry having taken a late-night walk to pad his numbers and re-take the number one position.

I couldn’t have that so I added one some extra cardio in the gym this morning. Instead of my usual fifteen minute warmup on the treadmill, working legs, then going home, I spent a half hour on the treadmill, worked my legs, then finished off the session with another grueling fifteen minutes on the treadmill.

I don’t expect to hold the number one position for long but I’m going to do all I can to maintain my lead. I’ve been making lots of trips to the refrigerator for water and a lot of follow-up trips to the bathroom to dispose of that water. It isn’t much in the way of extra steps but every little bit helps.