Healthy Living Blog

We've been working with NHS Wales and Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board for 3 years now; helping supply them with an annual step challenge for the staff and local communities.

The initial rollout was made with achievable goals in mind and a small group targeted to be core test group, however the challenge proved to be more popular than they imagined and numbers almost quadrupled!

"CTMUHB launched their activity challenge in 2023, using the Big Team Challenge (BTC) digital platform. They were the first NHS organisation in Wales to do so.
The initial target was to get 100 employees involved. Instead, nearly 400 employees joined. Collectively, they walked the virtual Wales Coastal Path (870 miles)."

Read the full report here

Since launching their initial challenge back in 2023, over 2000 participants have taken part in their numerous challenges and collectively walked over 17 times around the world!

As a UK company, it’s great seeing our platform being used by local organisations to help improve the wellbeing of their communities. The fact that another board in Wales has started running challenges with us is a wonderful indiciation of the popularity of such initiatives and hopefully the ease with which our system helps facilitate them.

We can't wait to help launch the latest challenge with CTMUHB in 2026!

May is National Walking Month

We're ramping up to May 2025, when we will see the UK launch it's annual National Walking Month! That means shaking off our winter routines and embracing the new spring weather. Read more about National Walking Month‍

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The benefits of walking

We've covered this topic a lot in previous posts, but what it boils down to is that moving keeps both our bodies active, but also our minds! Research has proven time and time again that simply going for a leisurely walk each day can help with chronic mental health issues, such as anxiety and stress, and even help with sleep patterns.

Walking is a low impact activity that is accessible to so many people, and it is one that should be promoted as often as possible. A great way to help change people's perception of it and to help build a routine is to run a walking challenge with us!

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Step Challenges

One of the easiest ways to get everyone involved this year is to run a walking challenge for your family, friends and community. Walking has so many wonderful health and mental wellbeing benefits, and is one of the easiest forms of exercise to get started with.

Creating your own challenge takes minutes with Big Team Challenge's 'Challenge Creator'. This allows you to choose how many participants can join, how long the challenge lasts for, what route you can walk and much more.

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Our New Virtual Walks

To celebrate the UK and National Walking Month, we have created 4 new routes, each specifically around ones of the 4 countries.

Walk Northern Ireland

Walk Scotland

Walk England

Walk Wales

While there's no time like the present, sometimes we need a little bit of time to plan important things such as step challenges!

With 2025 just around the corner, now would be a great time to start considering running a challenge for your workforce to help the get happy, healthy and motivated in the new year.

Step challenges and their affect on wellbeing

Step challenges are a great way to shake off the winter blues and get everyone thinking about their daily activity levels. A simple walk each day can help boost not only physical wellbeing, but mental wellbeing too. Not to mention it's a great way to help people stay motivated and focused at work.

At Big Team Challenge we must be doing a lot of walking, as our productivity has been through the roof this year, with a whole host of improvements and features being worked on behind the scenes. This year we introduced our built-in activity conversion feature, as well as team chat and a whole host of behind the scenes upgrades!

Get some ideas for your January step challenge

Keep your teams motivated with chat!

We recently launched our newest feature; Team Chat to help users keep connected with their team mates.
This latest updates allows team members to chat within their own team to help keep each other motivated, inspired and talking about their daily activity.

This was one of our most requested features so we're really excited to see it roll out to our platform.

Making it easier to track your daily activities

While something as simple as walking can have huge benefits to your physical and mental wellbeing, it's not the only option for people wanting to stay active. It's not even the easiest!

We've now built our activity conversion chart right into our apps and website, allowing users to convert over 100 activities, such as Yoga, Gardenning, Basketball, Cycling and Aerobics into a comparible step count.

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Greater levels of participation

Creating a walking or running challenge is simple, easy, and to the point. You can create it and ask all of your participants to get up, move about during lunch, and track those steps along a virtual map. It's a fun and intuitive way to get people motivated, but what about those who have a lower activity level or mobility issues? The message of getting up and moving about might be daunting to them or physically unachieveable.

This is where we saw the benefits of the conversion chart and why we chose to develop this new feature. Not only does it open up a world of other activities to every user, but it brings the opportunity for those in wheelchairs, walking aids, or with mobility issues to do other activities and participate with the rest of their team.

So why not encourage some gardening at the weekends, some yoga at lunch, or some swimming in the morning?

Read our full help article here to learn exactly how the activity conversion feature works.