Walking Challenge

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

We were delighted to have the opportunity to mark International Women’s Day 2023 in a practical way by running a challenge to help Scottish charity, Aid for Education, raise money for its microfinance project in Rwanda.

Using our One Big Challenge option coupled with a bespoke route complete with milestones which told the story of the Aid for Education’s inspirational work in Eastern Rwanda, the challenge participants raised £1,570 as they walked over 7,900 miles from Greenock, where the charity is based, to the heart of Africa.

The money raised will enable Aid for Education to help 15 women set up their own business which will provide each of them with the opportunity to earn money to pay for food, education and healthcare and give their children the chance of a more positive future.

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Running A Step Challenge

A step challenge is an online exercise initiative run by a company or organisation that encourages participants to get active in their daily lives. Users connect their smart phones or wearable devices to the challenge app and track their daily step counts against a virtual map around the world; the more the users walk, the more they explore!

Challenges can vary in how they are set up, with some pushing for individuals to participate by themselves and others encouraging teams to combine their effort and keep each other motivated.

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Creating your own step challenge

Below we will go over some of the steps you need to consider before creating your first step challenge.

‍Individuals or team challenges?

Are you looking to create an exercise challenge that is focused on an individual trying to complete the challenge, or are you looking to motivate a group of users to work together? Both options have their merits, however the team option can have added benefits of allowing for friendly competition and team building.
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Big Team Challenge also has two modes of competition, Teams vs Teams and One Big Challenge. You can read more about these challenge modes or get in touch to learn more.

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Choosing a virtual route

It's always fun to choose an exciting idea such as "walk around the world" or "walk to the moon and back", but these goals can often be overwhelming for users.
You should first consider how many users are on each team and what distance each user can comfortably be expected to do each day.

As a simple estimate you can use the following calculation:

Number of users per team x Number of days the challenge lasts x daily step goal = Route length

For example - 5 people per team, over 42 days, each trying to do 7500 steps a day = 1086km (each step is 0.69m)

Big Team Challenge has over 250 virtual routes to choose from, so there's something in there for everyone, regardless of their fitness levels.

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Get the word out there

Before you can get walking around the countryside of France, or island hopping around the Caribbean, you first have to let everyone know the challenge is even happening.

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Communication with your audience is key part to the success of any step challenge. You will find that your level of involvement directly relates to how much engagement you can expect from your challenge participants.

Some ideas to keep users engaged:

• Weekly or twice weekly email updates to let everyone know of the challenge progress.

• Encourage users to post their progress or achievements on social media using your challenge hashtag

• Run friendly competitions

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Big Team Challenge offers challenge organisers their own admin area, where they can create their challenge, launch a user registration page and even keep in communication with all of the users.

To learn more about our system, watch the video below or get in touch for a personalised demo.

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Finding the perfect name for your team can be tricky. Do you go for a pun, some awesome alliteration or a statement of your gonna-win attitude? We've compiled a list of 50+ team name ideas to give you some inspiration.

Love a Good Pun?

• Legs Miserable
• Red Hot Chilli Steppers
• Scrambled Legs
• Jabberwalkers
• Johnnie Walkers
• Rise of SkyWalkers
• The Walk 'Em Dead
• All About That Pace
• Walking 9 to 5
• Chafing The Dream
• Sole Sisters
• Adventure Afoot
• Mission Slimpossible
• Slow Patrol
• Agony of De Feet
• Cirque de Sore Legs
• Ketchup If You Can
• Lost in Pace
• Pimp My Stride
• School of Walk
• Holy Walkamolie!
• Walk 'n Roll! (or Walk n' Sole!)
• Gloves Actually (for a Winter challenge)

Climb (the Leaderboard) With a Rhyme

• Blister Sisters
• Quad Squad
• Senior Steppers

Talking the Challenge Seriously?

• Miles Over Matter
• Team Smash It!
• The A Team
• Walk the Talk
• Walking Divas
• Super Sprinters
• Catch Us If You Can
• Road Runners
• In It To Win It!
• Achilles Heels
• The Pacemakers

Just Looking to Feel Healthy and Have Some Fun?

• Are We There Yet?
• Walk This Way
• One Step Ahead
• The Globe Trotters
• The Walkie Talkies
• You'll Never Walk Alone
• Step By Step
• A Step Ahead
• These Boots Were Made for Walking
• The Dream Team
• Take A Hike
• Happy Feet
• One Step at a Time
• Paw Patrol (for dog walkers!)
• Steptacular
• The Walkaholics
• Happy Feet
• Take a Hike

Finding a unique name for your team is a fun way to start your challenge. Talk to your teammates to get more ideas then once you're done, either create your team or change the name of your existing team.

Staying motivated with a team behind you

Regular exercise can be a great way of staying healthy both physically and mentally, but it can be hard to stay motivated when it's just you. Shorter days, work deadlines and bad weather can all contribute to making you want to stay indoors and simply unwind while watching TV under a blanket, however this can actually lead to feeling worse in the long run. Regular daily exercise is an important part of any self care routine and has been shown time and time again to have an impact on your mental health.

Joining or creating groups with like-minded people can be a great way of motivating each other and encouraging more mindful thinking towards exercise.

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Creating a virtual walking challenge can help make a lasting change

Virtual walking challenges are a great way to begin this process. Participants are encouraged to sign up, create or join an existing team and start tracking their daily step counts. Being a part of a team helps create some friendly motivation, with users encouraged to keep up with their fellow team mates. With the use of team activity, unlock-able achievements and virtual routes they can track their progress along, a walking challenge can be a great way to boost motivation and help change long term attitudes towards exercise.

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Teams leaderboard

The addition of a challenge-wide leaderboard can help extend this competitive element to the wider community, with each team being able to actively compete against others on the challenge.

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Available worldwide

Another benefit of a virtual challenge is that it isn't limited to your local community, it's open to a worldwide audience. Creating a challenge across the globe can be a great way of users connecting with family, friends or colleagues from different countries.

Why not start your own Virtual Walk today?

Learn how to create your own Virtual Walking Challenge on Big team Challenge

Creating your own group walking challenge

Big Team Challenge allows you to organise your own walking challenge for your friends, family or colleagues. Getting signed up couldn't be easier with our online system.

Get everyone joined up and involved in the challenge where they will track their real world activity along a virtual map.

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Why run a walking challenge?

Group walking challenges can not only boost physical wellbeing, but improve morale, help with team building and put a focus on mental wellbeing.

Our group walking challenges can be run for any size of group, with flexible pricing in case you have more participants than you expected to begin with.

When you launch your challenge, users can sign up online or via our big team challenge apps. Once registered participants can join or create a team of the very own, invite friends and connect their smart devices such as fitbit, garmin, or iphone.

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Your own registration screen

When you launch your private walking challenge, you will be given a landing page where you can direct all of your users to. This page allows them to get registered and into the challenge without anything required form you.
An example of this can be found on our demo challenge at demo.bigteamchallenge.com

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Choosing a virtual walk

When building your walking challenge you will have the option to choose from one of our 200+ virtual walking routes. When your users input their daily steps they will be moved along this virtual map, discovering new milestones, filled with interesting facts about their destination.

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Group walking challenge pricing

Group walking challenges begin at £500 and includes up to 100 users as part of the price. For an instant custom quote, please fill in the pricing calculator here.

Learn more about our walking challenge features

Enjoy a virtual walk around Ireland

Ireland is one of our most popular destinations for a virtual step challenge and it's not hard to understand why, with its rugged coast line, green valleys and colourful cities.

How does the Ireland virtual route work?

When enjoying one of our walking challenges, users can transfer their real time daily step counts onto a virtual map around Ireland, moving them through various key milestones around the country.

When arriving at a new milestone users are presented with a gorgeous photograph of the location and an introductory piece of text that describes the area and provides fun facts.

Ireland Milestones

Our Ireland routes often bridge both Northern Ireland and Ireland itself, with milestones in both countries. Some of these milestones include Brú na Bóinne, Dublin, Rock of Cashel, Giant's Causeway, Killarney National Park, Blarney Castle, Belfast and many more.

Creating your own Ireland walking challenge

Big Team Challenge allows you to create your own challenges and invite your participants to join you. To learn more about how our step challenges work, please visit out step challenge page for more information and pricing.

Group Walking Challenge

With summer fast approaching, now is a great time to start a team walking challenge with your friends, family or community group. With lockdown still restricting our activity choices at the moment, walking is great alternative that is free to do, accessible anywhere and has a very low impact on joints. Read more about what the UK NHS has to say on the matter: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/walking-for-health/

Creating a walking challenge on Big Team Challenge takes less than 5 minutes and you can instantly have your friends signing up online and setting up their own teams. This is a great way of building some friendly competition between teams as you all try to cover the same virtual route together.

Everyone participating in your challenge will have access to both our website version and the mobile apps too, allowing them to keep track of their and everyone else's progress while at home or on the go!

Challenge Features

• Private to only you and your participants
• Admin area to control and monitor your challenge
• Access to website and app
• Create or join teams
• Track your steps manually or use a smart watch like Fitbit, Garmin or Apple Watch.
• Earn achievements
• Teams Leaderboard

Read more about our step challenge features

Challenge Description

To celebrate to the summer games in Tokyo this year, we have built a virtual route from the previous site in Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, Japan! Get walking, running, cycling or swimming your way along this sporty challenge route.

The Benefits Of Running A Virtual Walking Challenge

Travel! Yes, we might all still be bound by travel restrictions and it looks like we might spend another summer in and around our homes... but that doesn't mean we can't visit some virtual travel spots! Getting your friends, family or colleagues out of the house and interacting with a walking challenge can help them build healthy exercise habits as well as boost their mental wellbeing.

Our virtual walking routes aim to be both physically challenging in terms of their length, but also engaging intellectually. We spend a lot of time and effort researching our routes and trying to take in as many of the wonders of the world as possible! Each route combines a mixture of urban and rural milestones and uses beautiful imagery to showcase these wonderful places. We then add as much information about the location as possible, to make the routes more engaging and educational.
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Virtual Route Details

Our walking route starts off in the heart of Brazil, Rio De Janeiro and sets off through several South American countries including Peru, Columbia and and Puerto Rico. Our journey then takes us further up through north America and onto the edge of the continent in Alaska, before hopping over the Bering Strait into Russia. From here we make our way down the coast through Russia, North Korea, South Korea and into Japan itself!

‍Step Count: 45,923,063

Kilometers: 31494km

Miles: 19569 miles

Milestones: 26

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A Virtual Walk Of The Highlands

To celebrate National Walking Month in the UK, we have created 4 custom routes around each of the 4 countries that make up this wonderful island. The first of which is the epic and dramatic landscapes of Scotland.

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Step Count

At a modest 1564377 Steps (1072km / 666 miles), our virtual route around Scotland takes in 22 milestones and goes from the lowlands of the border counties to the coastal views of the Isle of Skye and back down to Edinburgh.

If you were looking to set up a month long challenge on this route, it would suit walking challenges for teams of 5 or 6 and would be a great way to get your teams motivated and engaged in a little sightseeing!

Learn more about the route here and how you can get started with your step challenge.

Overview

We recently did a deep dive into the statistics of Big Team Challenge and discovered a lot of surprising facts about our walking challenges.
These include: how our customers run their own step count challenges, how many users are web versus mobile apps, and just how many steps we're tallying each day!

You can find these on our newly created statistics page, which we'll be updating regularly moving forward.

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New Year, New Step Count Challenges

Our year has had an incredible start so far, with more people creating walking challenges than ever before!
So far in 2021, on average, we've seen 101 new registrations every single day! That's incredible and just goes to show that even in the cold winter months, people are creating new exercise challenges for their friends, family and employees to get them moving!

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New Virtual Walks

We've been busy in the digital workshop building new virtual routes all around the world for you to use for free.
You can find all of these by signing up to your own free admin account and creating as many draft exercise challenges as you like.
You can sign up at https://app.bigteamchallenge.com/signup-form with no obligation to pay. You will only ever be asked for payment details when you want to publish a challenge and make it live.

Running a virtual walking challenge

Whether it's for your employees, family or community group, a winter exercise challenge can be a great way of incentivising people to get moving in the darker months.
As the days grow shorter and the thermometer plummets, it can be easy to get into the habit of staying inside instead of going for a walk. So what can you do to help get yourself and others motivated and out the door?

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Big Team Challenge's Step Count Challenge

Setting yourself goals and trying to outdo yourself is a great place to start, but it's not a whole lot of fun by yourself. With Big Team Challenge you can not only get yourself moving, but you can encourage others to do so with a little friendly competition.
Participants are encouraged to get into teams of between 2 and 10 people, track all of their daily activity (including walking, running, cycling and more), and help their team move along a virtual route.

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Team Leaderboards

With our leaderboard feature, teams are able to keep track of one another and boost each other's motivation through friendly competition. As well as having a challenge wide leaderboard for all of your participants, you can have unique leaderboards for different groups such as locations (for example, Glasgow or New York) or departments within an organisation (like Accounting, Warehouse, and Management).

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Global participation with remote workers

With Big Team Challenge's digital system, participants can join from anywhere in the world. Our website and apps are available to anyone you want to join, so why not get those relatives in Florida to race against their Parisian counterparts, or get the accounting department in Detroit to challenge those in Edinburgh?

Adapting To The Community's Needs

Lockdown caused life to change is many ways and for members of Orchardhill Parish Church in Glasgow, Scotland, it meant an end to in-person gatherings. The regular services and the extra curricular social events which are important to so many parishioners were cancelled, leaving church members looking for novel ways of staying connected. The idea of a virtual pilgrimage was raised, and Big Team Challenge was chosen as the platform to help almost one-hundred churchgoers walk the 7,300 kms (4,536 miles) from Glasgow to Jerusalem.

Regular Updates

While on their journey, the church’s minister, Grant Barclay, gave a pilgrimage update on his weekly video sermon, adding his own personal thoughts and stories about the latest milestone the group had reached that week. The challenge organisers, Maureen and Richard Park, used the platform’s messaging tools to send out daily updates and weekly challenges, keeping everyone entertained and motivated throughout the four week journey.

Digital Fundraising

The challenge was also used as fundraiser, with donations being accepted from participants and their friends and family and put towards the various charities the church supports.

18 million steps counted

The church ran their challenge using our “One Big Challenge” mode, where all participants combine their steps towards a single route. This allowed the group to cover the huge distance surprisingly quickly, almost adding enough distance to walk there and back again. In the end, church members clocked up over 18 million steps during the six-week challenge.

Read about our other customer success stories here

We're walking to the moon and back again (and then there and back.... yet again).

We reached another exciting goal at Big Team Challenge this week: we reached over 7 billion steps walked together with all of our partners and their participants.

That means that we've collectively walked, cycled, ran, swam, rolled and jazzercised our way to the moon and back again... in fact we're on our return journey for the second time!

We would like to thank our clients for joining us and returning to us year after year and making this big milestone possible.

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An average step count of around 10,000 steps per participant

We always hear that number passed around a lot as a good target for everyone to achieve for their daily exercise goal. However, after pouring over our anonymised statistics, we actually found that our participants on average were exceeding this!

This is wonderful news for both us and our challenge organisers. It helps illustrate that Big Team Challenge can help build lasting change in participants, and even help maintain healthy attitudes to pushing yourself further.