Great (and Easy) Offsite Team Workout for Holidays and to Get out of the Gym

Here is a GREAT option for an offsite activity that builds community and works great if you want to close the gym for a day.

This week’s programming has Thanksgiving for those in the US so I’d like to give you guys an option for a fun park/trail workout that we’ve been doing for years. It works great for community building and getting out into the real world to meet some possible new clients.  And it is a very good option for holidays when you want to close up the gym!

It works best if you can find a place where you can run 1-2 miles in a loop.  I prefer a place that has lots of hills and dirt trails. You’ll want to pick up some small wooden stakes and be prepared to go out early to set up 5-8 ‘stations’ for people to get points.  Each station will have a set of movements for people to accumulate 1 point for performing a ‘set’. Here are a few ideas:

• 10 kipping pull ups or 15 jumping pull ups
• 10 burpees
• 20 walking lunge steps
• 10 push ups
• 15 air squats
• 5 handstand push ups (against a tree or a wall)
• 2 points (up to 5, depending on length of loop) for each completion of the loop
• If you have some cool obstacles along the way, or a playground, you can give a point for climbing over or doing the obstacle
• You can even have a station where people can ‘check in’ to that location on FB/Instagram and then tag your gym!

Spread the obstacles out over the course as much as possible. If you need to mark the trail with arrows bring flour or birdseed to make the arrows so that it is environment friendly and temporary. Using a bike to set this up will save you a ton of time also!  Label each stake with the movement assignment for that station.

The ‘Workout’

Set people up into teams.  Larger teams of 8 or more will make this more fun but it is still great if people are in small groups. We like to break people up into Morning, Mid day, and Evening teams so they get to be part of a team that is with the people they normally train with. It is also good to start this at a park where there can be a playground and obstacle to climb over for points and generally it is a good place that will have some parking and a picnic table to have coffee, etc.

Warm everyone up together and get a group photo.  At the start of “GO” the teams will be sent off on the course to run/walk from station to station to get as many points as possible for their team. The goal is that everyone can participate including guests/friends who aren’t part of your community (yet).

Every station is optional, and every station can be completed as many times as someone wants. But you must do them in order and you can’t go backwards. Once you move on, you have to keep going.  That said, people are free to do the ‘loop’ more than once.   You may want to set a finish time so that people know when it is going to end (usually 30-45 minutes after starting, but tell everyone what TIME it is going to end instead of how long it is so that they can check their own phone/watches)

The Ending

At the end, you should keep track of which man, woman, masters, teen, etc. got the most points as well as who was the first person back.  Celebrate them and/or give them a small prize (a coffee mug, their own lacrosse/mobility ball, etc.)

Tally up all of the points for the teams and see which team gets bragging rights!

Help people count

You can print pieces of paper to staple to each stake and then cut little tabs (like when someone is advertising babysitting services), but they do tend to get lost and not everyone has pockets.

A better option is to get some cheap wristbands like those found here: Cotton Loops . These are great because as people start to accumulate the loops you can really see who is getting more of the points and they are re-usable!  Just put a bunch of them on each stake and people grab them once they have completed the station.

Events like this are great for getting people outside of the gym and having fun in the community, possibly meeting a few strangers and getting some new members. It is also far better than doing things like a ‘bring a friend day’ since it is neutral ground and is much more approachable for friends and family members to attend. Be sure to document the event with photos and videos with lots of tagging of members. You can even live stream it for people who couldn’t come!

(Check out Thursday’s video for another explanation of the format.)

I hope you have as much fun doing this one as we have in the past and remember that life happens outside of the gym (that is why the Thrivestry logo has mountains and water in it and not just weights and rings)!

Thrive on.

-jj