You know what we haven’t had much of recently? If you’re thinking challenge, then you’re right. We haven’t had much of a challenge lately. So I thought I would offer you this challenging idea and see if you will pick it up and ‘run’ with it or ‘walk’ with it or even ‘cycle’ with it. We’re going to call it our Buddy Challenge.
What Is It?
The Buddy Challenge is a way to not only improve your fitness, but also to help you boost relationships with a buddy whether it’s a friend, a child or a spouse. For the purposes of this Buddy Challenge, my buddy is going to be my daughter Cassidy. She just recently learned to ride her bike sans training wheels and loves riding it everywhere she wants to go. In a show of support for her efforts and because she wants to be my little buddy, I’m taking my bike out and we’re going to ride everywhere that we can.
Can you think of a buddy that will walk, run, and bike or hit the gym with you? Now’s the time to ping them.
What Do You Do?
Create a personal challenge for yourselves. Maybe you want to get out of the house after dinner every evening and take a 30 minute walk. You and your buddy are responsible for motivating each other to get that challenge going. That means, you nudge, coax or entice your buddy to do that walk everyday and they do the same.
For my daughter and myself, we’re going to bike back and forth to school and on those occasions when we just need 1 or 2 items from the grocery store that aren’t ginormous, we’re going to bike up to the store to pick them up. If we can get there on the bike in a reasonable amount of time and safely, we’ll be keeping the car in the garage and the bikes on the road.
What Do You Get Out of It?
First and foremost you get the personal satisfaction of combining exercise with quality time. If you and your buddy keep up the motivation, you also get to reap the benefits of that exercise. But, for some people, incentives are important. So here’s the big one. If you’re willing to take up the buddy challenge, send me a note through the site, tell me who your buddy is and what you’re going to do as well as what day you’re starting on. Keep me updated on your progress and I’ll post your progress right here in this very blog. The first buddy pair to make it 30 days on their challenge will each get a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com.
Remember though, to qualify for the prize, you have to keep me in the loop. So, who’s your buddy gonna be?