One Step: Both insignificant and Powerful
A few years back I read a book called “The Slight Edge,” it was a great book that expanded upon the principle of setting your trajectory on the right path by making good seemingly insignificant decisions that will drastically change where you end up in relation to your goals. They used the illustration of a rocket blasting off to outer space, if they are off even by the smallest of margins they will end their journey far from where they wanted to be.
I see fitness as very much the same process. There isn’t a lot of change that happens as the result of any one step you take or any one workout. Change happens over a long period of time after consistently hitting workout after workout, all while balancing the physical stress of hard workouts with lots of quality sleep and nutrition.
A while back I calculated how many steps I would take training for one marathon. Over the sixth month period I would take approximately half a million steps. Each step didn’t singularly accomplish much of anything but the impact of all the steps put together was a massive change in what my body was capable of doing.
I feel the same way about global poverty. It’s a massive issue in our world today but no one government or person can fix it, it’s going to take everyone getting involved and taking their step towards ending the global poverty crisis, which is why Sara and I named our foundation The Steps Foundation. There is tremendous power in all of us taking our steps together.
Lately, it’s been fun for Sara and I to pay more attention to tracking our steps on our Fitbit Surge. It gives us a great overall picture of just how active our days are, which is why we are excited to invite all of you to join us in our upcoming StepBet Challenge.
Our StepBet Challenge will take place on Monday, September 12th and will end six weeks later on, Monday, October 24th. We are very excited to host our first StepBet challenge because it’s fun to go after a personal physical challenge in an encouraging group atmosphere. Also how cool is it that you can get paid to take your steps and accomplish your fitness goals? That will give us all a little extra motivation to get out the door for our training and anyone who has been trying to tackle their fitness goals, whether it be a professional athlete or someone trying to run their first 5k, knows we could always use a little extra encouragement to get out the door. So how does Step Bet work?
StepBet is a 6-week game that challenges players to be more active. It’s an app that’s available on iPhone and Android. Players are given custom goals based off of their personal activity history. StepBet supports FitBit and Apple Watch with more devices in the works but you also don’t need a wearable to play – you can play with only the app on your phone. The entry fee for the game is $40.
Once you install the app on your phone, you are given two custom goals: An Active Goal and a Stretch Goal. In order to win the game, players need to hit 4 Active Days and 2 Stretch Days every week for 6-weeks. Players are given one free day. The goals do not change from week to week so the goals you are given at the start of the game are the same as they are at the end. On the app you can see your progress throughout the day to make sure you hit your goal. The first week is a warmup week, so you can still enter the game during the first week.
If a player wins the game (hits all of their step goals for 6-weeks), they get their $40 entry fee back and they split the pot with the other winners. How cool would it be to get everyone together and go after our fitness goals together, especially as fall marathons and road races are right around the corner, and the hot summer days are beginning to turn towards crisp, perfect mornings to get out and train. We will be hosting the game and encouraging players throughout. We are hoping you can come take your step with us!