Paul Donaghy – Go Well

Lockdown has had a significant impact on all our activity levels. Sport England’s latest survey noted the decline in activity levels amongst children. During the 2019/20 academic year, the majority of young people failed to meet the recommended 60 minutes of daily exercise and almost a third of children, that’s 2.3 million children, are now classed as ‘inactive’ as a result of lockdown restrictions. There is a real worry that the latest lockdown, coinciding with winter when it is even more difficult to get motivated to be active, will have taken an even greater its toll on our activity levels and how we feel.

Everyone here at Go Well is passionate about helping young people to be active. Being active has a tremendous impact on our minds as well as our bodies.

This is why we are so excited to be in a position where we can help children whose activity levels have dropped during the pandemic to build healthy active lifestyles. Thanks to funding from Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund via County Durham Sport and Area Action Partnerships in Bishop Auckland and Shildon, Spennymoor, Great Aycliffe and Middridge, and East Durham Rural Corridor, we are able to give direct support to 1,320 children across 42 schools in the South Durham area.

With this funding we will be launching the GO Well HEART Project! A group of children in each school will become part of a Research Team to try and test a series of activities over 12 weeks. They will receive a bag of equipment, a booklet to note their findings and will also create their own activities. With the help of the Research Team we will be able to find out what works for children and what helps them to be active at home. The children will of course be active throughout the research project!

We will be getting in touch directly with each school to launch the project and are looking forward to taking the kits into schools after the Easter holidays when the better weather will make it easier for the children to get outside and get active.

It is our mission to inspire and build healthy active futures across the whole of the country, particularly in the north-east. By 2025, we want to have had a positive impact on the wellness of 1 million people. We are very grateful to the Area Action Partnerships and to County Durham Sport, and Sport England, for the funding and to help us move closer to our goal.

We recently won an Innovation Award at the National School Games Summit for a Strava Challenge we set up with Durham & Chester-le-Street SSP in Lockdown 1. The challenge was successful in “rising to the challenge and doing things differently to solve problems as well as developing creative ways to overcome barriers.” The challenge helped school staff to stay active, connected and support their mental health. We therefore thought that it might be helpful to show you how to set up a Strava Group Challenge for your school school staff or organisation.

STEP ONE

Create a CLUB on the Strava App – https://www.strava.com/clubs/new

Ensure it is a running club which means you can record distances from people both running and walking (but not cycling). You can add logos and descriptions and then invite staff/colleagues to join. As the designated “admin” for the group you can see who wants to join and then accept or deny them entry into the club.

The way the club works is that from 1 minute past midnight on a Sunday night you are off – every time a member of your team/club does an activity it records it and adds it to your weekly total – as a whole and also as an individual. You can then see who is doing the longest runs, the most uphill climbs, the greatest time out exercising. It is displayed in a league table.

STEP TWO

Decide a cut off time for taking daily totals – we suggest 9pm. Any miles/kilometres after that time can be rolled over to the next day. You could make a google map of how far you have travelled that day and a Canva template to compare the team totals if you are challenging another group. Our first challenge was to travel from John O’Groats to Land’s End (a mere 874 miles) and as we progressed quickly during the week (there were over 340 participants split very evenly between the two clubs – we decided to turn around and head back up North to double the distance!).

STEP THREE

Keep your team members motivated by creating a POST in Strava in order to let them know how they are doing at various points during the week. This can include photos as well as text. Perhaps you have passed a particularly interesting landmark or famous city?

TOP TIPS FOR MOTIVATION

Pick an achievable distance to cover in a week depending on how many team members you have – most people should be able to do 3 or 4 miles per day.
Pick an iconic route – Hadrian’s Wall, The Pennine Way, Route 66 – or travel between two cities (we went from Paris to Milan one week!)
Take a break from travelling for distance and travel for ART! This will bring out the artistic flair of staff as they try to design their walking/running routes in order to make a pretty pattern or a picture. You will see lots of pans, worms and boxes but also stick people, horses, snails and flowers! Find someone from another company to be the judge.
Set up a Whatsapp group to encourage team chat and motivation.
Have a theme – take a photo of an animal, some scenery, famous landmarks, something green.
Create smaller teams and then have weekly challenges between them – who can climb the most metres? Who can visit the most places starting with the letter S?
Most importantly have FUN, keep HEALTHY and ACTIVE and ENJOY!

We hope you found this blog helpful. For more information contact pauldonaghy@go-well.org.

STEP ONE

STEP TWO

STEP THREE

TOP TIPS FOR MOTIVATION

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