Fitness Club Champions

How has this idea enhanced your club's operation, etc.?

Ocean Reef Club crowns golf and tennis champions every year. We also have fishing tournament champions and more recently pickleball champions. Therefore, it seem natural to add fitness club champions to the list.

The fitness challenges produce excitement and great publicity in the community. They also set a bar for everyone to measure their progress and to compete against theirs peers. The Fitness Championship gives our department another dimension. Fitness is not simply something we do to live well but also a way to challenge ourselves and compete against others. If members are recognized for their sporting achievements, they should also experience recognition for their fitness feats.

How was this idea implemented, and what have been the club members' reactions?

During the busier months of November and April, we host several fitness challenges as part of our Special Events Program. We choose four challenges, one per month in January, February, March and April to be the scoring challenges towards the championships. The challenges we choose were the plank (core strength/endurance), push-ups, pull-ups (upper body strength/endurance) and wall sit (lower body strength/endurance). Each challenge has a minimal standard to receive a reward such as holding a plank for 90 seconds. On the day of each challenge, one member of the Front Desk staff is assigned to lead the challenge, while everyone else promotes and creates an atmosphere of excitement around each challenger. The Fitness Champions are those with the most points across the four challenges. Scoring is 400 for 1st place, 200 for second place and 100 for third. The champions receive their trophies during our end of season fitness awards party.

Our reigning Fitness Champion, a very fit 74 year old who recently planked for 30 minutes created an alter ego named “The Plankster”. Before planking, he makes a WWE style entrance wearing a mask, championship belt, cape and “P” symbol in the middle of his chest. On one occasion, after he challenged the fitness trainers to compete fellow members walked in with him holding signs and chanting his alter ego name. The Plankster has not been defeated in three years and keeps getting better with age. To make all this even better, the Plankster wrote an article for our weekly newspaper, the Ocean Reef Press about how a few years back he suffered from back spasms. His doctor then recommended that he worked on strengthening his core. He has not suffered of back spasms since and gives much credit to the work he does with our team of trainers and instructors.

The Fitness Champions much like the other top sport performers inspire respect and admiration from their peers and shine a bright light on what each department does for the members we serve.