Adventures @ FITology | #4 – Get Fit February | Alternate Reality Game

This post is contributed by Saamir Gupta of FITology.

In most of the metropolitan cities, we have people from different cities, states and countries come and work. They all mostly settle in high rise societies but seldom get a chance to develop a strong sense of community. Different families living in the same high-rise apartments, might recognize each other and say hi! whenever they bump into each other, but that is mostly it. Every family has it’s own daily schedule and people mostly have a social circle from work or relations – there are very few avenues to make friends with your neighborhood.

This is exactly what we wanted to address – We wanted to bring these families closer. We wanted to help them on their health and wellness journey as well. And by the families of a residential society we mean over 500 apartments, all age groups (from new born to 80+ young men and women), all kinds of work profiles, all cultures and races. It is a massive mix of participants. How to solve for it, all at the same time?

As always, we set some ground rules for designing the concept. We wanted to do something –

Sustainable – sticks with people for long

For everyone – at least some component of it should relate to some segment of participants

Within the premises of residential society – so that everyone has easy access

We came up with an idea of exclusive health and wellness month. All round this month we will do various activities at different times, to be able to cater to all constraints. Because we were doing it in February, we called it #GetFitFebruary!

We organized talk sessions for those who wanted to know more about nutrition, yoga sessions for people who wanted to try it out and improve flexibility, meditation sessions to advocate for mindfulness, group walking / jogging / running sessions and a lot of different formats of boot camps.

Here is our calendar –

All the sessions were open to everyone. Prior registrations via whatsapp was necessary – just for us to make sure we make adequate arrangements. Once an individual would come for a particular session, he / she was given an overview of the other sessions and motivated to join or send someone from the family to attend the session.

Because it was a residential society, instead of a person, the unique identifier was the society’s apartment number. We would keep a track of how many sessions were attended by a particular apartment number and accordingly the teams were created and scored. This was primarily to motivate families living in the same apartment. For different families to collaborate, we would look at the score of the apartments in the same floor or more so, in the same building. And accordingly, different floor or different buildings in the same society got into a competitive mode.

Our flagship events were the boot-camps. We made sure that we built the boot-camps in such a fashion that we could account for any and every kind of participant. The tasks and exercises were not just exciting and fun but also scalable to all age groups. We wanted to ensure all participants have the feeling of competence and autonomy while choosing the version of tasks they want to perform. There were prize medals for top performing teams at the end of final bootcamp to give a sense of purpose to the participants.

We witnessed teams in which three generations of the same family participated, youngest members were as young as 3 years, a team of all women, a team of school friends… it was great to see how the people bonded with their fellow society mates, while conquering their personal health and wellness goals. A lot of people picked up a lot of healthy habits – and it was no more only Get Fit February..

 

About the author –

Saamir is the founder of FITology. He creates alternate reality games to nudge people towards a healthier lifestyle. Over the last five years, he has developed and executed fun, engaging and gamified concepts for people across geographies, cultures and ages. As an ex-strategy consultant, he has advised world’s largest oil, chemicals and electricity companies on growth, cost reduction and operations optimization. He is also a Crossfit L1 Trainer, ACE Certified Group Instructor and trained Bollywood dancer & actor. He loves to travel around the world and make new friends.

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