Snowball Challenge being offering by NJC

***Press Release***

Fitness promotion helps you develop life changes

The unseasonably warm day this past Saturday had all kinds of people out doing all kinds of physical activities. Remember, it is winter in Colorado and the snow will once again fly. The fitness promotions department at the Bank of Colorado Event Center at Northeastern Junior College invites everyone to participate in this spring’s Snowball Challenge.  Like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger the more it rolls across the white surface, this fitness challenge encourages you to begin with individual short-term goals  and  eventually obtain a larger long-term goal. The Snowball Challenge runs January 28^th through April 28^th, 2013.

Every two weeks, participants will pick one healthier or more active change to make to their life and they will add it to their previous goal. You’ll be asked to focus on things you want or need to make different in order to approve your overall health. Among these changes could be life-style alterations in nutrition and specific fitness goals as well as emotional and psychological changes.  By adding these small changes one at a time over an eight week period, it is more likely that some of them will stick long-term.

You’ll be asked to turn in your goals, and then track your own progress, turning in a log every two weeks to document that you have continued to keep up with your commitment. In order to move on through the challenge, each participant will be required to show on paper that he or she has kept up with the goals by completing the activity 6 out of the 7 days per week.

All participants who complete their goals and turn in logs every other week will be able to have their name in a drawing for a prize at the end of each small-term goal cycle. Prizes will include gift cards to the college’s bookstore and Northeastern 18 and Plainsman Grill,  athletic apparel, or free access to one week of workout classes. Each participant who successfully completed the challenge will receive one month free access to the event center. A grand prize will be awarded to the overall  challenge winner which will be selected from whomever has completed all the short term goals and in doing so, has achieved their long-term goal.

To participate in the Snowball Challenge, all participants are required to enroll in the PED 110 Fitness activity class ($134.72) and pay a one-time fee of $5 to contribute to purchasing weekly prizes.

According to NJC’s Bank of Colorado assistant manager and health  and  fitness promotions coordinator Kari Mueller,  “I will provide weekly challenging exercises for you to incorporate and ideas and motivation to help you push through those difficult weeks in order to obtain your goals,” she said. “You can expect research-based nutritional information that is on the rise and proven to help in creating a healthy lifestyle.”  Mueller sites a few examples of how the goal setting in the Snowball Challenge might work, “Let’s say the first week you set the goal of drinking eight  8-ounce  glasses of water each day. On week three, you then set the goal of adding 10 minutes of vertical core exercises to your previous goal, so now you are drinking the right amount of water and doing some vertical core exercises,” she explains. “On your fifth week, you add the goal of adding lean protein to your breakfast every day, so now you are doing three good things for yourself. Every two weeks you are adding something else to make you better!”

Mueller notes that over a period of eight weeks, you will have adopted some great life-style changes that are going to improve your physical well-being.  Mueller also said that while you are doing the Snowball Challenge, you will also have access to the use of the fitness center on campus and can work-out in the facility as much as you want during this time.

For more information, contact Mueller at 521-6614 or email her at kari.mueller@njc.edu     Participants must sign up for this challenge by Monday, January 28^th. You can do this at the Bank of Colorado Event Center on NJC’s campus.