January is always a bit of a struggle, and the lack of daylight, post-Christmas malaise and dreary weather don’t help.
As someone who suffers a bit from the black dog, I’ve found exercise to be key. But while many of us pledge that January will herald a fitness kick, it can be hard to get motivated.
So a couple of years ago, I signed up to RED (Run Every Day) January. I logged each run online and received positive feedback from others doing the same.
Staff wellbeing: the power of exercise
I completed 31 days straight and it got me thinking. If I can get motivated by virtual friends, imagine the impact real people could have. After talking the idea through with a couple of colleagues, I launched Exercise Every Day (EED) in January 2023 at my school.
Its aim was to improve physical and mental wellbeing through 20 minutes of exercise every day: running, yoga, walking, swimming, high-intensity interval training - whatever people wanted to do.
To log the activities, I set up a spreadsheet on Microsoft and granted permission to the 20 or so staff members who signed up.
All they had to do was fill in the type of exercise they did each day from 1 to 31 January. I didn’t ask for proof and no one was called out for missing a day - it was all voluntary and meant to be fun.
It seemed to work as, over the month, more people joined in, so that by the end, 36 colleagues were exercising every day.
Motivating one another
It was more than simply a spreadsheet. Colleagues were tracking not only their own progress but everyone else’s. Seeing that Joe in science had managed to do his weights meant that Ros in pastoral was motivated to go to the gym the next day.
The motivation worked offline too. Staff were stopping each other in the corridor asking where they’d run, how the walk was, what’s the name of the yoga YouTube site was, and so on. There was a lot of “I wouldn’t have got out if I hadn’t seen you’d done it”.
Staff also ran some in-school sessions. A PE teacher offered free Pilates classes every Friday after school and another couple of teachers organised a ceilidh.
Every day I sent a short email (two or three lines) celebrating our progress, with a link to the spreadsheet to ensure we kept the momentum going.
I also shared something positive to help with this, such as a link to a time and date website to show we were getting an extra three minutes a day of sunlight as January progressed, a link to a free yoga app or something on the benefits of exercise.
The upside of moving
In February, we asked for feedback and the responses were overwhelmingly positive, with comments including: “I had a feeling of success and achievement when completing and better sleep through exercise”, “Seeing what others were doing on the spreadsheet felt like a little community - sometimes it helped me to find the motivation!” and “Encouragement and a sense of purpose made me more likely to keep up exercise.”
Staff wanted us to continue through the year but we decided to keep it as a January event so that it wasn’t unmanageable and had a clear purpose and focus each year.
We launched again this year and have had 60 staff sign up, with almost all still on track for hitting 31 days and others coming close. This is exercise that might not otherwise have happened during a cold, dark, stormy January.
Again, the feedback has been hugely positive, with those involved reporting improved physical and mental health and a more positive approach to the start of the year.
Of course, as January comes to an end, the chance to do something similar in your school has passed, but I hope the idea could become something to try in 2025, or that it inspires a similar month-themed event that would resonate with your staff and have similar positive impacts.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for run number 27.
Drusilla Patkin is a teacher of science at Stockport School
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