We recently had a company wide step challenge.  The winner, Ethan Garcia, had over 1.5 million steps. Here is his blog about his victory. 

 

The first (and most important) tip is going to catch a lot of you off guard: WEAR BANDAIDS ON YOUR NIPPLES! Pasties work too. The feeling of your shirt rubbing and chafing against your chest will end your attempt at the step competition on its own. This sensation is called “Jogger’s Nipple.” Look into it at your own discretion.

 

The second tip is short and easy but can make or break your attempt: Make sure your device is tracking your steps properly. If you are using a watch to track your steps, then this should be easy. Just make sure you remember to wear it everywhere you go.

 

However, if you are using your phone to track your steps, make sure you are holding your phone in your hand. It will likely not count as many of your steps if it’s just sitting in your pocket. Your steps are tracked based on the physical movement of your phone, so it needs to be waving through the air in your hand as you run. It must be more of a “jiggle and jostle” than a smooth movement.

 

My third tip for you is a loaded one: Pick the correct setting for your run. This is subjective and will change from person to person based on personal preferences, so I will describe it as it is from my perspective.

 

I found running in place from the comfort of my own apartment to be the optimal strategy. A nice, cool environment away from the outdoor humidity, wind, and extreme temperatures. In the privacy of my own apartment, I am free to be in nothing but socks, a t-shirt (or shirtless,) and a pair of boxer shorts to stay cool in.

 

This also meant I had quick and easy access to food, water, a bathroom, and a place to charge my phone at all times. I do not own a treadmill, but I imagine that a treadmill would make this experience even better.

 

My final tip (especially for those of you with ADHD like me) is to keep yourself entertained. Boredom is a serious mood dropper and morale killer. If you feel like you hate getting up every day just to work and run, you will burn out. The best method I found to stay entertained was to binge watch TV shows and movies.

 

Finally, I’m going to give some context on my own personal experience with this competition as well as how I found most of these tips. I was highly motivated to win this competition from the second it was announced. Last November, I got LASIK surgery and was still $2,000 deep on paying it off. The prize money would cover most of the remaining debt. I spent a few days before the competition started practicing and warming up. I was getting about 30,000 steps a day, which I thought would be more than enough to win. Shoutout to J. Fabiyi for showing me that that was far from the truth.

 

During the first week of the challenge, I ran into a few problems.

 

First, I was getting some really bad blisters on my toes. My solution to this was to start doing most of my steps with no shoes on. This is the main reason why I believe the comfort of your own home is the best place to get steps in.

 

The next problem I ran into was a very painful case of Jogger’s Nipple. I was advised by a friend that wearing Band-Aids would fix my issue.

 

It worked like a charm.

 

Another problem I encountered: using my phone for entertainment didn’t really work. Throughout the first week, I would watch TikTok on my phone and play mobile games while running/walking in place. The problem with this is that it’s really hard to focus on what you’re watching while the screen is jostling around in your hand. You can’t keep the phone extra still either, because that will cause your steps to start not being tracked correctly.

 

The solution for this is to get your steps in while watching a TV or computer monitor or anything of the sort.

 

I’m going to leave this off with a really important reminder: STAY HEALTHY.

 

Take your vitamins, stay hydrated, eat plenty of food. I may have stayed up all night a bunch of times and neglected rest, but do as I say not as I do. I ended up getting sick for a few days and I wasn’t able to get steps in. That could have cost me the competition if I was sick for even one or two days longer.

 

Thanks for reading!