Nov. 1st, 2021 | 8 min read

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TL;DR

• Learn how the Year of 1000km fitness challenge application and global community of amazingly awesome humans can push anyone to get motivated and become an even better, healthier version of themselves.

• Who should read this: Anyone looking for something that will actually create a feeling of accountability and keep them pushing forward when motivation begins to wear off. 

• Takeaways: Runners are awesome — but you don’t have to be grinding out half marathon training to find serious value in being a part of the Year of 1000km community. If you need a kick in the ass to get off the couch (even if it’s just to do a Couch to 5k, meditate or dust off that rainbow coloured xylophone your kids don’t play with anymore and learn to crank out some serious Yankee Doodle chimes), Year of 1000km has you covered. 

• Your Next Move: Smash this link to create an account (both Free and Premium options available) once you’ve finished reading this article and join our Facebook Group to embrace the full Year of 1000km experience. Just do it. You’ll love it.

For too long, fitness enthusiasts, personal trainers, and those who simply crave a social aspect to their health and wellness have struggled to find a place where they can come together online. 

The past year hasn’t helped — many people who depended on group fitness options to come together with like-minded people have found that, in reality, their options are severely limited. 

Broad-span social media apps can help, but it’s too easy to get sucked into the not-so-healthy effects associated with social scrolling (how the hell did a 20 second clip on “how to master the perfect burpee” turn into 3 hours and I now know who Charli D’Amelio is AND that my favourite singer is @samhairwolfryder!?)

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Year of 1000km is Changing the Fitness Challenge Game

If you have any interest in fitness, you likely have several free workout apps installed on your phone. 

Whether you’re a personal trainer who runs fitness challenges through Facebook, a weekend warrior who is taking on a Couch to 5K challenge (or just LARP’ing like a champ on the reg), it’s helpful to have access to exercise motivation at your fingertips.

While free fitness apps can be helpful and fun for tracking progress, it can be tough to cross sport-specific boundaries with your fitness fam. A runner and a swimmer, for example, may have similar fitness and improvement goals, but it’s tough for a running or swimming app to quantify the two in a way that makes comparative sense. 

Someone who is working hard to gain muscle and someone who is trying to lose fat may have similar motivation and craving for competition, yet struggle to work together due to their vastly different goals. This very issue is keeping active humans confined to their own sport-specific boxes – enter Year of 1000km: a physical and mental fitness challenge solution that brings everyone together into a community to motivate.

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Finding Your Crew

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Whether you’ve been working hard at perfecting your training for years or you’re just exploring new ways to move your body, nothing beats coming together with awesome people looking to motivate others, and be motivated themselves. 

On standard social media channels, it can be tough to find a crew who is ready to work on your level, with your focus areas (and of course, similar taste in workout apparel).

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Year of 1000km Gets It

Whether you’re looking for a group that’s just as dedicated to half marathon training as you are, or you’re searching for other parents who are trying to figure out mommy fitness (because let’s be real — juggling kids and your own personal well-being is like trying to teach a whale how to knit), we’re creating a way for you to connect with people in your backyard and around the world, without having to make it to group fitness classes or another lamo Zoom workout on your iPad.

What Makes Fitness Challenge Apps So Helpful?

Fitness apps today fall into one of two categories:

1. fitness/nutrition tracker apps; and 
2. personal training apps. 

Both are excellent resources for those who want to get fit or want to help others get fit. 

We’re not here to replace the best free and paid fitness challenge apps that you’re already using — we’re here to add a social fitness hub to your phone, where you can interact with your trainer, your friends (both old and new), and stay motivated to hit your goals, no matter what healthy activities you might be knocking out. 

Apps like Runkeeper, Strava, Freeletics, and MapMyRide are great for tracking physical activity, providing insights into improvements over time, and creating screenshot-able pics to splash all over your social handles (of course, sprinkled with a shameless selfie here and there).

Serious and novice athletes alike love seeing their progress change over time. It’s exciting (read as: addicting) to check out how distance splits, time spent moving, and average pace ramp up as experience grows and fitness improves. 

Users of fitness tracking apps also love the motivation and encouragement they feel when they receive badges for achieving a new distance or pace, as well as the ease of tracking their workouts using the latest GPS tech. Heart rate monitoring options allow users to get a sense of how their fitness is improving over time using real-time data.

While some fitness tracking apps offer challenges that allow users to compete with one another, they fail to allow users to compete across multiple activities (good luck to any swimmer who thinks they can swim their way through a RunKeeper distance challenge).

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Apps like MyFitnessPal and Lose It! are awesome for meeting nutrition goals. Many nutrition apps offer users several ways to track what they’re eating, and can be customised to help users meet their goals. 

Barcode scanning and restaurant menu uploads make it easier than ever for nutrition app users to track what they’re putting into their bodies. Calorie counting, macro tracking, and flexible dieting plans can all be accommodated by nutrition tracking apps. 

Much like fitness tracking apps, users of nutrition apps love seeing how their stats change over time. Whether they’re trying to lose weight, gain weight, or change their body composition, it motivates them to monitor their own progress, and the information provided within the apps can provide insight into the changes necessary to continue moving forward. 

Many nutrition tracking apps even upload data from fitness tracking apps, allowing users to check out an estimate of their caloric burn so they can decide whether they need to take in more calories to fuel up. 

Personal trainers love apps like Mindbody and True Coach to manage their clients and schedules. They also get a kick out of monitoring their clients’ activity on both fitness and nutrition tracking apps. Many personal trainers use these apps to easily move between progressions for exercises, making it easy to progress or regress movement based on a client’s needs.

Standard social media apps like Facebook provide a platform for trainers to create a team environment for their clients, but often, clients get distracted by all the other shiny objects available to them on non-niche social media.

So… How Does Year of 1000km Bridge The Fitness App Gap?

Year of 1000km will not replace your (free or paid) fitness apps — it will supplement them.

We’ve created a space for anyone craving movement — from beginners to seasoned athletes (and the professionals who are there to help get everyone moving) — to enjoy a social, supportive environment that encourages them to take their fitness and healthy lifestyle to the next level.

Year of 1000km is a virtual hub where anyone who wants to get healthy and become an even better version of themselves, can come together to find their crew — while working to complete challenges. There are official challenges that anyone can join, and it’s also possible for users to create their own custom challenges and invite others to them.

It all started with a few friends challenging each other to run 1000km over the course of a year; this became our flagship Distance Challenge (official challenge). We have since expanded this challenge to include other distance-based activities such as cycling, swimming and much more. It’s tough, but doable, and we love watching our members work day in and day out to make progress toward their 1000km goal.

While the 1000km Distance Challenge was our original spirit animal for everything from Couch to 5k training to half marathon training, it didn’t stop there. A Distance Challenge isn’t the right goal for everyone, and the whole point of Year of 1000km is to create a virtual space where anyone can work to improve their fitness and mental health. 

Our official Healthy Lifestyle and Healthy Mind Challenges invite anyone who wants to become a healthier, happier version of themselves to commit and create lasting change.

The Healthy Lifestyle Challenge invites members who want to make big changes in their lives — like sticking to a nutrition plan or getting their asses moving — to stay on track with the accountability and motivation that can only be provided by a group of people with a similar mindset. The Healthy Mind Challenge works in a similar way, inviting participants to stick with activities like spending more time reading, meditating or even practicing an instrument.

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We know that fitness professionals are craving a space where they can bring their clients together to create a collaborative and supportive environment — something that’s become increasingly difficult to achieve since the Pandemic began.

With the Year of 1000km application, personal trainers are able to create groups consisting of clients that are working together toward similar goals and invite them to custom challenges that they create. This can be a convenient, effective way for trainers to help their clients stay on track and make progress, even if they don’t have the opportunity to meet face-to-face. 

Trainers don’t just need to stick to fitness-based challenges on the Year of 1000km application. Many trainers find that groups of clients struggle in similar areas, such as with getting enough sleep or sticking to a nutrition plan. The Healthy Mind and Healthy Lifestyle Challenges are perfect for clients who need extra support in meeting goals outside of their personal training sessions that will have a lasting impact on their long-term wellness.

With the Year of 1000km application, trainers and fitness group leaders can recreate the teaching session they would give in the gym, online, making it easy for clients to get the knowledge they need, ask questions, and fully participate, without having to make it to the gym (we’re all busy, and nobody likes giving into The Man!).

Trainer resources soon to be launched on Year of 1000km include:

• Whiteboard functionality to share workout plans, nutrition information and draw cute little stick figures;

• Video conferencing, both for leading training sessions and for providing information to clients (AKA: virtual Friday afternoon drinks, anyone!?

• Live broadcasts, allowing trainers to provide updates to clients and shout out their success;

• Real-time chat for both clients and trainers (let the shit-talking… I mean, motivation, begin!!)

Personal trainers with a large client base can use Year of 1000km to group their clients into micro-communities that have similar goals. Progressing through groups (from novice –> advanced, for example) can be motivating for clients and will help to keep them on track between 1-on-1 training sessions.

Since Year of 1000km allows users to engage in healthy competition, no matter what their exercise of choice, trainers can group both weightlifters and aerobics fanatics into the same group if they want to, depending on the challenge that would best benefit them.

The Power Of Community to Motivate

Many people today are lacking a supportive community, especially in the fitness space. Social media is packed with influencers, edited before and after pics, and filtered photos that can make even the most dedicated fitness lover lose motivation.

We’ve created a positive space where our users can push and encourage each other, no matter what their exercise / sport / hobby of choice.

​Year of 1000km is going to disrupt the fitness industry. 

If you’re ready to get moving and join our community, we’re ready to support you. 

Stop reading. Go create an account and join your first challenge today (it takes under 1 minute and can be done while “checking your emails” in the can) — after all, you came here to read our very first blog post and kick some ass… and we’re all outta blog post!!

… and don’t forget to sign up for the Healthy Lifestylers Hits newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the great content we’ll be pumping out every single week!

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The Author

Lee D. Haines, is a dad, half-baked runner and the Founder of both the Year of 1000km fitness challenge application & Healthy Lifestylers Marketplace for Personal Trainers. Originally from Canada, he is a dual citizen living in The Netherlands. Lee is passionate about getting people moving and chasing their dreams to become healthier versions of themselves.

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