The theme of our season this year at Cutting Edge Fencing is going to be: Greatness Awaits. This idea is going to color everything that we do from practice, to workouts, to goal-setting, and personal development.
We all know that if you want to be good at fencing you have to be thinking about it and training for it both inside AND outside the fencing club. We’ve gotten a lot better at getting people to work hard at practice. The more challenging part is getting them motivated to do extra training on their own. With the busy lives that we all lead, allotting 30 extra minutes a day for physical training is not easy.
That’s where the #GreatnessAwaits Training Challenge comes in. We are challenging every member of our club to do 30 minutes of physical activity outside of practice five times a week. They will win milestone prizes as they accumulate activity “points”.
What kind of prizes can a club offer without breaking the bank and still motivating everyone to rack up those imaginary points? In this day and age, where instant gratification and quick results are what is desired, how do you break through those tendencies and get people to devote 2 1/2 extra hours per week to their physical training? By offering them incentives such as “Squire for the Night”, that’s how. (That’s the most popular prize so far at CEFC and one that a LOT of fencers want to earn.)
Here’s our list of parameters for the #GreatnessAwaits Workout Challenge.
GreatnessAwaitsWorkoutChallenge Feel free to use them as is or change them up
as your club sees fit. Here is an example training plan SabreCat training plan and a weekly exercise log Weekly Exercise Log to help you get started as well.
Note: I know that the start date of August 1 is just two days away so that might not give you or your club enough time to plan. If you need to push the start and end dates back a week or two, that’s perfectly fine. I just started telling our people about it yesterday in the hopes that not giving them much lead time will spur them into quick action 🙂
If you do decide to do this in some form at your club, please share your ideas with us. Tag pictures and videos of your club performing the awards for those who have earned them with #GAWC2015 on your social media. If you have any questions about the rules or need some help coming up with ideas for milestone prizes, email me at coachkate@cuttingedgefencing.com or type them in the comment section below.
The CEFC SabreCats challenge YOU! What Greatness awaits you this season? Here’s your chance to find out!