Fitness Bank is a fun healthy app that incentivizes us to be more active. How? I’m glad you asked. Challengers can join groups and participate in step challenges, usually running a month or more. The Stepping up with Des Linden challenge ran through April and May of this year.

So we had a challenge group with more than 300 people. It was fun to watch and see which friends you recognize and who was leapfrogging over you in the challenge step leaderboard, encouraging us to STEP IT UP! with more steps! I watched daily to see who was active and the astonishing number of steps they were amassing.

With COVID-19/coronavirus and the social distancing that occurred as a result of it, many of my steps were completed alone or with our dog, Misty. There were some runs with maybe 1 other friend max (observing proper distancing of course). I was counting on all those group runs to propel me through this challenge but life delivers curve balls.

We all have a human tendency to want to be sedentary at times and I sensed that seemed much stronger than usual for me after the corona pandemic impacted us all. Fortunately, the timing of this challenge was fortuitous to help me conquer and deal with adverse current events better and it helped me shake off the suddenly sedentary desire, activating me into a stepping warrior (instead of a sendentary worrier).

The weather was a little cold and wintry in April so many of the steps were on the treadmill or inside on our steps. or in the backyard. Walking the dog round the block. A few virtual races and longer training runs helped boost the step counts. One day I even ran in the backyard. Some of the most fun steps were in pursuing hopscotch that we would encounter on the streets, sidewalks, or playgrounds we visited.

If you’re competitive, you really want to win step competitions (or be in the top 10 at least one day). But most importantly, we were all more active than we would have been had we not competed with the Fitness Bank app.

The app itself is on iOS and it syncs with your watch (I used Apple watch). Every once in a while I would refresh the steps simply by opening the app. Wait a minute or two. Watch the numbers change. Celebrate every 10,000 step day. I think my best step days were a few days at 30,000 or so (running a half-marathon almost guarantees that level of steps, depending on your stride length of course).

We were happily joined in a healthy pursuit, making lemonade out of the lemons that 2020 has delivered. Just as every mile counts, every step counts. How many steps do you aim for a day? Test the Fitness Bank app and let your friends and the platform help catapult you to hit and exceed your step goals. After a while of hitting the daily step goals, I gradually increased them. It teaches us to aim for a higher step goal. Maybe 15,000 instead of 10,000 daily steps. And it averages them out over the days, allowing us all to have recovery and rest days, come what may.

Loved the app. Test it out. It’s free. It’s fun. Love the flexibility (you can get steps almost anywhere). It’s healthy and accurate. I’ll share some more pics of my experience (I snapped the leaderboard on the last day of the challenge so I could see how many steps I was averaging). Happy stepping it up for all of you this spring/summer! Happy trails!

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