Posted on August 20, 2012 by Jenny Cromack

THE MOTIVE8 GAMES & THE SPARTAN CHALLENGE!

I think we can officially declare that the personal training clients and gym members at motive8 North were some of the most active people in Leeds last week!

Thursday night saw the launch of the motive8 Olympic Games at our Personal Training Studio in Leeds. We had 11 teams competing to be crowned winners of the Games and what a competition it was!! The teams consisted of personal training clients, gym and class members and local businesses. There were closely fought battles in the individual competitions such as the 100m Sprint and Sack Race, and there were some amazing distances achieved in the Shot Put and Welly Wanging! The final two events were the Team 100m Sprint Relay and Tug-of-War, these events were full of ‘friendly’ competition and determination as the teams battled for 1^st Prize! There was a huge cheer when the leading team 3 Guys, 1 Girl and A Cup lost in the Tug-of-War but this wasn’t enough to stop them and they went onto claim the number one spot, closely followed by KMPG in 2^nd Place and Baby Giraffes in 3^rd Place.

And then Sunday came……what a different affair this was going to be! The motive8 north team and 20 of our personal training clients has signed up to do the Spartan Challenge….a 5k Run (sounds easy so far?!) with 21 obstacles throughout the course (doesn’t sound that easy anymore?!) The obstacles are kept a secret until the day of the event so there was a sense of anticipation as we all met in the morning, and if you couldn’t complete the obstacles you had to do 20 burpees instead (I had been practicing burpees just in case!).

Chris had run a 6 week Spartan Bootcamp to get everyone in shape for the day and everyone’s fitness levels had massively improved so we were all feeling strong and positive! We were all stood at the start line as the announcer told us that on the last barbed wire obstacle there was a 5 foot pool of muddy water to swim through and if we were not strong swimmers we should miss this one out….but with a forfeit of 20 burpees……what had we let ourselves in for?!

I am a keen runner and I can honestly say I have never had so much fun during a run! We had to commando crawl under netting and barbed wire, go up and over various rope climbs, carry tyres and sand-filled sacks up and down hills (and these were steep hills….worse than some when I’ve been felling running!), traverse balance beans, climb over walls, crawl through ice baths whilst some crazy man was throwing ice cubes over you and best of all…..swim and crawl through chest deep mud and smelly water!! I know this probably doesn’t sound like most people’s idea of fun but for someone who is still a tomboy at heart I was in my element. There was a huge amount of team work involved as we all helped and encouraged each other on the obstacles, and despite the fact it took about 4 times the normally time to complete a 5k run, there were plenty of smiles as we crossed the finish line!

The buzz created at our personal training studio from these two events has been amazing. Whilst our primary aim is to ensure our clients achieve the health and fitness goals they want to achieve, we also want to create a feeling that people belong to our studio and are part of a big team, and the motive8 Games and Spartan Challenge certainly achieved this. There were big smiles and a huge sense of achievement at the end of each event. New friendships were made……we now have clients who didn’t know each other before these events joining each other to go running or come to the gym. The events were also a huge demonstration that fitness can be fun and doesn’t have to be about slogging it out on a treadmill for hours….bring on the next one!!

Well done to everyone who took part in both the motive8 Games and Spartan Challenge.