May All-Campus Movement Challenge

Let’s "go" to the World Cup! 

Olympic College is joining the Kitsap Healthy Eating Active Living Coalition for Kitsap Moves 2023!  The focus of this year's event is on the connection between movement and mental health.  

Did you know that movement and exercise reduces anxiety, depression, and negative mood as well as alleviating symptoms of low self-esteem and social withdrawal?  Regular movement and exercise can also improve sleep, relieve stress, increase energy and stamina, reduce tiredness and increase mental alertness, as well as reduce cholesterol by improving cardiovascular fitness (citation). 

In order to explore the benefits that movement brings, OC Recreation has developed the May Movement Challenge to set a fun collective goal for our campus community. 

That goal is to log enough miles to “travel” to Auckland, New Zealand, in preparation for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July of 2023.   Auckland is 6,988 miles from Bremerton.  Our stretch goal is to also “travel” back to Bremerton from Auckland, so 13,996 miles total.   

The challenge runs from May 1 to May 31, 2023. 

We’re aware that people have different relationships with movement, whether that is personal history, differing level of access, or varying cultural approaches to movement.  These experiences may include fun or judgement, successes and failures, goals and wishes.   

Our goal is to invite the Olympic College community to participate in an activity that encourages movement in known and new ways to take advantage of all the benefits it brings.  

We invite you to connect with movement however feels meaningful to you. We've designed this challenge so no matter how you move, you can participate and contribute to the collective goal.  

Ways to participate:

1. You can log miles through any method of movement – from walking to hiking to biking to daily steps. 

2. For those who participate in activities that aren’t tracked by distance, we have created a method that translates minutes participated into distance. Use this for your yoga, house cleaning, weightlifting, gardening or any other way you move. 

3. For those who, for various reasons, need an alternative way to participate that doesn’t involve counting minutes or miles, we’ve got you! Try any of the new activities on the below sites to earn 1 mile per activity.  

   1. Action for Happiness: Active April Calendar

   2. Greater Good in Action: Discover New Practices

   3. Healthy South Dakota:  Get Moving Today! Activity Calendar

You in?  Click the button below to register and we'll send you all the details on how to participate, including helpful tracking forms and how to add your miles to the week total. 

REGISTER HERE

Will there be prizes?  Nothing week to week but we're working on a prize for if (when!) we reach our collective goal.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for ideas all month as well for updates on the campus-wide mileage total:   

Facebook:  Olympic College Recreation 

IG:  @OCRecreation 

 Also check out the county-wide event on both Facebook and Instagram:  Kitsap Moves 

Need ideas for new activities? Here are some great resources!  Know some more? Email us at @email and we will share with everyone!

1. Kitsap Heathy Eating, Active Living (HEAL):  Kitsap Moves

2. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services: Move Your Way

Learn more about the connection between movement and mental health:

• Exercise for Mental Health, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
• How Simply Moving Benefits Your Mental Health, Harvard Health Blog