Registration is now open to take part in NHS Lanarkshire’s latest walking challenge – Walk ‘Scottish Highlights’.

Why not take a virtual tour of our beautiful country while increasing your steps and exercise levels at the same time.

Walk ‘Scottish Highlights’ follows on from the successful virtual tours of California, Japan and the Islands of the Caribbean which have created a huge buzz around the organisation.  The focus for the latest challenge, however, is on ‘quality’ and not necessarily ‘quantity’.  Of course, the Healthy Working Lives (HWL) team want people to increase their steps and to get out exercising but it’s been shown that it’s perhaps more important to simply get your heart beating faster for shorter periods of exercise than ambling along in the search for 10,000 steps per day.

In fact, breaking your exercise down into 10/15 minute chunks, two or three times per day is more achievable than aiming for 10,000 steps over the course of a day.  So less is sometimes more and that’s the message for our participants in this challenge.

With this shift in focus, it is hoped that many people who may not be aspiring to win the challenge feel they can participate and achieve some real health benefits.  There is certainly something for everyone and it’s about setting personal goals.  It might be an introduction to becoming more physically active or it might be about improving fitness levels.  It doesn’t have to be about finishing first.

The HWL team has also made some changes this time around following feedback from staff.   HWL will be asking participants to categorise their team’s overall activity level.  This will let you see where your team rank compared to colleagues of similar levels and you will still be able to see where you are overall.

Register at: https://hwl.bigteamchallenge.com

The challenge will begin at 9am on Tuesday 25 September.