The Fittest Execs Challenge and the Fittest Companies Challenge were conceived in the belief that a top-down corporate emphasis on employee fitness could help achieve bottom-line results with a fitter work force. Now, the results are in, and they offer statistical proof that executive leadership can help sway people’s attitudes about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and produce leaner, happier workers in the process.
Roughly 130 competitors—members from more than two dozen corporate teams and individual contestants—took part in the inaugural Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge, which ran from Oct. 1 through the end of the year. Over those three months, people armed with detailed measurements of their own health metrics focused on their primary areas of concern. They revised their eating habits. And they hit the gym, the pool, the running track, the treadmill and any number of sport hobbies, including fencing and mountain climbing, to name a few.
What did it yield? Well, the average weight of man in America is about 191 pounds. Which means we’re about 2-1/2 men short of where we started: The field, including many with little need to lose weight, combined to shed approximately 500 pounds. But the successes didn’t stop there: blood pressures fell, along with triglyceride and cholesterol levels; ratios of HDL and LDL improved, aerobic capacities increased and flexibility measurements soared.
It’s no great revelation that eating right and exercising will yield better overall health. What Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge hoped to demonstrate was that the X-factor in fitness—motivation—could be altered by the positive example of key executive endorsements and competing as members of these teams. Almost across the board, that was the case. Average health scores improved—some significantly—for 20 of the 21 teams to finish.
In these pages, we’ll explore the successes of participants by age group and gender, in overall fitness and improved fitness. Their stories are powerful affirmation of the notion that leadership on so vital an issue can make all the difference in the world.
The story, however, doesn’t end with this competition. The 2010 Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge will begin September 1. Our hope with this report is that your organization will see the value of participating this important and proven program, and will be on board for similar successes this year.
METHODOLOGY
To help Ingram’s and its other co-sponsors establish quantifiable metrics or measures of fitness in the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge, we collaborated with one of our project partners, the Center for Health and Human Performance at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. Each of the 130 contestants in the field had an initial health-risk assessment performed in late September, 2009 to establish fitness levels at the onset of the competition.
The center drew blood, put each entrant on a scale, measured height and flexibility, then had each competitor on a treadmill, a leg-press machine and a chest-press machine. From those tests, 15 health metrics or indicators were established: weight, cholesterol level, high- and low-density lipoprotein levels, triglyceride levels and ratios, glucose levels, blood pressure, waist-hip ratio, body-mass index and body composition, strength levels for chest and leg press, VO2 max to measure aerobic capacity, and flexibility. The performance of each participant was rated on a scale of 1-10 in each metric, and the entire process was repeated in early January to measure bio metrics and overall improvements.
Based on those raw or actual scores, we determined the highest levels of fitness and greatest improvements, the categories that produced our 10 individual winners. Some contestants, however, were awarded additional points on top of the 10-point scale in various categories. To gauge fitness beyond those parameters, we applied a formula that produced an adjusted score, and those measurements produced three additional winners.
