Working in human resources for A. Zahner Co., Jo Ann Mendenhall is used to dealing with numbers. But not like the numbers she saw reviewing preliminary health scores for Zahner’s corporate team in the Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge. One contestant could manage a single push-up. Another member of that fivesome couldn’t execute a partial sit-up.
Aiming to sharpen the corporate culture’s focus on employee fitness, Zahner management was soon on the phone, enrolling its team at YMCA and recruiting a fitness trainer, Mendenhall said. “We gave him our dismal numbers and asked him if he could help improve our fitness,” she said.
Mission accomplished. Over the next 111 days, the Zahner team went to work not just pushing fabricated metal—they remade themselves. Mendenhall was joined by Ben Hicks, Jim Porter, Jeff Mann and Tony Birchler, attacking the 150-point scale used to assess contestants’ overall health. By competition’s end, team members had raised their initial average score, which started at just over 90 points, by an average of 18.6 points each, to 109.4. That edged out the performance of Jack Stack Barbecue’s Team No. 1, which finished with a solid gain of 17.67 points per member.
Mendenhall herself bent the Zahner curve upward, improving her personal score by 33 points, which earned her separate distinction as the Most Improved Woman Over 50. But the boys on the team were no slouches, either; Mann cruised home with an impressive 24-point improvement in his score.
One key to that overall success was the peer-pressure factor, said Hicks. It kicked in during the group workout sessions at least twice a week at the YMCA.
“The team aspect helped encourage a little friendly competition between us during our workouts to push us a little further than I think we would have done on our own,” he said. “I feel it helped out tremendously, as we were very supportive of each other; also, I didn’t want to let the team down.”
Tracking the numbers as well was powerful motivation, Mendenhall said. A month into the program, she said, “I was able to do eight push-ups compared to the one that I started with, and I really got excited.”
The next month, she hit 20; by December, she was snapping off 30. “That was exciting, and although most people wouldn’t think that was a ‘killer’ score, for me it was—I truly didn’t think I could achieve it,” she said.
So what turned the trick? Team members credited trainer Sam Philpot with implementing a rigorous schedule of push-ups, sit-ups, squats, walking lunges, hand weights, skull crushers, walking up stairs two at a time—anything to burn calories and tax their underused musculature.
“I ride my bike to the grocery store as often as I could in place of a car,” Mendenhall said. “I’m the goofy person in Olathe that has the double baskets full of groceries …”
Hicks, who said he had battled weight issues for years, said the most important take-away from this year’s competition was the realization that his case isn’t
hopeless.
“I still have a long way to go, but I have made some positive progress,” he said. “This challenge just helped keep me focused about my long-term goal. I know
it’s going to be a lifelong struggle, but at least now I know it is possible.” 
