The Stridekick app allows you to create your own step and activity challenges with friends and family straight from your iPhone or Android device! It’s super easy to get started, but we’re here to walk you through the basics today.

Getting started

After you’ve downloaded the free Stridekick app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and created an account, you’ll have full access to create your own step challenges! To get started, just tap the Join/Create button from your dashboard, or from the Challenges tab, tap the Create a challenge button.

From here, it’s all up to you! Your challenge is completely customizable. We’ve included some helpful tips below, but feel free to get creative!

Challenge Mode

The first decision you’ll need to make for your first challenge is whether you’d like to run a Leaderboard, Streak, Target, Virtual Race, or Daily Habit challenge. You can’t go wrong with any of our 5 challenges modes, but we’ve outlined each mode below so that you can get a better feel for what each mode offers.

Leaderboard

The Leaderboard mode ranks all challenge participants from most to least steps, distance, or active minutes. The user with the most steps, distance, or active minutes will earn the top spot!

The Leaderboard mode is a true fitness competition classic and is especially popular for more competitive groups who are ready to fight for the ultimate glory—the top of the Leaderboard!

Streak

The Streak mode tracks the number of consecutive days that participants meet a daily steps, distance, or active minutes goal. For each day in a row that participants meet their Streak goals, they’ll earn another day towards their streak counts to keep their streaks alive!

Participants will also be able to view the average streak for your challenge and compare their streak with other challenge participants to see who's keeping up by visiting the Group Stats tab of this challenge. This mode is especially popular for groups focused on building healthier habits, as users can focus more on building up their own hot streak!

Target

The Target mode tracks a cumulative steps, distance, or active minutes goal for an individual user to reach over the course of your challenge. Participants can track their daily pace to make sure they reach the target goal before the challenge end.

Participants can also check in on how others are staying on target by checking in the Group Stats tab of this challenge. Participants will see a list of everyone’s progress from this page and a fun ranking of the top 3 best days for the challenge highlighting who’s taken the most steps in a single day during the challenge. Use this mode for a fun, long-term goal that allows participants to go at their own pace to stay on target!

Virtual Race

The Virtual Race challenge mode allows you to set a distance goal for each participant to reach by the challenge end. As participants move in real life, they progress through a racetrack in the app. Along the way, they’ll unlock new map scenes and fun milestones.

Virtual Race also ranks individual users from high-to-low based on their total distance moved over the course of the challenge. This data is then shown on a leaderboard for all participants to view. This challenge mode is a great option for replicating a race-like feel and is best for competitive groups who are ready to race to the finish!

Daily Habit

The Daily Habit mode gives participants the ability to track the completion of a specific activity for each day of the challenge. As participants reach their habit goal for the day, they will be able to mark it as complete from the Stridekick app.

These activities are not tracked by your device; instead, they are manually added by users via the dashboard. Once an activity is logged for the day, this data will be shown on the Stridekick main dashboard under the Log a Daily Habit section.

This challenge mode is best for when you’re working to build any kind of healthy habit, from remembering to floss each day to drinking enough water! When you create your Daily Habit challenge, you can choose from preset habits, or you can create your own for maximum flexibility.

Challenge Goals

Depending on the challenge mode you select, you’ll need to decide whether you’d like to compete based on steps, distance, or active minutes and you’ll need to set a daily or cumulative goal.

Choose your challenge metric

You can choose to compete on steps, distance, or active minutes for the Leaderboard, Streak, and Target mode. While competing on steps is usually the most popular choice, distance and active minutes are also a fun way to compete!

Steps or distance can be useful metrics to compare your total activity throughout the day and can be earned from slower-paced walks that may not count towards active minutes. On the other hand, active minutes can sometimes be a better indicator of the actual time spent on the move. For your very first challenge, we’d suggest choosing steps to keep things simple, but as you continue creating challenges, you can explore other metrics including distance, active minutes, and your own habits through the Daily Habit mode.

Set a daily or cumulative activity goal

For Streak, Target, and the Virtual Race challenge mode, you’ll be required to set an activity goal. If you're not sure of your group's typical daily activity, we’d recommend estimating that participants will get somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day, 2-5 miles per day, or 15-45 active minutes per day depending on their fitness levels.

If you selected a Streak mode, then you’ll want to enter a daily goal that’s somewhere within this range, such as 7,500 steps or 30 active minutes per day.

If you’re creating a Target or Virtual Race challenge, you’ll need to choose a cumulative step goal for users to reach over the course of your challenge. For example, if you’re planning to run your challenge for 10 days, you could challenge your users to reach 75,000 steps or 25 miles over your 10 day challenge.

Challenge Duration & Start Date

After deciding whether to compete on steps, distance, or active minutes and setting your goal if needed, you’ll be prompted to select your challenge duration and start date. Challenges in Stridekick can be set to last anywhere from 1 to 31 days. We’d recommend setting your duration for your first challenge to at least 7 days to give you enough time to experience your first challenge.

You can choose any start date within the next 60 days, including the same day you’re creating your challenge. If you choose the same day, please note that it may take a few minutes for your challenge to officially start, so be patient! If you select a start date in the future, your challenge will begin at 12:00am (midnight) according to your time zone in Stridekick. Learn more here.

Challenge Name & Description

A great challenge name doesn’t make or break your challenge, but it definitely helps, so we recommend taking your time here. Some ideas to get you started are:

• Walking on Sunshine
• Will Walk for Tacos
• Stepping Up Our Game
• We Like to Move It, Move It
• Race You to the Top of the Leaderboard
• Following the Leaderboard
• Can’t Touch My Hot Streak
• It’s the Streaking Weekend
• Target Tourney
• Right on Target
• Race You to the Finish
• Pace Yourself
• Hone Your Habit
• Happy for Habits
• One Step at a Time
• Walking towards a Healthier Lifestyle
• Stepping for a Better Tomorrow

Your description is optional but can be used to get some friendly smack talk in early, share why you created the challenge, or to motivate your friends and family to get stepping alongside you. Apart from the 500 character limit, the possibilities are endless!

For more inspiration on what your next challenge name should be, click here.

Editing Your Challenge

Edits to your challenge can only be made before your challenge begins, so be sure to make any adjustments beforehand! Before your challenge has started, you can easily edit your challenge goal, start date, duration, name, and description. Only the challenge creator can edit an upcoming challenge. Learn more here.

Inviting Your Friends and Family

After creating your challenge, don’t forget to invite your friends and family to join you! They can participate in your challenges using their own fitness device (such as a Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch, Misfit, Withings, and more) or their phone as their fitness tracker, making it a breeze for anyone to participate, from fitness aficionados to users new to the world of fitness tracking.

If your friends and family are already on Stridekick, you can invite them directly in the app to join your challenge, but, if not, no need to worry! Just copy and paste the join link that’s generated for you after you create your challenge to send via text, email, or other messaging apps to invite them to create their own accounts on Stridekick and join in on the fun!

Now, what are you waiting for? Go get some steps!

It’s time to compete! Grab your friends, lace up your shoes and get to stepping!