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In the UK, one man in five dies before he reaches 65. Together we can change that. Donate, sign up for news or order some of our man manuals from the online shop.
Sign up for Men's Health Week
HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
50 Champion ideas for the CAN DO Challenge
This year's Men's Health Week focuses on mental health in a Covid world. It includes the CAN DO challenge in which we invite you to try a different way to well being each week.
If you want to take part and are looking for some ideas, here are fifty fantastic ones:
CONNECT
- Find a local facebook or other meet up group for people with similar interests
- Write a letter to someone, using your own handwriting
- Respond to a local blog post/social media post to engage with someone new in your community
- Join a hobby group
- Go and see your neighbour. Ask them how are they are doing and whether they need any help
- Send someone a card for no ‘official’ reason
- Talk to a stranger in a queue
- Join a randomised coffee trials
- Get in touch with someone you haven't spoke to since before lockdown
- Next time you ask someone ’how are you?, ask it twice? ‘How are you really?’
ACTIVE
- Take a 15 minute walk at lunchtime
- Volunteer to walk dogs from a shelter
- Find a Youtube exercise class that you like. Could be Yoga, Pilates or anything at all.
- Signing up for a challenge such as the Couch to 5K
- Join an exercise class you can join from home.
- Find your local green gym (free gym equipment in a park or other open space)
- Compile a list of jobs round the home that need doing: gardening, DIY, hand-washing etc.
- Arrange a lunchtime car cleaning exercise (money raised goes to charity)
- Set yourself an achievable one month personal goal - 100 press up a day, a mile walked a day etc
- Have sex.
NOTICE
- Listen to music with the lights off
- Spending some time with a pet/animals
- Write a Gratitude Journal - note down one thing everyday to be grateful for
- Eat your lunch outside, or sitting in your favourite peaceful spot
- Have a break from social media for one day a week
- Enjoy the different wildlife coming into the garden by feeding birds.
- Try walking in your local area at different times of the day so you can notice the different colours, sounds and atmosphere in the morning and afternoon.
- Draw/paint your favourite local view and then compare when you visit
- People watch - far more interesting than you phone screen.
- Learn some mindfulness exercises
DISCOVER
- Revisit something you used to do but haven't recently (eg. playing an instrument)
- Set up a quiz with others
- Learn how to play a new sport, find a beginners group (eg adult tennis)
- Listen/watch TedTalks, exploring new topics
- Find out more about the development opportunities at your workplace
- Ask someone from a different generation about anything (life before you were born, an old skill, their first job)
- Watch a factual programme about a topic that would not normally interest you
- Build Lego
- Learn magic tricks or games like chess, cards
- Learn sign language
OFFER
- Volunteer at a food bank
- Declutter and donate unwanted items to charity
- Become a mentor
- Opt to become a school governor
- Give way and let a car out of a side road in the traffic
- Compliment someone
- Offer to help decorate someone else’s room
- Trade time and skills with others - eg. hang a door in return for accounting advice
- Recycle
- Pick up some litter
We learn more about the five ways to wellbeing as part of our popular Men's Health Champions training. All of the above ideas are from our trained champions - tried and tested.
There are more great ideas on the tell us about your challenge page and in Man MOT for the Mind.
Enjoy the challenge.
Jim Pollard,
Men's health champions' co-trainer
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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