New and user-friendly digital solution will make it easier to exercise onboard
Mental well-being and physical activity are crucial to seafarers’ mental and physical health – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. From 1 January 2022, it will become easier and more fun to be active and exercise on board when SEA HEALTH & WELFARE releases a new and user-friendly and digital exercise solution for seafarers.
Sometimes it requires an extra effort to exercise onboard. It can be challenging to find time and space for physical activities, and how do you motivate yourself and the whole crew to exercise?
One of the answers to that question is SHW’s initiative FIT4SEA; the annual sports competition, which has existed for twenty years. With a brand-new digital solution – a user- and mobile-friendly website that you can easily add to your phone screen as a bookmark – it gets even easier to participate in FIT4SEA. With the new digital solution it also gets easier to compete with your colleagues on board and against other ships.
Pernille Voigt Nordstrand, Health Promotion Consultant at SHW says:
“With this new digital solution, each seafarer will get his or her own FIT4SEA profile, which makes it easy to register activities and results. It makes it much easier to participate and no longer requires a lot of coordination and computer work to report the results to us. By making it much easier, we hope we can motivate even more seafarers to exercise.”
PHOTO: FIT4SEA was established more than twenty years ago. Back then the results were reported from the ships and registered with pen and paper by an consultant. Since then we moved on to using Excels to register the results and today there is new and user- and mobile-friendly website ready to use to make it easy to track and register all the seafarers results.
Physical activity while on board, whether for shorter or longer periods, is very important to seafarers’ mental well-being and physical health.
“There are no disadvantages to exercising. How easy or difficult it is to find time and space to exercise varies from ship to ship. But it is important to remember that a little bit of exercising is always better than nothing. Exercise not only helps seafarers to stay fit and maintain good mental well-being, it also plays an important role in strengthening the community onboard. That is always important, but during the pandemic it has become even more important. Crewmembers are on board for very long periods, and it takes a strong community to help each other in times of insecurity,” Pernille Voigt Nordstrand says.
Physical activities on the agenda
On the oil tanker GIJON KNUTSEN they focus on exercise and community building, for which FIT4SEA is an important tool, tells Chief Engineer Michael Thinnesen:
”FIT4SEA delivers exercise activities that are ready to use, so it’s very convenient. If we are in doubt about how to do an exercise, it’s easy to watch a demo video. We also follow FIT4SEA on social media. It is very motivating seeing photos and videos from other ships. It inspires, motivates, and makes it even more fun to exercise.”
The Chief Engineer says that it’s especially the exercise that you have to do in pairs that brings joy and laughter. Another motivating factor is competing against other Danish-flagged ships with the possibility of winning different types of merchandise from SHW.
“It is obvious that exercise in general creates a healthy body and soul, as well as reducing common lifestyle illnesses and strengthening muscles. But exercise on board also plays an important role in moving focus from what’s sometimes a very long workday or a very long period at sea,” Michael Thinnesen points out.
In 2021, GIJON KNUTSEN was awarded the title of Welfare Ship of the Year by SHW because they succeeded in including and involving the crew in joint activities that benefit mental and physical well-being onboard.
“As a crew, we get together and get closer by sharing fun moments and activities. We find that invisible barriers between different cultures get shattered. We have also learned that the tone gets better, and we skip titles such as sir when we approach each other,” Michael Thinnesen explains.
Get started!
Follow the link: https://fit4sea.shw.dk/
Click on “Create profile” and fill in the form to create your own FIT4SEA profile. Once you have created your profile, you are ready to register your activities and results! You will always be able to edit your profile, e.g. if you change ships at a later date.
Register your activities under either “My FIT4SEA profile” or in the meu under “Activities” or simply just click on the orange plus.
Register your activity by choosing a discipline and fill in your results.
After you have registered your activity, you will be able to see them individually below. You can also get an overall overview of your total activities and results, by going to "My statistics".
FIT4SEA in the future
The next step in developing FIT4SEA is establishing a digital community (like a Facebook group). With a digital community, seafarers will be able to follow their colleagues’ activities and rankings in FIT4SEA. They will be able to cheer each other on, motivating and inspiring each other via the community. On top of that, it will be possible to follow other ships’ activities and rankings. The overall purpose is to create a stronger community feeling, team spirit, and friendly competition.
The new digital solution has been developed and tested in close cooperation with seafarers.
