In today’s modern world, where everything moves with incredible swiftness, our personal and professional lives are sometimes caught in the whirlpool of perfectly balancing their demands with the lack of time.
In fact, responders often quote lack of time in studies and surveys related to sports and physical activity.
Struggling to find time for everything while being present at home, productive at work, and having a social life can take its toll when it comes to a healthy lifestyle.
Table of contents
- Stress
- Benefits of Organizing Extreme Team Building Events
- Skydiving
- Extreme Zip Line Adventures
- The Bear Grylls Survival Challenge
- Escape Room Team Building
- The Wim Hof Method Retreat
- Shark Spotting
- Survival Training
- Combined Extreme Team Building Events
- Outward Bound Trust
- Related Articles, Guides and Insights
- Questions or Comments?
Stress
According to the World Health Organization, the stress in the workplace can have a significant impact on the lives of employees and even lead to more serious problems and stress-related hazards that can affect both the professional and personal lives of those who don’t deal with the situation.
Also, it can impact business continuity and the overall activity of companies.
If alongside data related to workplace stress, we also take into account studies speaking of sedentarism and physical inactivity, we see that there exists a poignant need of finding a solution for providing employees with a more harmonious environment and the ability to work toward a healthier lifestyle.
There have been numerous studies speaking of the benefits of office team sports and how the experience of playing team sports can be correlated with professional success. Also, the connection between physical activity and overall productivity has been studied since such endeavours existed.
Therefore, choosing sports and various physical activities to improve the relationship with employees and increase their productivity and satisfaction with the workplace is highly beneficial.
Regardless of the sector, a company operates in, choosing to do something fun and challenging with and for employees will considerably change the working environment for the better.
And what healthier way of achieving it than organizing activities such as extreme team building events that are fun, challenging, and highly enjoyable for employees from all departments?
Benefits of Organizing Extreme Team Building Events
The advantages of physical activity—especially for those sitting at a desk for 8 hours daily—are well-known to everyone. Still, usually, the lack of time and even the lack of interest in an activity that might be tedious or repetitive keeps people from exercising regularly.
Bringing employees together through corporate events is a great way of strengthening your team and increasing productivity. And since everyone is looking to emphasise a healthier lifestyle, turning to extreme team-building events comes with even more advantages.
These activities target a wide array of aspects, such as increasing communication abilities, reenergizing employees, developing creativity, increasing employee satisfaction with their workplace, strengthening the community within your company, networking, developing fear management skills, increasing focus, strengthening resistance, and many others.
The key to organizing successful extreme team building events is knowing your employees and making sure you choose something tailored to their needs, both as individuals and as a community within the workplace.
Also, make sure that you keep in mind those particular areas you want to improve to choose an extreme team building event that will help.
Further, we will discuss some of the most fun, popular, and challenging extreme team-building events and why they can be great for all companies, no matter their size, industry, or goals.
Skydiving
Did you know that the youngest person to accomplish the feat of skydiving was four years old? The fact that skydiving is an excellent activity for adrenaline seekers is a well-known fact. Still, studies revealing the psychology of skydiving show that it is also a great activity for companies looking to offer their employees a fun and exciting way of relaxing bonding.
Places such as Skydive Buzz offer companies tailor-made packages, including exclusive access to an entire dive zone, champagne celebrations, team building photography, and even nerve-wracking yet fun activities such as employees packing the parachute for each other.
You can also choose who jumps with whom, which is a marvellous way of getting people together, especially if you want to create or improve the relationship between certain employees.
Extreme Zip Line Adventures
Zipline rides are highly popular worldwide, and you can find them everywhere—from entertainment parks to tropical forests and other remote locations.
Extreme zip lines adventures go beyond what we are used to from local parks and offer adventure seekers the excellent balance between enjoying great views and getting your blood pumping.
Companies that want to organize an extreme zip line team building event can contact places such as Punta Mita Adventures, which offer a wide range of activities alongside extreme zip line adventures, such as jungle off-road or hillside waterslides.
The Bear Grylls Survival Challenge
The Bear Grylls Survival Academy organizes extreme team building events for companies and their employees, ranging from learning and development activities to adrenaline-fueled survival experiences.
Its survival challenges are themed and inspired by Bear Grylls or by some of the greatest explorers of all time—giving your employees the chance to undergo amazing experiences, improve their community, and strengthen their minds and bodies.
The academy can provide its events in various locations around the world. It can focus on improving creativity, problem-solving, strategy planning, conflict resolution, trust-building, and many others.
Escape Room Team Building
Escape rooms have been popular for years, but recently, companies have started to understand their appeal and organize extreme team building events around them since it’s a great activity for helping employees bond and strengthen various skills.
Renting escape rooms for team building events can help companies assess their employees and get everyone into a problem-solving mindset.
Businesses such as The Escape Artist offer escape room experiences for companies with a wide range of themes, depending on the preferences of your employees and the skills you want to further develop in your team.
The Wim Hof Method Retreat
Becoming happier, healthier, and stronger should be everyone’s goal, and it’s also the goal behind the Wim Hof Method, an extreme cold exposure technique coupled with breathing exercises and meditation that can help regulate stress levels.
The benefits of this technique also include improving mental health, improving sports performance, increasing energy levels, improving sleep quality, boosting concentration, and many others.
The science behind the method speaks of voluntarily influencing the autonomic nervous system through practising techniques that you can learn in a short period of time, thus making it highly effective for activities such as team-building events.
Shark Spotting
It doesn’t get more extreme than spotting and sometimes even interacting with great white sharks. Supreme Sharks in Cape Town offer guests the possibility of diving into a cage and wait for sharks to breach nearby.
If your employees enjoy diving and getting an adrenaline pump, shark spotting is the next extreme team building event you need to organize. As insane as it may sound to put yourself in the vicinity of such a predator, shark spotting experiences are safe and highly rewarding when it comes to conquering fear, strengthening psychological abilities, and more.
Survival Training
Whether we are simulating being lost at sea, a plane crash, or any other kind of catastrophic event, survival training is an excellent way of getting your employees to test their strengths and weaknesses. While also working toward improving the skills they lack or aren’t as developed as they should be.
Survival Systems USA offers extreme survival training and leadership development exercises based on surviving catastrophic events and has great company packages.
Being in simulated life-threatening situations and relying on survival skills that need to kick in a matter of seconds is an excellent test for teams and individuals regarding the ability to act quickly in case of an emergency.
Therefore, such extreme team building events is highly recommended for first responders, emergency communicators, and employees from related fields.
Combined Extreme Team Building Events
Some companies offer packages that include more than one extreme activity, therefore appealing to the needs of employers who can’t decide on what event to organize.
If your employees have diverse tastes, or if you need to work on a wide range of skills, a combined extreme team building event might be the thing for you.
The Team Building Company offers a package titled Club Adrenaline, including their most thrilling and adrenaline-fueled activities.
Regardless of what extreme team building event you choose to organize for your employees, its success relies on knowing your employees’ needs and preferences and tailoring them to fit your desires in terms of goals and objectives.
Ensuring that an extreme team-building event focuses on both psychological and physical improvement is guaranteed to help the community within your company become stronger and more productive.
Don’t forget to ask for feedback to improve how you organize the events in the future while also getting a clearer understanding of their outcomes—and of course, have fun alongside your employees.
Outward Bound Trust
The Outward Bound Trust, established in the UK in 1941, offers outdoor learning programmes to develop critical skills such as resilience, leadership, teamwork, and confidence. This makes it an ideal setting for an extreme team-building event. The programme takes employees out of their comfort zones and places them in challenging but safe outdoor environments.
Outward Bound courses often entail adventurous activities such as rock climbing, gorge walking, canoeing, and raft building. These activities are designed not just for physical stimulation but also to challenge and enhance mental aptitude. They require problem-solving, effective communication, and trust among team members – essential skills in a thriving workplace environment.
One significant advantage of these programmes is their adaptability. The Outward Bound Trust can customise activities based on the specific needs and objectives of the company, ensuring that the programme directly addresses areas of improvement. The exercises can focus on leadership, problem-solving, effective communication, or other key areas that may need strengthening within the team.
Furthermore, the Outward Bound Trust offers professionally trained facilitators who can debrief and provide insightful feedback to participants. This learning process enables participants to reflect on their performance and understand how to apply the same principles in their work environment.
The natural settings used in Outward Bound programmes also offer a unique benefit: promoting well-being. Numerous studies show the positive effects of spending time outdoors on mental health, reducing stress levels and improving mood. The opportunity for employees to disconnect from technology and connect with nature and each other can profoundly impact their overall wellness and productivity.
Finally, these extreme team-building events also foster a sense of shared experience and achievement that can lead to stronger bonds between employees. This shared experience can then translate into increased cooperation and better interpersonal relations at the workplace.
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