Are you up for the challenge?
The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) is once again hosting the Push-Up Challenge for its third year.
This event, which is the largest mental health and fitness event in the country, encourages Canadians to get fit, and push for better mental health.
Participants will take on 2,000 push-ups across 23 days in February, to remember and honour the approximately 2,000 lives that are lost to suicide each day worldwide and raise vital funds for the CMHA.
The Push-Up Challenge is a free event, and participants can choose to fundraise and support the Windsor-Essex County branch.
Last year, 573 participants took part in Windsor-Essex, raising just shy of $46,000.
Kerri Hill, Manager of Community Engagement with CMHA-WECB, says registration is now open.
"We currently have about 250 people registered, we had well over 500 last year, so there's still lots of time to register as an individual, or grab your friends, your family, your coworkers, and register as a team."
She says an app goes along with the program and will send daily notifications.
"The idea is that you'll complete a total of 2,000 push-ups between February 5th to the 27th, and those daily push notifications will give you your daily targets... that target signifies a specific mental health statistic."
Hill says there are so many wonderful people locally who take part.
"We know that Windsor-Essex is an incredibly generous community, we were super lucky that one of the top two fundraiser's in the country was actually somebody who was pushing for better here in Windsor-Essex. So we're always super grateful for folks who donate, who ask others to donate."
Since 2024, over 120,000 Canadian participants completed over 100-million push-ups and raised over $6-million for mental health.
If completing 2,000 push-ups feels out of reach, participants can choose exercise alternatives such as sit-ups or squats.
The Push-Up Challenge 2026 will run from February 5 to 27.