It’s been a month since I signed up for Fitocracy, which is a site that combines VC-friendly buzzwords in the form of social networking and gamification to exercise. And, for me, anyway, it works splendidly.
Let’s look at the key buzzword: gamification. Fitocracy attempts to apply RPG style mechanics to your exercise regime, awarding you points for everything you log; as you grind through more exercise, you gain levels; if you complete specific goals you gain achievement badges and can complete quests for bonus points.
What’s the value in that? Well, in and of itself it’s logging your workouts, which is always convenient, and more importantly providing an incentive to kick on with your exercise plan. The handy aspect is that it hooks into the same Progress Quest style rewards that have hooked so many people into the Everquests and Worlds of Warcraft. If you doubt their effectiveness, contemplate how many billions Blizzard have made from those same hooks. Except in this case, instead of a pasty complexion, piles of imaginary stuff, and a divorce, you get fitter. Or faster. Or stronger.
The thing that’s most interesting about this to me is that it’s a radical departure from the motivational tools usually applied to exercise programs. RPG-style progress tends to create small, incremental rewards, with regular ‘fixes’ of achievement. You levelled up. You completed a quest. You’ve overtaken someone in your guild. MMORPGs seek to create a virtuous circle of continuous achievement, hooking the player in to the idea that the next accomplishment is just around the corner.
Compare that with the tools of so many exercise programs and so much of so-called fitness culture. Magazines tend to proffer distant, seemingly unattainable goals-weight programs for supermen, figures of goddesses. Supplicants at the temple of physical culture are as likely to be berated as encouraged: ‘anything that moves when you jump is fat.’ You are weak, disgusting, a source of amusement. Only benching your bodyweight? Pathetic! Running 5km? Poof. Your expensive running shoes reprove you in the corner. Your unused gym membership taunts you.
There’s a great term for this; the shame spiral. You feel bad about the things you haven’t done so you avoid them then you feel worse so you avoid them some more. And those traditional negative motivators are perfect for creating and and feeding those behaviours. It’s a pleasing novelty to have tools that are aiming for the positive.
From the general to the personal, let me speak to what about Fitocracy works for me:
- Easy recording and display of workouts. So much less clumsy than my spreadsheet I’ve used in the past, and so much easier to pull out my targets for each workout, based on the previous session.
- The Progress Quest element works for me. It routinely tops me into making the effort to do workouts I’ve been dodging. “I’m tired” has been relaxed with “I can level up” and “I need points for that challenge.”
- The Quests and Achievements, in particular, have spurred me into pushing through plateaus that have lasted for months; moreover, it’s encouraged me to attacking some neglected areas in my weight work.
The net effect for me has been dramatic: I’ve gone from my in-theory three, but in-practise two, weight sessions per week, to a solid, reliable three per week. I’ve expanded them to make sure my hope back gets proper emphasis, something I’ve always struggled to motivate myself to lock in. Thanks to my desire to grab the pull-up achievement, that’s sorted. And my overall progress, especially on the big core exercises of the deadlift, squat, bench, and shoulder press, have rattled along nicely, not least because of the ability to easily see past reps and weights in the logging tool.
All-in-all I’ve been pleased and impressed with the concept and execution around Fitocracy. If you’re susceptible to those levers, I suspect it’ll work for you, too.
