Fitocracy – The Gamer’s Gym

If you’re anything like me, you have a daily routine that consists of sleeping, eating, going to class, doing work, and playing video games.  I’m not much for exercise, or rather, not much about it appeals to me.  That’s not to say I don’t get any form of exercise; I work my fingers to the bone playing Skyrim!  Obviously, two bright souls (Brian Wang and Richard Talens) realized that a lot of people follow a daily routine similar to mine.  So together, they founded Fitocracy.com, the most intriguing fitness website I’ve ever seen.

Most fitness sites in this day and age will give you tips on what exercises will benefit you the most, tell you how to do them, and send you on your merry way.  Now that’s all fine and dandy, but Fitocracy is different in that you get points and achievements for finishing different routines.  After a certain number of points are reached, you level up.  Your score is ranked against other members on a massive leader-board on the site.  Each person has a profile where you can compare their stats and achievements against your own. You can create a customized routine for every day you want to workout.  Each routine can be completely created for whatever muscle group(s) you want to improve, and you can choose what type of workout you want, whether you want to focused more on cardio or strength.

Basically, it’s exactly like a video game, but, to steal from the Kinect, you are the controller.  No other fitness site out there uses this formula, so it’ll be interesting to see how members react to it.  As of right now, the site is still in a Beta stage, but yours truly managed to get into it.  It’s actually a lot like the Google+ Beta, where you could invite a certain number of people to the site.  I’ve been on the it numerous times, but I still find it hard to force myself to actually do the exercises.  As I said before, it’ll be interesting to see how members react to the program, and whether or not they’ll stick with it for longer then a few weeks, if not a few days; because there’s no penalty for not completing a routine, you don’t feel bad because you miss one or two.  But, as it usually happens, does missing one or two exercise windows eventually snowball into a complete and utter relapse?

The site is still in Beta, so they have plenty of time to fix any issues they’re having and to come up with solutions to each member’s individual problems.  One suggestion I have would be to add a penalty for missing or not finishing a routine, perhaps a deduction of points or the loss of an achievement–Anything to get that person to feel bad about missing their routine.

What do you think?  If you get into the Beta, or if you join when the site officially launches, do you think that you’ll stick with it?  Let me know in the comments below!

*If you would like a Beta invite, I’d be more than happy to give you one!  Just ask in the comments section!*