Fitness Gamification
Handing out points, special rewards and medals for achievements is not new. When I ran my first official track final in high school in 2013, I was awarded a ribbon for achieving first place in the 200m sprinting event. The feeling associated with being handed over the ribbon while my teammates applauded me was amazing. Fast-forward to today and we can see virtual badges popping up from everywhere. “Congratulations, for your continuous loyalty you have qualified for our new promotion – receive up to 70% off your next purchase”. If that doesn’t sound familiar, think about your current reward cards that may be in your wallet right now. Do you collect points on reward cards such as air miles, visa, stamps? Maybe you once took part in an auction at e-bay? Lots of businesses take use different gamification techniques to their advantage in order to bypass their competition. Find out how you can adopt this strategy and try out fitness gamification for yourself!
The Quest for Long-Term Exercise Adherence
IIn order to truly change your behaviour and ensure long-term motivation, you will need One of the main issues in the fitness industry is keeping people motivated in the long run. For many individuals it is difficult to find the drive, as well as significant meaning of fitness to make it past the short term. The results of the National Health Survey showed that 53.3% of individuals under the age of 18 years, and only 23.2% of individuals aged 18 years and older were able to achieve the recommended national physical activity guidelines.
Gamification Is Everywhere
Whether you are a fan of video games or not, you are likely easily motivated by being able to rank up o increase your social status through the achievement of special awards. If we are so motivated to spend money when it comes to rewards, how can we apply the same to our fitness? Can we turn it into a fun game that enhances your likelihood of sticking with a routine in the long run?
Online Fitness Gamification
Believe it or not, but there are many different fitness apps that are already doing this. Apps such as Strava, Nike+ Run Club, Zombies, Run!, and many more provide you with a virtual fitness experience that promote adherence in the form of a game experience.
The unfortunate thing with most apps is that you have to pay for them and that you have to adhere to a reward system designed by the workout app. As a result, the game apps are typically not the best solution to stay motivated in your fitness journey for the long run. That being said, give it a try and see if you like it. You can always start a more personalized gamification method once you get bored of the mobile apps.
“Games are Explicitly Designed to Improve Quality of Life, to Prevent Suffering, and to Create Real, Widespread Happiness“
JANE MCGONIGAL
Manual Fitness Gamification
Get your pen and paper ready, because we are about to design your very own addictive fitness game that will hopefully provide you with a superior sense of accomplishment at the end of the workout, as well as for endless workouts to come. Keep in mind that this is your own game that you can personalize to your liking. All points below are merely guidelines to help you with the game development.
A) Create a Goal
The very first thing you should do before you get started on gamifying your workouts is to create realistic, but challenging goals. Write them down visibly onto the first sheet of paper so that you are continuously reminded of your goals. Do you want to increase your activity level to increase your strength, happiness, or do you just want to have more energy throughout your day? Whatever it is, make sure to get it visibly on paper. Do not skip this step.
- Think about your deep internal desires: What makes you want to work out? Do you want to look good? Do you want to feel healthy and fit? Would you like to feel happier? Think about it and answer honestly.
- Write down your short-term and long-term fitness goals using the SMART goal framework
B) Design Your Game
- Set up your ranking system. To avoid overwhelming yourself at the beginning, I would advise that you start with just a few short-term rewards. Would you like to reward yourself at the end of the day by having a glass of wine? Do you reward yourself by having a cheat meal at night? Do you want to reward yourself in the long-term and buy yourself something meaningful that requires a certain amount of points to get?
- Think about the gamification elements of your workout. Would you like to award yourself points for every repetition you do or on the quality of your repetition. Do you want to give yourself points for finishing a set or are you struggling with keeping your rest periods down to a minimum and reward yourself for finishing your workout within a decent time? Do you have fitness trackers that are able to track key physiological markers (e.g. heart rate, breathing rate, etc.) that you want to make part of your reward system? Plan regular measurements into your game to properly track your workout progress (e.g. scale, tape measure, etc.).
- You can choose to give yourself negative points if you do not perform the physical activity that you told yourself you would do. It is okay to skip a workout, however you should be honest with yourself. You can decide not to do this if you are feeling sick and readjust your game to account for those days as well.
C) Track Your Journey
To make it even more fun, you can start blogging or make a fitness journal, which can also significantly help with increasing exercise adherence. You may even want to share your game and compete against your friends and family. You can add game mechanics to allow another person to join your game so that you can hype each other up for some additional motivation. Positive social interactions can have significantly positive effects on your workout motivation!
Note: Ensure to write EVERYTHING down. The better you are able to see it, the more likely you are going to follow it. Maybe you want to create a poster, journal or start a visually appealing binder so that nothing gets forgotten. Set yourself regular reminders on your phone. The deeper you go into the gamification of your fitness, the more fun and addictive it gets, but keep it simple for the start. Create high scores to compete against yourself. The options are endless.
My Experience
Looking for some more inspiration before you are truly ready?
No problem. I was struggling at the beginning as well. Below you can find an example to get you inspired.
- Long-Term Goal #1: Increase bilateral upper thigh circumference muscle mass by one inch by March 21st (within 3 months time)
- Short-Term Goal #1: Perform 4 sets of weighted ball squats, lunges and crab walks until momentary muscular failure every second day
- Short-Term Goal #2: Perform 5x 100m hill sprints 2x/week at 90% of your maximum
- Rewards: 3,000 points = purchase workout mat (one that I have wanted to buy for some time) & have wine tonight / 2,500 points = watch a movie & order healthy take out / 2,000 = make myself a smoothie, a healthy snack and relax after 8:30pm
- Point System: 250 points for completion of challenging task / 200 points for moderately challenging task / 150 for somewhat challenging task
- 1) Start workout by 9:00 am the latest (250 points)
- 2) Complete one set of weighted squats to failure with occlusion band (250 points each)
- 2) Complete one set of weighted lunges to failure (200 points for each)
- 3) Complete one set of crab walks until failure (150 points for each)
- 4) Keep rest periods at a minimum – below 60 seconds (50 points for each rest below 60 seconds)
- 5) Finish workout by 9:20am the latest (250 points)
Benefits Of Fitness Gamification
- Gamification increases Intrinsic Motivation: Over time, you will automatically become more drawn towards working out as you are relating it with special rewards if you perform it correctly. Keep thinking of creative ways to keep stimulating your mind to keep your motivation levels as high as possible.
- Improve Happiness and Mental Health: Everyone likes playing games. Achieving and accomplishing difficult tasks and getting appropriately rewarded for it in ways you like to be rewarded will have a great impact on your overall mood and mental health.
- It Stays Challenging: You are automatically going to try and beat your own high scores as you perform in increasingly more difficult fitness activities.
- Behavioural Changes: Over time, you find that you may not even need to turn your workouts into games anymore, as your new active lifestyle just becomes naturally rewarding to you. Working out regularly becomes part of your new routine. You start recognizing the positive mental health effect from intense fitness experiences and external rewards may be a thing of the past.
Lifestyle Gamification
Who says you can only apply the gamification concept to your fitness lifestyle? Why not apply it to your work, chores, or your overall to-do list? Maybe you want to start by adding points to your to-do lists and create special long term rewards for staying productive in the long term. You could award yourself more points for those aspects that require a little more motivation than others (think of things that you have been wanting to accomplish for some time now). You will surprise yourself once you see how much more you can get done by applying reward systems. Be careful though not to overdo it, or you may overdo it and lose track of what is really important to you.
Conclusion
Whether you want to reward yourself for starting your workout on time or for giving yourself an extra push, you can design your game the way you want to play it. Gamification is a growing trend that will only increase in popularity over the next few years. It is a fun way to stay motivated in areas of your life that require a little external boost. What fitness game are you going to create? Will you be using a smartphone app or are you going to crease your personal point systems? I’m excited to find out! Are you ready to get started on your very own addicting game? Then what are you waiting for? Get started towards living a more healthy lifestyle. NOW.