By Kenneth Muir (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: February 29, 2012
A new social networking site has been rapidly gaining members and public attention as of late. Though still in beta, the site has been online since 2010, and it has been slowly accumulating its members through an invite-only system. The premise of the website is to turn fitness into a game, thereby motivating members to exercise more in order to get a higher score. The name of the game? Fitocracy.
Essentially, the aim of the game is to level up by gaining points, and you gain points by logging any workouts that you complete. The points and levels are as arbitrary as Microsoft’s gamer points for the Xbox 360, or Sony’s trophies for the PlayStation 3; they stand for nothing other than proof of some goal accomplished. Hilariously, as any gamer knows, acquiring these points and trophies is unbelievably addictive, and gives a strong sense of reward, even though you know the feeling is irrational. Avid gamers themselves, creators Brian Wang and Richard Talens were well-aware of this concept and applied it to workouts instead.
On Fitocracy, points are earned for every workout logged on the website, and you earn even more points by meeting the criteria for achievements, which stand as fitness goals or challenges, such as “complete five pull-ups in one set (+100 points),” or “bench press X amount (+50 points),” etc. Additionally, there are quests, which act as challenges which expire after a few weeks or so. Completing quests earns you more points. I can say from first-hand experience that the model is maddeningly addictive, to the point where I’ve become observably angry for having missed my workout; those intangible points were gone forever.
What makes this website so close to tipping into the mainstream is that it also employs the same features you might expect from any social networking site. You can add friends, join or create groups and events, message one another, and so on. The twist is that every group and event has its own leader board, making for a somewhat competitive atmosphere.
The mechanics of the website itself are still mildly clunky. For instance, your workout won’t always translate as well as it should into the log. I once tried to enter a circuit weights shoulder program I had completed, but couldn’t figure out how to change the repetitions option into time. After that, it told me that I couldn’t enter more than 30 repetitions for a single set. So, after some estimation on my part, my circuit weight program had to be translated into 33 sets of 30 repetitions of military press. Obviously this wasn’t ideal. You may also find the variety of offered exercises to be lacking. It was vile having to enter my eight km paddle in a kayak as rowing (they are in no way similar sports). Furthermore, the social networking aspects of the site are much less fluid and comprehensive as competing social networks. Finally, it’s incredibly easy to cheat. There’s no way to verify whether or not you did the workout that was logged. Hopefully most people will avoid this temptation as the reward is supposed to be mostly intrinsic, meaning that there’s really very little reason to cheat if nothing is achieved. These hitches the site suffers are, however, fairly forgivable, as it’s still in beta.
Probably the worst aspect of the site is its “Become a Hero” option, which gives you slightly better features than regular users, and no ads, but requires a five dollar monthly fee. All this did was make me aware that there were unnecessary restrictions on regular users, such as limited memory space for saved workouts.
Despite these flaws, I still highly recommend trying to sign up, as the site really will motivate you to exercise more often. It’s a lot of fun and gives you a slight push out the door; for some that may be all that’s required to go exercise.
How do you become a member? Unfortunately the website is still in a closed beta, so you can’t get in unless you’re invited. However, each member is allowed to give out 10 invites, so even if you’re a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of someone who’s a member, it shouldn’t be that hard to get one. Personally I’d recommend just Googling for invites. In the meantime, I’ll be going for the high score.
