Fitness Achievements, Where Are You?
Why is it we spend so much time on this mundane game mechanic known as achievements? Wait, I know the answer…
BECAUSE IT’S MY CRACK AND I WANT MORE ACHIEVEMENT POINTS THAN YOU NOOB!!!1!
While I have limited myself in the last few months (I just earned the Father of Two achievement), I always seem to get stuck on this simple game mechanic. Achievements in World of Warcraft and Mafia Wars, Medals in Farmville, traits in Lord of the Rings online, the mayor-ship and badge system in FourSquare and Gowalla. I will kill the Eff out of some boars just to get the next achievement, and I will spend waste a lot of time doing it. Which led me to a realization that there is a total lack of this addictive mechanic in online fitness tracking world, where it could provide a big benefit. Daily burn has medals that display on your profile when you win a challenge, which is similar, but it is not as autonomous as I would like to see. If I and many others will happily do nothing to get a little “ding” that means nothing in a game that (let’s face it) means nothing, why wouldn’t the same psychological boost help motivate me to do a little extra during my workout?
So I think I will use this post to propose just a few fitness achievement that would fit in great in the average fitness tracking site. Of course you will have your basics: lost 10 pounds, lost 20 pounds, ran 5k, etc), but I prefer to take the World of Warcraft approach in coming up with these, which means that there are a few achievements that are obvious, but most try to throw in humor and pop culture references. Also, some of these are negative achievements that you don’t want to get.
- A Friend of Tortoises – Walk one mile or less in 30 minutes or longer
- Go Speed Walker, Go! – Walk a mile in less than 10 minutes
- A Proclaimer Part 1 - Walk 500 miles (does not have to be all at once)
- A Proclaimer Part 2 – Walk 500 more (that’s a 100o total) Da-da-da-da.
- Girly Man – Bench press exactly 45 pounds (that’s the bar alone)
- Lost My Sit! (-ups) – Do 6 sets of sit ups with the following rep counts: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
- Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it – Eat more than 4000 calories in a single day
- Noob – Win 1 fitness challenge
- 1337 – Win 25 fitness challenges
- Cylon Prototype – You weight 87 pounds.
- Greg Kinnear Would be Proud – You ate a bowl of soup
- John Henson Would be Proud – You ate a second bowl of soup in the same day
- Joel McHale Would be Proud – You really need to lay off the soup
These are just a few silly ideas, but I was having fun coming up with them. The more I thought about these for this post, the more I wished that someone would implement this system, because I would love to be surprised these pop-up as I logged my work outs and food. It would give me a reason to log more. It would even give me a reason to change up my workout, or give it that extra umph to earn an achievement. I love these little bits that might lighten up the tough process of losing weight, while at the same time, gives you a reason to work harder.
Do you have a fun fitness achievement ideas? Leave me a comment.
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