#oneaday Day 813: Fitocrat

I last wrote about up-and-coming “fitness social game” Fitocracy back in… [checks] Ooh. October of last year. I thought it was more recently. I feel less guilty about writing about it tonight, in that case.

For the uninitiated, Fitocracy is a site which gamifies your exercise regime. Completing exercises rewards you with points. Points mean level ups. Level ups mean… well, nothing actually, but they provide you with bragging rights plus also give you a rough idea of how much cumulative exercise you’ve done since you started tracking it (and, in theory, “got serious” about it).

Tracking exercises can be done in two ways: manually logging them or linking to a Runkeeper account. The former is necessary for exercises which can’t be automatically tracked such as resistance machines, free weights and bodyweight exercises. The latter is the easiest way to track cardiovascular workouts — particularly those where you’ve actually, you know, gone outside — but you can also track CV stuff directly within Fitocracy if you don’t want to plaster your information over yet another site. (Runkeeper is a pretty cool app, though, so if you’re serious about your fitness, enjoy attempting to draw GPS penises via your exercise route and have a smartphone, it’s worth a download.)

If Fitocracy was just an exercise-tracking system with a levelling system, it’d be pretty decent. But the team behind it has gone the extra mile and included a bunch of other stuff, too. There are Achievements for a variety of things ranging from engaging with the site’s social features to performing challenging exercises. There is a Quest system that provides specific, one-off missions for you to undertake — a good means of setting yourself long-term goals if you can’t think of any of your own. You can save your favourite routines so you can easily recall and record them. There’s a solid Groups system whereby you and your friends can work together and even set up mini-challenges to see who can earn the most points in a set time period. And the whole thing is wrapped in a straightforward, conventional but effective and highly-polished social interface that encourages interaction and encouragement between “players”.

All in all, it’s an excellent motivational tool. Everything combined together forms a powerful system that makes you feel like you’re being “rewarded” for bettering yourself when, in fact, you’re simply making a variable go a bit higher each time or occasionally unlocking intangible shiny things. The thing is, though, you are actually rewarding yourself. You’re bettering yourself. You’re getting fit. You’re learning how to self-motivate. And, assuming you’ve managed to badger some friends into joining up too, you’re also being rewarded by positive encouragement and reinforcement from other people who are going through the same thing. It’s a social network for people who are serious about their fitness — or who want to get serious about their fitness. And it does its job extremely well.

Fitocracy was in closed beta for a pretty long time, and during that period it was only possible to use the service if you had an invite. Now, though, the whole thing is open to the public and is completely free to use — though power users have the option of shelling out $4.99 a month to become a “hero” and get early access to new features. The service has had a fresh new coat of purple paint, its site looks great and the new iPhone app is a pleasure to use with its simple, intuitive and attractive interface.

So why not give it a try? Here’s my profile. I’ll be your friend! NOW GET MOVING, MAGGOT!