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Scott Adams: Your Next Gym

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66 pointscwan76 comments

My gym does just the MVP of this, where your RFID wristband gives you data persistence for workout results. Walk up to machine, swipe wristband, Good afternoon Mr. Mckenz lets try for 12 reps at 40kg today. ("Who ever heard of someone with a last name longer than six characters long? LOL" <- Japanese programmers are as good on this issue as American ones are.)

A segment of their clientele -- and most at my gym are north of forty -- love it to death. There is at least one seventy something who brought me over to his screen to show me his fiftieth gold badge. One is earned for running a Tokyo marathon. You do the math.

Of course, their main business is still selling the notion of belonging to a gym.

I'm surprised there's no virtual pets involved. :)

The new Ford Fusion apparently has a virtual pet installed in the dashboard to encourage better driving habits. It would probably work just as well in an exercise machine, as a more-visible proxy for one's own fitness.

Just curious, what is the name of the gym company?

Konami. Yeah, THAT Konami.

No, no--what's coming first is farmville/foursquare style workouts and tracking.

"Poiesis is King of the elliptical trainer!" "Achievement unlocked: 200 pound club" "New badge: Power Hour" "Most consecutive workout days: Poesis (42)"

Add an iPhone app maybe for cardio workout tracking that's harder to cheat.

This would be totally awesome. Maybe stick a leaderboard up on one of the big screens. Only problem is that it would encourage people to visit the gym, which is a bit of a problem for the current business model. You might have to switch to pay per use. Or maybe charge extra for the frequent users? But then there's a monetary barrier to working out.

I have to ruefully say that if it weren't for the fact that this actually actively contradicts the current business model, it's a great idea.

It'd at least do well for retention I'd wager.

There are so many ways to improve, too. Leaderboards are an anti pattern in community design because they turn 99% of your customers into losers and losing is not fun. Instead, you either do leagues or publish individual successes within friend groups.

After you have achievements longevity awards are like taking candy from a very wealthy baby. (Only one more month until you get Bronze Boots of Buttkicking! Do not cancel now. Then next month, they are halfway up a new treadmill.)

Leaderboards are an anti pattern in community design because they turn 99% of your customers into losers and losing is not fun.

Of course. I've always wondered about that. Do you have a source for this info? I'm not trying to lay on the wikipedia-snark but rather I'd like to see where to read on social media [anti]patterns.

I read about game design. It is sort of like the nicotine patch for the ex-WoW gamer in me.

See slides 27 ~ 33:

http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/putting-the-fun-in-functi...

I actually feel that leaderboards are mostly bad only when there are too many people participating. With a small enough number of participants they can be motivating (although they might be better yet if they were opt-in). There are a subset of people that like to rank themselves and "see how they stack up" against others. As you mentioned, it can also degrade motivation for others which is why an opt-in method might work best for something like this.

Interesting. Is this a widely accepted theory, that leaderboards are a community design anti-pattern?

From my experience, leaderboards are compelling and rewarding even though I know I'll probably never make it to the top. I just like to watch my percentile rank improve.

EDIT: I just saw your response to the other comment. Cool!

My partner and I have been working on something that's very similar to this description for some time now. Earliest feedback has been quite interesting and we're hoping to get a beta out in the wild sometime this year. Those interested in beta testing should let me know :)

I maintain that Blizzard and 24 Hour Fitness could make a lot of money (or at least get a lot of attention) by installing WoW clients on treadmills, elliptical machines, etc. When you're logged into the game and using one of these machines, your player gets a buff that makes it stronger or gains xp faster. Stop walking on the treadmill and the buff wears off. If they made the buff valuable enough, they'd sell a lot of gym memberships to people that would otherwise never set a foot in one -- and maybe some people would lose some weight too.

Hmm, this is an interesting idea. Perhaps instead of making the buff wear off, make things available for the next time you are "in game" as it would be rather risky trying to play the game while walking on a treadmill, bike or eliptical machine.

That's a good alternative. Although I think the game would be easily playable at even a quick walking pace on the treadmill, they could trade each minute on the machine with a minute of the buff next time you login. Or charge up an orb in your inventory that you can use at will.

Just make sure that you can't make other people walk for you. (Or do make sure that you can?)

I have no interest, but my strength training doesn't use machines. And I use progress as my motivation.

But no gym would want to do this because it violates their business model.

Most gyms are not in the business of encouraging people to work out. Gyms are in the business of encouraging people to sign up. A person who signs up for a year, comes for a week or two, then never comes again is almost pure profit.

I agree with regards to the business model, but the question is whether World of Weightlifting brings in sufficient new customers or decreases churn. My LTV to my gym is over $6k. If they convert the MMORPG crowd, they make money hats.

> they make money hats

Where do you get these phrases? You're making me laugh at work :)

Money hats is a metric for profitability of video games created by Scott Jennings (Lum the Mad), but most phrases I use repeatedly are the result of trying out a lot of ways to say things and iterating on what gets smiles, laughs, or quoted back at me.

relevant: hats made of money, from Penny Arcade (2000): http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/10/23/

> most phrases I use repeatedly are the result of trying out a lot of ways to say things and iterating

Wow, I knew you were into A/B testing, but damn!

While I agree that it does seem to be the business model I think a hungry competitor would be willing to give it a go if they thought it would give them an edge. If they got traction the others might be compelled to follow. Most advances in technology or processes put the old guard out of business or at least severely cut down their market size if they don't adapt.

What strikes me as far more plausible and profitable: home fitness equipment companies going down this path. There's only an upside for them. And their challenges are straightforward engineering, sales and marketing:

1) Add a wireless module to their equipment. 2) Update their equipment software (badly needed anyway. 3) Expand their (largely existing) progress-tracking software. 4) Establish a data exchange format. 5) Go shopping for partners. 6) Market the crap out of it.

I'm honestly surprised they didn't all run down this path when the Wii showed them the way.

As a distance runner, I'm more interested in increasing speed, VO2 max, and duration. I'd love gym equipment that could measure and help me improve in those areas.

Playing a MMO game in the gym as the article suggests? Not my style (distance running is an endeavor of solitude). It'll definitely appeal to some gym goers. You tend to have people who either do it alone, do it with a few select partners (weight lifting), or do it in more of a social way with lots of people (workout classes, team sports, etc...). The latter may be interested in something like this.

It's interesting to see how this idea is being received. My startup (IActionable.com) actually provides a way to make this happen to a degree. We're mostly focusing on game mechanics for websites at the moment but I really like the idea of moving in to other types of areas as well (we have a few other ideas already). Our informal motto is "If you can record it we can reward it".

I wonder if this co-op mode would be better suited to teams within the same gym. Maybe it would work better without any teams at all? Individual competition through leaderboards could be interesting. The motivational factor, especially for new people could really be useful as well. I know a lot of people are saying that it is not in the best interest of the gym - but which gym would you rather sign up for? As soon as one big gym does it the others would have to follow just to keep up if it does well.

The co-op mode is still pretty interesting too though. It could lead to better camaraderie and feeling of belonging amongst gym goers. Any time you can get a group working towards a common goal I think you can accomplish some interesting things. I really like this idea and hope to be able to be a part of it someday.

"I wonder if this co-op mode would be better suited to teams within the same gym"

Definitely, this. Make it a cooperative group effort like skipping, not a competitive team sport. See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1687502

Yeah I like the idea of a group working towards a common goal that everyone is contributing to more than trying to beat someone else. Competition works really well sometimes but perhaps not in this case.

On the other hand, a lot of people who are social/motivated by team psychology already have other motivating options, like team sports, group classes etc.

The interesting thing in this idea (which I agree with the comment that it would be great for home equipment) is that it allows you to tap into your motivation circuits even when you are engaging in a solitary activity.

The nice thing is that you can build around all of these with the same system and people can take what they want from them. There is no reason why any of these elements would need to be mutually exclusive.

After hurting my knee in a downhill skiing accident, I went through two months of rehabilitation at the Sports Medicine Center. A lot of it had to do with specific weight training for the damaged knee's tendons, and some of the machines were hooked up as controllers to computers, where each exercise would be represented as a simple game.

To keep the story short, the games forced you to focus not on the number of repetitions or mass your were working with, but on the precise motion required for the exercise.

I wonder what the balance is for gyms between active members and non active members. I imagine most successful gyms have a relatively high number of non active members, and if use increased then membership could actually decrease because of crowding issues. I would think the gym's motivation is to increase the number of memberships while keeping actual use low, restricting this kind of investment to expensive specialty gyms. But this idea is successful only if many gyms with many active members are involved.

I'm sure this kind of thing will eventually happen, just doesn't seem like the economic motivation is there. But of course I have no actual knowledge about this industry so my ramblings really aren't worth much.

On the other hand, nothing sells gym memberships like more success cases, telling their friends how they got fit.

Or a free membership paid for by your employer in an effort to reduce overall health insurance costs.

Reminds me of a DICE talk about how games will work their way into our lives providing us incentives to do all sorts of things like eat healthily, study, etc.

http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Bo...

I just want to add that at home I have a treadmill with a flat panel tv,dvd player, and xbox 360 hooked up right in front of it. That is the only way I can do 40+ minutes of cardio. It turns out that for me the multiplayer games like Call of Duty 4 are the most engaging. I can get so wrapped up in those kinds of games that I forget that I am working out. It helps that often I am "running" in the game at the same rate that I am physically running. I had to cancel my gym membership because it was just so boring to be there for any length of time. I think a first step will be to allow wifi in the gyms and have stands where you can pop a laptop in front of the treadmill to watch netflix or something.

With better UI I might try surfing the net or some kind of reading if the text were big enough.

Don't your arms get tired from being held up in front of you for so long?

I use a wireless controller for the xbox, so I just hold it up in front of me. It hasn't been an issue, my legs get tired first.

Hmm, depending on how fast you run, yeah... It's a good idea, but I can see Gorilla Arm becoming a problem. I'm thinking of buying a recumbent exercise bike to replace my desk chair with, though.

Right.

What he's describing is just like team rowing, or tug-o-war or a sport like american football, rugby, basketball, etc.

We've had this technology for thousands of years.

What Scott Adams is proposing is a system that would allow individuals to compete in team rowing or tug-o-war competitions with individuals from other cities/countries/continents via the internet, which would be new technology. It's sort of like the transition from local multiplayer on a game console to online play. Home multiplayer video games have been around since the 80's, but it's not until recently that they've made their way online. The internet is a great tool because it ensures that you never suffer from a lack of available teammates/competitors. In the olden days, your ability to partipate was dependant on those around you having the same interest. Scott suggests setting up gyms for this kind of thing, but the beauty is that with the proper equipment, anyone would be able to compete from home. This could be a boon for people living in more remote/rural areas who want to compete in team athletic events.

Plus, there's all kinds of other neat things that you can have the tech do with regards to scoring, like having a system to scale/normalize scores so that a team of 10 adults can compete against a team of 10 children and come out with roughly a 50/50 win ratio.

This observation is correct; exergaming won't displace team sports. However, not everyone can get involved with a team sport. Cost, location, time - you name it. Exergaming is going to deliver many of the advantages of team sports without as many costs or constraints, and it's going to be huge.

One nice thing about this idea is it lets people jump in and participate when they have time and not be beholden to a schedule or have to rely on a team. It's sort of like an FPS where if you have 15 minutes to kill, you can log in, get some headshots, and log out. It's a team thing but the players can come and go without too much of a structure around it.

I'm with you - it's a perverse situation where you're intentionally designing an abstraction layer between yourself and individual or team sports. There's a neat-o factor in this, but one more suited for a fairground attraction rather than a template for day-to-day exercise.

It's just easier to circumvent the technology and go to the gym with a friend, or to join a rowing team, etc, etc. I wonder daily why I run past people inside on their running machines, when running outside is free and immensely more enjoyable.

I do sometimes worry that people are trying to abstract away too much of their life and live in solo-yet-connected worlds. Gyms are already a shortcut to getting real movement and activity in your day, but to substitute interaction along with your physical movement feels completely like an optimization step in the wrong direction, like freeze drying food for longer storage, when just going to the shop for fresh food is quite easy for most people, and a far superior solution.

The local YMCA has a Fitlinxx system: http://www.fitlinxx.com/

I type in a code into the b/w touchscreen on each machine (could be RFID I guess, but that's stuff to carry/break), and it tells me what weight to set, all the other machine settings (how high to put the seat, etc).

End of the month I get reports via email that tell me how much I lifted or how much cardio I did in a somewhat clever manner - last month it was:

"Weight lifted this month: 159,840 pounds = 19.9 African Elephants"

These are actually pretty common, and I find it to be a great motivational tool.

I've seen the machine hardware reboot before - it's DOS based, on 486s hooked up with what looks like ethernet.

This doesn't seem to be a particularly well thought out prediction in terms of weight machines.

First of all, it would be dangerous. Say I'm on a leg press machine and my contribution is some function of the weight I move and the number of reps I do per unit of time. If I wanted to win the game, I'd be trying to bang out as many reps as possible as fast as possible. Now say I've loaded on 200kg (440lbs) and I start trying to do this. Say I'm on a Smith Machine and I'm squatting as fast as I can. Say I'm on a bicep curl machine and I start trying to rep too fast. These examples would expose a person to the potential for a whole range of nasty injuries. Now imagine the kind of litigation implications that would arise if the gym members started looking for someone to blame for their injuries. In fact, these types of games (when applied to weight training) look like a perfect candidate for a class action lawsuit.

The games that Scott is suggesting seem to indicate that they would encourage poor exercise form. I challenge anyone to find a significant body of sports science literature indicating that the faster one completes their reps (set), the better it is for them.

The only way these games could be good for a person would be if they somehow encouraged good form. Even if they did, the games would have to encourage good workouts, e.g. appropriate exercises, appropriate rest between sets, an appropriate number of sets, and appropriate number of reps and an appropriate amount of weight. Even if this requirement was satisfied, the workout and all relevant parameters would have to be tailored to the individual.

In summary, Scott's suggestion, if applied to any sort of weight training machine, could be one of the worst things to happen to weight training since the Nautilus circuit.

The idea in some form probably has merit but

You'd need strict supervision to make sure no one was so amped up by the game that he hurt himself on the machines. And the captain would need to coordinate when someone moved from one machine to another. For example, if you were being attacked and needed stronger shields, you might move your most buff teammate to the machine controlling shield power until the threat was over. If speed was most important, you'd put your speedsters on the treadmill. Or maybe at some point everyone would have to "lift" at the same time to get over an obstacle. The variations are limitless.

sounds a lot like it would actually get in the way of an effective workout. It's not a good idea to just arbitrarily jump from one kid of exercise to another, and if the game was any sort of actual game (as opposed to just a leader board)the emergent gameplay would mean just that

Oh great, World of WorkoutCraft.

The thing is… achievements are what ultimately caused me to quit WoW. It completely sapped out the enjoyment of the holiday events for me.

The current emphasis on achievements and worldwide leaderboards is discouraging for me. I recently took a stab at making an iOS game in an effort to get a development business underway, only for my game to be mostly ignored because I had no “itch to scratch” involving writing a game with such Darwinian mechanisms to drive community. (I’m an old school solo gamer.)

It's a tough balancing act. I participated a lot more in the WoW holiday events because of the achievements. I noticed that a lot of people did not like competing with the new horde of achievement go-getters making holiday events more frantic and overcrowded.

I eventually quit WoW because I could not keep it as a reasonable, casual attention sink. It would always end up as the dominant time and attention sink in my life.

I think (hope?) this might be exactly what it would take to get me going to the gym regularly. The team element would be a great source of peer pressure "You best be at the gym tonight, we've an important battle".

Here in the UK there is a trend of £9.99/month 24/7 Gyms - and this would complement them really well.

cycling / rowing machines had this years ago. The little LCD screen shows a cartoon of you and the gym's best, your best, or some pro athlete at a set rate zooming off into the distance. I assume the screens and graphics have got a lot better in the last 10 years.

We do not need all these gimmicks. We need people to know what is good for themselves, and start doing something about it. Call me oldfashioned, but I am of the impression that:

+ No RFID chip in my backpack will make a mountain hike with 50lb weight added any more fun, any more useful, any more easy or anything else.

+ No RFID chips in the my plates will make my sets of squats or deadlifts any more fun or easy.

+ No RFID chip in my pants will make my hill sprints any more fun, easy or anything else.

+ No RFID chips in my food or fridge will make eating fruits, veggies, meat, eggs, fish, berries and dairy any more fun than it already is.

Okay, here goes: You're old-fashioned.

Things are more fun when they're part of a game. Brushing your teeth or doing your homework was not fun at age 6, but if you got a gold star, it was worth it, just because gold stars had some value to you.

But, you say, you don't care about games associated with your everyday life these days. Okay, then. You don't have to play. Don't pretend that your preferences are a model of the way things ought to be. There are a lot of ways that that doing non-fun things can be made more fun with technology and games.

Putting RFID chips in your plates will make lifting more fun if it's tied to a fun, competitive game with teammates cheering you on. The fact that you personally don't want to play doesn't mean that making healthy things fun with technology is an insurmountable problem, or that people should give up on all this fun stuff and pull themselves up by their bootstraps as you've made it so very clear that you have.

Putting RFID chips in your plates will make lifting more fun if it's tied to a fun, competitive game with teammates cheering you on

What good are gym buddies who can't spot you?

And besides, lifting is satisfying, but it's not "fun" if you're doing it right.

"Doing it right" by whose definition?

Why can't something be satisfying on one level and fun as it relates to other things?

By the definition of taking it to failure if you want to make progress. That's the only definition that matters - human physiology. Progressive overload leading to adaptation.

Aerobics with 5-kilo weights can be "fun".

I found power cleans to be at least as much fun as running.

Hang cleans are my favourite at the moment :-) But it's not fun that squeezes out the last rep, it's sheer bloody-mindedness.

Yes. Though that can also be a kind of fun. I guess it's not worth to fight over definitions.

Do you plan to progress to full power cleans later?

I'm having a bit of difficulty with hand position - the correct position for me for the deadlift phase is slightly wider than for the hang clean phase at the moment. Not sure if it's something I can practice/train around, or if it's just the way my wrists are.

Plus my deadlift is well over double my hang clean...

I do deadlifts and power cleans. My deadlift is almost double my power clean.

I like to pick the bar up from the ground. Also putting the bar down between repetitions allows me to re-set my back.

Keep practising, your flexibility should improve. I'd use the hand position of the hang clean phase also for the deadlift phase---because the weight will be so low compared to a proper deadlift that you can afford to use suboptimal positioning for this part.

You make a valid point, that the use of this fancy-schmancy technology is optional. The reason I am still worried, and the reason why I hold on tight to my old-fashioned principles, is that most gyms nowadays are very poor for serious training;

There is a ton of machines that are of no use to people that want to use the gym to actually make progress, to stay healthy and get strong/fast/lean/whatever-floats-your-boat. All these machines take up the space of the barbells, dumbbells and racks, and they steal the attention away from those things as well. The end result is that the average people in a gym in 2010 are in worse shape than the average people in a gym in 1970. I hope this trend is not allowed to continue.

PS: Let me tell you a fun, competitive game that require little modern technology (just some creativity and a barbell and a rack); bring your friends to spot you in the gym, and have a competition in the squat rack ("who does the most reps with 225lb in one set?").

You can also just track your progress in a journal. That's motivation enough for me. (And be sure to take a photograph of yourself every once in a while.)

I agree. I also do old-fashioned stuff at the gym.

But I can see how hooking up a X-Box Kinect (a camera with some fancy software) to automatically give you feedback on your technique for squats could be a nice thing.

Most people don't go low enough on the squat, so a neutral third party would be nice. Especially if you do not have a knowledgeable training buddy. (You can't trust most employees' knowledge in gyms about proper weight lifting technique.) Also I would like to have my heart rate graphed during the lifts.

And the chip in the fridge could just give you the nudge to do what you like to do anyway, but would be too lazy at the moment to do.

The typical gym experience is incredibly tedious (and boring) for the average person, and removing the tedium is what this targets. And game mechanics can be very good in habit formation. If wii fit actually gave a person a work out other than pushups, sit-ups and a couple other poses, you would see a lot more fit people out there.

"That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially."

Sure, people should be willing to do things of their own accord without needing any motivation at all, but we live in a world filled with motivation to do all sorts of things - why not try to use some of that influence for good?

There is a similar thing called Nike Plus. It's a community web site with a database of the running data of runners/joggers using Nike+ sensors in their shoes (or Nike+ GPS App for iPhone).

And yes, I find it funny to be able to compare my running times, pace, total running distance, etc. to the people around the world, it's like a RPG game doing real things....

Of course, there are drawbacks. For instance, if the sensor isn't properly calibrated the results can be inaccurate. Not the case with the pure GPS tracking app, of course...

Overall I love the idea of software improving the gym experience but I'm not too sure about this simultaneous team effort idea. Anybody who's tried to grab a cardio/weight machine or even a squat rack at peak usage hours before understands the pain in the ass that is swapping sets or having to find a completely different exercise to do.

Sounds a fair bit like the hill climbing bits from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?".

Would be more useful, in addition, to have gyms generate power for the grid.

Except for the fact that humans are really bad power sources. Tour de France riders generate about 500 watts. A quick googling turns up this article: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/07/tour-de-france-2009-...

Basically you wouldn't even be able to keep the lights on, let alone run the televisions, AC, fans, etc...

Never do it. Who wants to sweat so the Captain can have all the fun?

If this space is interesting to anyone shoot me an email.

That's a completely stupid idea that will never work, as is obvious to anyone who's actually ever attempted to get people to do things. It fails on so many levels that it's not really even possible to write a concise, structured rebuttal of it. Off the top of my head:

- Too weird, most normal people won't do it

- Not everyone gives a damn about video games

- Too much of a financial risk for gyms to sign up to such a system

- Too much of a financial risk for someone to build such a system for gyms to sign up to

- Too difficult to get everyone to agree on a game

- Probably wouldn't make all that much difference to the total amount of exercise being done, as it would turn off as many people as it turns on

Basically, this idea could work, so long as it was effectively free to implement. So, by the time physical and informational resources are that cheap, do you really think that no one will have figured out something more efficient than gyms to work out?

Next: "How to make everyone happier: just get all the warlords to agree to peace."

I disagree. I think it sounds great. It deals with two of the key things I like least about my gym:

* It's a space with so many social possibilities, but 95% of the time everyone acts as if everyone else were invisible.

* All I get for entertainment is banks of TVs with mind-numbing rolling news coverage, mind-numbing sports, and mind-numbing (and slightly pornographic) music videos.

If I wasn't in the middle of a PhD I'd be tempted to have a go myself.

As somebody who works out a lot, this idea does not appeal to me. I put myself in the shoes of people who attend aerobics and cycling classes (I strictly do free weights and the occasional cardio machine). And even then, I think this would be a turnoff to them. Yes, they like the encouragement of having an instructor and the pressure of keeping up with their classmates. But generally they would be turned off by having to compete against another team. It might sound sexist, but a lot of the people who attend classes at my gym are women and there is more of an air of the class being like schoolyard skipping rope than competitive team sport. The focus is on cooperation amongst the team itself, but not in an effort to beat some opponent.

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