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Comment by MtL | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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