An Overview of Fitocracy – The Social Network for Fitness

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What Is Fitocracy?

Chances are that you’ve never heard of this site before. It’s a recent startup that’s currently exploding in the internet world and for a good reason.

Fitocracy is a social networking site for fitness. It’s the place to track your workouts, beat challenges, and compete against other people.

It combines the structure of Facebook, the “following” feature of Twitter, and the gamification of role-playing games. I haven’t really played any RPG games, but for those who have, let me give you a heads up that Fitocracy is just as addicting.

This isn’t your regular game though where you have to press the buttons on your keyboard or mouse. In order to “level up”, you have to exercise. Yes, in real life. Not on the computer. And the more you level up on the site, the more you level up in real life. More on that later.

But the best feature of Fitocracy is the community. This site wouldn’t be as big as it is now without the social component of it. Founders  and  has made it extremely easy for you to interact with people with the same goals as you. Fitocracy allows you to go on a fitness journey for yourself, but not by yourself.

Workout Logging On Steroids

Leveling up is achieved through the points you earn from performing many different exercises. From weight lifting and cardio, to playing sports like basketball and even rock climbing, you’ll get points for almost any fitness activity. The more points you rack up, the faster you level up.

The psychology behind this is that it will make you more dedicated to your fitness goals while treating it as a game rather than a task. Because let’s be honest, there’s been times when you just wanted to skip a workout or two. Or when you wanted to just give up completely because you didn’t see any results.

Fitocracy changes all of that. Every single time you log a workout and see the numbers on your computer screen, there’s this instant excitement where you want to go back to the gym just to improve those numbers.

Why is this a good thing? Well, for the simple reason that progress always lead to results. Numbers don’t lie. Any type of progress is good progress. Whether you increase the weight on the bar or the reps that you do for an exercise, the more you progress the better (and maybe faster) your results will be.

Just to show you an inside look, the picture above is a screenshot of a recent workout that I logged. As you can see, everything is pretty much straight-forward. It shows the points you’ve earned from your workout, your PR’s (marked with a star), and the “props” and comments that you receive from your followers. Giving someone “props” is exactly like “liking” someone’s post on Facebook.

And then this one a screenshot of the stats page located in my profile. What you’re seeing here is a graph of the max sets for every single deadlift workout I’ve done since December 5th (the first day I logged a deadlift exercise on the site). By being able to see my stats, I can easily figure out what I need to do in order to beat what I did for the past weeks. Another great reason why I love this site.

Awesome Fitness Community

Although achieving points from your workouts is satisfying, the community is what completes Fitocracy.

The site would be nothing without its users. Like I said earlier, when trying to reach a certain fitness goal, you’re in it for yourself but not by yourself.

With Fitocracy, you’re in an environment where people are willing to talk about anything fitness-related. On Facebook, nobody really cares when you put up a status about your new Squat, Bench, or Deadlift PR’s. Meanwhile on Fitocracy, that’s the kind of stuff we love to see.

The site also has groups that you can join. For instance, if you’re an intermittent faster, there’s a group called Intermittent Fasting where people can get advice from other intermittent fasters from all around the world. Are you a runner? There’s a group called Long Distance Running that you might want to be a part of. Are you a martial artist? There’s a group for that too.

Aside from the Fitocracy groups, there’s also a message board that anyone can participate in as long as you’re a member. It’s slowly becoming the go-to place for people to talk about things pertaining to training, nutrition, or even just random topics. The number of active users are growing, and it’s just going to keep getting bigger over the coming months.

So Why Use Fitocracy?

You might be thinking to yourself “Uhh why do I need to get all geeky and try to level myself up in a social game? What if I don’t want to talk to people about fitness? This is stupid/nonsense/meaningless/pointless.”

To be honest, that’s what I said too when I first heard about it. The idea of logging my workouts to get points and leveling up sounded really dumb.

But one day I gave in and decided to try it out.

As soon as I had gotten home from a Monday morning workout, I logged on Fitocracy what I did in the gym. After seeing the achievements and points that I earned, I was instantly hooked. I’m not sure what it was, but something just clicked in my head. “This site lets me track my workouts… AND shows my PR’s…  AND allows me to connect with other people who work out… Can Wednesday come already so I can go back to the gym?!”

Now, Fitocracy is one of the sites that I visit on a daily basis. If I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, I’m on Fitocracy.

Check it out for yourself. The site is still in BETA invite-only so to sign up you’re going to need an invite from someone who’s currently a member. Here’s one for you from yours truly. Don’t forget to follow me! I’ll be sure to follow you back. =)

Comments

    • OliveiraMikeC says

      @VonsFitnessTips No problem man! I’m a Fitocracy user myself and I think you provided an excellent review of it! It’s definitely helped me!

      Reply

  5. DickTalens says

    Whaaaat, you thought it was stupid when you heard about it?!?!?! ;) But THE AA endorses it!

    Kidding bro. Great article, and really cool to have you as part of the community.

    Reply

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