Last December, Michael Garcia began going to his local Dave & Buster’s in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to play an arcade game called Pump It Up.. Players move their bodies to the beat of the music as colored arrows light up on a platform beneath their feet. As the levels progress, the beats get faster and more complicated.
Before long, Garcia, 26, was addicted. He used to only play the game for an hour or two a week, but now he plays all day just as well. “I stayed here for 8 hours on Saturday,” he says. “I had even brought a packed lunch so I could continue.”
Garcia says he started to see positive changes in his body. He lost weight and felt fitter than he had been in a long time. But the point was – when he played Pump It Up, he never… felt like he was training. Why was that?
Garcia poses for a portrait for the Pump It Up game. The object of the game is to move your body to the rhythm of the music.
Becky Harlan / NPR
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Becky Harlan / NPR
Garcia poses for a portrait for the Pump It Up game. The object of the game is to move your body to the rhythm of the music.
Becky Harlan / NPR
As it turns out, there’s an entire area of research devoted to this question: fitness gamification. It’s about “trying to make things we want to do that are typically tedious and boring” [like exercise] — and find ways to make them fun,” said Dr. Mitesh Patel, a researcher on the topic and head of the behavioral insights team at the Ascension healthcare group.
Games like Pump It Up are fun, he says, because it takes things that make games addictive — points, levels, and challenges, for example — and combines them with physical movement. This powerful combination motivates people to keep playing… and exercising.
The good news is that we can apply these techniques to our daily fitness routines. Life Kit chats with Patel and Elizabeth Lyons, an associate professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who studies how gamification can motivate exercise in older women, about how exercise can be as fun as a video game.
1. Have a purpose
Wearable technology, such as an activity tracker, can help you track your progress as you work towards achieving your goals.
Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
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Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
Wearable technology, such as an activity tracker, can help you track your progress as you work towards achieving your goals.
Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
When you play a game, there is always a goal. It helps us focus on the task ahead and motivates us to keep playing until we win the game. Exercise shouldn’t be any different, Patel says. Create a clear fitness goal. For example, aim to walk 10,000 steps a day, or try to run a total of 6 miles each week.
But to see your progress and whether you’ve reached your goal, it helps to keep track of your physical activity, Patel says. That includes steps, heart rate and distance traveled. And there are plenty of digital tools that can help with this: wearable technology like the Fitbit or the Apple Watch, or smartphone apps that may come with your device for free (like the Health app on the iPhone) or free to download like Google Fit or Strava.
You can also ditch the high-tech methods and go old school, Patel says. For example, if your goal is to be physically active for at least 150 minutes a week, write down in a notebook how long you’ve been exercising.
2. Compete with others…
Sarah Comer demonstrates the Beat Saber game using a virtual reality headset in Washington, DC. During the pandemic, Comer and her family held a competition from their respective homes in different states to see who could accumulate the most points on some of the practice games on their VR headsets, “as a motivator for us to practice and stay connected.” “, she says.
Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
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Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
Sarah Comer demonstrates the Beat Saber game using a virtual reality headset in Washington, DC. During the pandemic, Comer and her family held a competition from their respective homes in different states to see who could accumulate the most points on some of the practice games on their VR headsets, “as a motivator for us to practice and stay connected.” “, she says.
Photo illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR
Research suggests that adding a competitive element to your workout routine can help you train harder. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2019, Patel and a team of researchers challenged 602 overweight and obese employees of a single company to participate in a step-tracking challenge. The group asked for compete other employees ended up taking more steps than any other group in the study.
If you’re looking for a similar motivation, look to fitness programs that encourage friendly competition. With the Zwift app, for example, you can race against others in a virtual world with your own bicycle and treadmill (with the purchase of sensors and other equipment to keep track of data). And many companies offer their employees wellness challenges through their health insurance companies. For example, Cigna has a fitness app that connects employees to compete against other teams.
And don’t forget fitness video games! In addition to Pump It Up, you can also try Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure, a game that combines role-playing game elements with fitness. Players take on enemies by jogging in place and pushing and pulling a ring-shaped controller to defeat the game’s enemies. The game keeps track of your scores and progress against your friends on a leaderboard.
If you have a virtual reality headset, you can try Supernatural, a boxing and meditation game, or Beat Saber, a game that requires you to use your arms to fight your way through musical notes. Play against a friend to get competitive.
3. … Or work with them
In the same 2019 JAMA study, the researchers found that collaboration – letting a group work together towards a common goal – was also an effective way to increase physical activity. Another subset of participants were asked to divide into teams of three. Each day, one member of the group was randomly selected to represent the entire team with their individual step count of the day. This approach encouraged each member of the group to try to meet the day’s step goal. No one wanted to disappoint his team members.
You can try to mimic this dynamic by working toward a training goal with other people, especially those you have a close relationship with, Patel says. They can help “hold you accountable in a way you might not with a stranger,” he says. And you’ll be less likely to break your exercise commitments if someone you like is counting on you to help them achieve their own fitness goals. So grab a close friend or family member and take them to the gym — there’s a reason the “gym buddy” exists.
4. Add a quirky element
Elizabeth Lyons of the University of Texas Medical Department says some people love video games because there are a lot of unpredictability and surprises.
Lyons tries to emulate these characteristics in her own fitness game designs. As part of her research, she created a Facebook page to motivate elderly women in Galveston, Texas, to take a daily walk. To keep the participants sharp, she places fun challenges on the page. For example, she asks the women to take a picture of something that resembles a book cover during their walk – or to mark out as many different types of trees as possible on a checklist she shares beforehand. In response, the participants share photos and comments on the Facebook post with updates of what they discovered during their walks.
“A lot of the things we’ve tried to do… [the] challenges is to bring back a sense of childlike wonder,” she says, kind of like what you get when you first explore a video game world.
You can recreate this sense of whimsy in your own exercises, Lyons says. During your neighborhood walk, take pictures of at least 5 different flowers. Cycle from one friend’s house to another. Beat your personal best to the top of a trail run.
And remember, Lyons says — any moment of playful engagement — active or not — is a win. If exercising, even for a few minutes, makes you feel “a little happy or fulfilled or adds some kind of meaning to your life, that’s great.”
The audio portion of this episode was produced by Audrey Nguyen with technical support from Stu Rushfield. The digital story is edited by Malaka Gharib. We would love to hear from you. Leave a voicemail at 202-216-9823or email us LifeKit@npr.org.
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