Fitness Competitions

How do you feel about fitness competitions? I always thought they'd motivate me to workout more because I love competition. My work had a weightloss competition during the holidays (overall I lost 5 pounds in the in first 5 weeks and maintained for the next 5 weeks, better than gaining I guess). Then there was the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge sponsored by Run to the Finish (she has decided to run monthly challenges this year). I lost interest in that one too after it became blatantly obvious that I wasn't going to win.

Awhile back my friend invited me to Fitocracy. I signed up in like October and didn't do anything on it for a few months because I was tracking my exercises on dailymile since all of my goals for the year were focused around miles and dm has all kinds of pretty graphics for miles run...and donuts burned

who wouldn't love this??

Maybe I like dm so much because I'm so in love with math. At the beginning of the year my friend started to bug me about being active on fitocracy so I logged in and started logging my 2012 miles. It was the perfect time to really join the site. Once I started playing around I realized how fun it really is! You get points for what you do and how much effort you put in (an 8 minute mile earns you more points than a 10 minute mile). Your points accumulate to help you level up. The higher the level you are the more you've exercised. So instead of comparing miles (not always fair on dm if you're comparing a biker to a runner), you compare level of effort (it might factor in your weight and perceived effort, not sure what their algorithms are). You can follow your friends and compete against them or you can just do it for your own benefit and challenge yourself to get a certain number of points every day/week/whatever.

In addition there are also Quests. Quests are kind of arbitrary in my opinion but still fun. I think once you log some stuff they start adding Quests to help you round out your training and push your farther and harder (I'm just going to go with that thought...). You get bonus points when you complete Quests (in addition to the points you get for doing the exercises!). As you progress your Quests get more difficult. For example, after I completed the "Run a 5k" Quest, I unlocked the "Run a 10k" Quest and now that I've completed that my next running related Quest is "Run a Half Marathon."

Example Quest

I also have a ton of cross training related Quests. The Quests are fun because the weight lifting ones (at least for me at this point) aren't too difficult/time consuming so it makes you want to add on a few extra things to your workout every day to complete the Quests...or even do some little things maybe while you're watching TV at night instead of sitting on the couch.

It has definitely gotten me to stay at the gym for longer every day and do a little more each time. I haven't really focused on going after specific Quests yet. Until now I've just been happy when I randomly complete a Quest. I think starting this week I'm going to start targeting Quests and try to do more at the gym.

What gets you motivated to work out? Do Fitness Competitions work for you?