What Is Gamercising and Why Does It Matter?

Despite being one of the ugliest words to have been invented, gamercise is everywhere right now. But is it just a buzzword? What does it really mean and why does it matter?

Gamercise is a bit like gamification. The goal of gamification is to make us more likely to complete those everyday tasks that would normally seem repetitive, boring or trivial.

For instance – how many people use LinkedIn? You may have noticed that your user profile has a percentage figure next to it. This is gamification in action. The percentage gently persuades you to try to edge closer to the 100% mark, requiring more form filling – and giving LinkedIn a fuller data picture of their users. It is a proven and effective way of encouraging their users to do more than they might otherwise.

So gamercise is gamification for fitness. Exercising more leads to wellness, a longer life and generally a happier outlook – but often this knowledge alone isn’t enough to incentivise us into action. Motivating clients continues to be a big challenge for gyms.

Gamercise aims to motivate us to get fit and retain our enthusiasm for working out – making exercise challenging, fun and interesting, with or without the support of a personal trainer.

The effectiveness of gamercise is supported by a growing number of scientific investigations, especially amongst individuals who might feel intimidated by a standard gym offering.

Leading by example… at Rugged Interactive, we use gamification and the latest technology to make fitness more fun, as well as appealing to the competitive side within in us all.

For example, FitMakr Pro is the power behind CardioWall – it’s a fully digital software platform, built from the ground up and incorporated into all our products. You can see FitMakr Pro in action at LIW 2013 in the picture above; it is also installed in our CardioWall Pro-X at the iZone in Silverstone.

FitMakr Pro enables each individual user to review, compare and track performances over time and share these on the internet. Leaderboards challenge each gym, user or location to compete across many different fields.

Gamercising is here to stay, despite its grammatical shortcomings – and at Rugged Interactive we say embrace it!

by Simon Heap