Breaking Up With Gym Pact

It had to be done 😦  I had gone back hoping for the best, and it was smooth sailing for a while.  But then came issues…needing to contact them because rewards weren’t showing.  Needing to contact them because they charged me when I completed my pact.  Friends having similar issues.  And little response from them.  Eventually, all my issues were fixed and I took my money and ditched.  It was more of a hassle than I wanted.

One thing I can’t understand is why they don’t have a way to see your history – like with each week’s workouts, showing how much you earned and what that made your balance.  If I didn’t keep track myself, I might not have realized that I was stiffed 4 of the past 6 weeks.  I have suggested this to them, but they haven’t implemented it.

So no more updates from me on that.  I did make almost $100 for working out since rejoining, never having to pay in.  But that wasn’t too worth it in the end.  Now I no longer have to worry that my workout didn’t count because the app froze or drain my battery first thing in the morning.

So, anyone else have motivational apps I can check out?  Leave them in the comments!

Gym-Pact Take 2

I started using the Gym-Pact App last year when it first started up.  If you haven’t heard of it, you risk an amount for completing workouts.  So I risk $5 that I will log 3 workouts with them (starting small and will up it as I get more confident in the app working!).  If I fail to complete my workouts, I lose my money.  If I succeed, I get a share of the money of those who did not complete their pact proportionate to the amount of workouts I wagered (so if I bet I’ll do 6 workouts, I’ll get more money than the 3 I’m doing now).    From January to May of last year, I made about $50 and never paid in.

I had some issues though.  I tried to cash out 4 times before deciding to quit.  Two out of four times, I had an issue with the transaction and had to deal with customer service.  Customer service didn’t get back to me in a time frame I found acceptable (I’m talking weeks, not hours).  I also had many glitches with the app logging me out during my workout or saying the workout was complete but having it missing later.  It was more of a hassle than a motivator, so I quit.

A friend of mine used the app also, and made awesome progress last year.  You can check her out on Gym-Pact’s blog.  This year, they launched Gym-Pact Anywhere, allowing you to use the app for home workouts.  At first, you could only workout at a gym (had to be verified) and then you could do a run with RunKeeper.  Anywhere uses the accelerometer on the iPhone to judge if you’re moving enough and you have (I think) 150 minutes to get 30 minutes above their threshold for a minute.  So far TurboFire cardio workouts hit the threshold but the strength and stretch workouts do not.

So I’m trying it again, actually starting next week though I’ve been logging workouts.  I am having an issue with the app not counting past 16 minutes with the lock screen on (it resumes when unlocked) which I am told they are working on.  But otherwise it’s good.  I wish there was a way for it to work for less intense movements but that’s one of the reasons I wanted to try before going all out into 6 workouts a week.  I probably can’t guarantee time for more than 5 every week that will make their threshold.  But that’s still good!  I’ll post any updates as to how I do with the app.

Workout yesterday – TurboFire Fire30 and Tone30
Workout today – most of TurboFire Fire55EZ and foam rolling