#actually we finally uninstalled overwatch so

[fenwick-melesmus]

Games

This post is a few things. It’s a confession. It’s an explanation for my friends. It’s a reminder to myself about how I feel, what got me to this point, and how I need to avoid it.

First off, the confession. I have a problem. I have a crippling video game addiction. I cringe just saying that, but I think it’s true. My dependency on gaming is causing me more problems than it’s worth, and it’s time to stop. I’ve spent the past year doing my homework, doing my studies, but just what I needed to to get by. I have some good portfolio pieces, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come. I still have old deviantart pages that I refuse to visit, and now, I feel like I can actually call myself an artist. I’m so grateful to my instructors, AG, LK, JC, MK, TB, LS. They’ve changed my life. I spent three years at KSU searching for what I want to do, and I think I’ve finally found it. I’ve invested so much to drop the past and move towards my future. New town. New school. New job. New debt. I can’t help but feel like I’m not giving this opportunity justice. I have so much potential at my disposal, and I’m not doing enough. I’ve prioritized the quick-fix-dopamine of competitive video games over my life and my passion.

So, my friends, what does this mean for us? For most of you, our only means of contact, communication, and interaction is through games like CS:GO. Well, I’m not going to leave discord, and I’ll probably always be around to chat (I am still a lonely wreck, after all). I’ll admit, I don’t think I would’ve met many of you without having dumped so much time into these kinds of games - from Halo, to CS:GO, to Overwatch, and more. If you’d like to, I’m going to try to get myself more into Tabletop Simulator, Minecraft, and a few other “chill” games. Maybe we try out Jackbox or online services like DrawTogether? If that’s not your speed, no problem! I don’t want to pressure you into changing your lifestyle to fit mine. I’m not going to fill the “vegan” stereotype in a gaming context.

Now, how do I feel? Well, it’s the fifth of October, 2019. The weather went from low-90′s to mid-50′s just a few days ago. The seasons are changing, and the cool air fills me with wanderlust and hope. Last night, I was in Jonathan Vair Duncan’s Twitch stream, while waiting for the Kaleidoscope render to finish for Motion Graphics. It failed to render 7 times before I updated my graphics driver. That fixed it. JVD’s community is so positive and introspective, utterly profound in philosophy. They’re always there to help you grow. Maybe you’ve forgotten by the time you’re revisiting this, but I felt like I was letting them down. 40 minute render, and I could have been drawing. I could have been doing more productive things, and I wasn’t. I know that I enjoy art, I enjoy drawing, reading, writing, all of it. I even miss it. But, it’s not easy, and it’s not convenient, and it isn’t a quick hit of brain-reward-juice. It’s work. It’s fulfilling and fun, but it’s work. In truth, I don’t think that I was letting them down, but I was letting me down. The difference is, I won’t hold myself accountable. But they will. It is the fifth of October, 2019, and you were in a rut. You were hurting. It’s cloudy, you have a tension headache (which hasn’t left for a week), and you’re once again filled with wanderlust and hope. You’re scared, and you don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re going to do your best.

It’s time to get to work. Tonight, I’ll uninstall a few games before I scramble to finish my homework. Tomorrow, I’m going home to see my family, and I hope that it’ll be fun, it’s so hard to have a positive experience when we’re all together these days... Good luck, me. Make me proud.

[tech-battery]

ACER ASPIRE 5 REVIEW: A $549 LAPTOP THAT DOESN’T COMPLETELY SUCK

The Acer Aspire 5 is a very functional laptop. I used it as my primary work driver for over a week, including the whirlwind that was Black Friday weekend. It loads the pages I need it to. It handles a heavy share of tabs and apps without burning itself up. It’s not seven pounds. Basically, it’s a $549 laptop that doesn’t completely suck.

There was a time when that would’ve made this the best budget laptop you can buy. But that time has come to an end, and the reason rhymes with “bay-MD.”

This Aspire 5 model has a four-core Intel Core i5-1035G1, the same budget- and midrange-oriented processor that powers Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go. Performance-wise, it gets the job done — but its battery life is disastrous, and its integrated graphics are behind the times at this point. My advice: if you can get your hands on one, buy the AMD model with a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 4500U for the same price instead.

Starting with the design, which is the same across both models. I’d say the Aspire 5 looks fine — it’s no Dell XPS, but it’s still respectable from all angles. It comes in a few colors including silver and black. (I have the silver one, though I think the black looks a bit fancier myself.) Most of it is plastic, but the top cover (the part people are most likely to see) is aluminum. There’s some flex in the keyboard and the screen, but not so much that I worried about snapping the thing in half. It’s neither ultraportable nor overly clunky, weighing 3.7 pounds (1.8 kg) and measuring 14.3 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches. Students should note that while the Aspire isn’t terribly heavy, its breadth makes it a bit of a chore to fit in a standard-sized backpack alongside a load of books and binders.

A few other touches you might notice: Like the higher-priced Swift line, the Aspire 5 has a lustrous center hinge with “Aspire” printed across it, which is a nice bit of flair. The bezels, though, are quite large and very plastic-looking. The top one is particularly hefty.

All fair enough. At $549, I’ll take it. But it is worth noting that you don’t need to spend all that much more to get significantly higher build quality if you’re willing to compromise on screen size. The Acer Swift 3 (if you’ll take a 14-incher) is a nicer-looking, slimmer, and sturdier-feeling machine. Its Ryzen 5 4500U model is only $80 more expensive than this Aspire 5 on Acer’s website (and is even cheaper when it’s on sale).

ACER ASPIRE 5 SPECS (AS REVIEWED)

15.6-inch 16:9 display, 1920 x 1080

Intel Core i5-1035G1 (1.0 GHz with turbo boost up to 3.6 GHz)

8GB DDR4 memory

256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, one available hard disk drive bay

3.97 lbs (1.8 kg)

Ports: one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 (one with power-off charging), one USB 2.0, one HDMI 2.0, one audio jack, one Ethernet (RJ-45), one DC-in jack

Windows Hello fingerprint reader

$549.99

“Pure silver” color option

The strength of such a large chassis, though, is that there’s room for a useful port selection. In total, we have one USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1, two USB 3.1 Gen 1, one USB 2.0, one HDMI 2.0, and one Ethernet, as well as a power port. That’s comprehensive, though you’ll need to look elsewhere if you’re seeking Thunderbolt support, a typical omission in this price range.

The display is a bit of a dud on paper. I measured it as covering just 66 percent of the sRGB gamut and 50 percent of AdobeRGB. It also maxes out at 220 nits of brightness. Those are both mediocre as laptop screens go, though they’re not terrible for the category; color-wise, the Aspire actually scored slightly better than the IPS panel on the Swift 3, as well as the Asus VivoBook 15.

The viewing experience wasn’t as bad as those metrics might indicate. The matte panel did a good job of reducing glare; even around 90 percent brightness, I could use the machine outdoors without a hassle. And while Netflix and YouTube looked drab next to more expensive screens, media consumption is still very doable. (Especially because the audio is quite good. It has a nice surround quality and can easily fill a room — I’d put it on par with a decent external speaker. I could actually hear the bass and percussion in my music.)

The Aspire has a nice keyboard. It’s backlit and quiet with decent travel. (It’s mushier than it is clicky, if you have strong feelings about that.) There’s a numpad on the right side, which is a nice feature, but it does push the touchpad to the left. This was irksome for me as someone with small hands. The area that was natural for me to touch with my right hand was the right-click area. I had to intentionally stretch over to left-click, and I never really got used to it — even after a week and a half, I was still accidentally right-clicking all the time. There’s also an embedded fingerprint reader in the top-left corner of the touchpad, but its location wasn’t super convenient for me as a righty and I never ended up using it much.

AGREE TO CONTINUE: ACER ASPIRE 5 (2020)

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

The Acer Aspire 5 presents you with multiple things to agree to or decline upon setup.

The mandatory policies, for which an agreement is required, are:

A request for your region and keyboard layout

Windows 10 License Agreement and Acer License Agreement

A Microsoft account for sign-in (this can be bypassed if you don’t connect the computer to the internet during setup)

A PIN

In addition, there is a slew of optional things to agree to:

Connect to Wi-Fi

Windows Hello fingerprint sensor authentication

Device privacy settings: online speech recognition, Find My Device, Inking and Typing, Advertising ID, location, diagnostic data, tailored experiences

Link an Android phone

OneDrive backup

Office 365

Let Microsoft collect information (including location, location history, contacts, voice input, speech and handwriting patterns, typing history, search history, calendar details, messages, apps, and Edge browsing history) to help Cortana provide personalized experiences and suggestions

Register for an Acer account

Enroll in Acer’s mailing list and the Acer User Experience Improvement Program (allowing Acer to collect information on your usage), and allow Acer to share contact details with Norton so it can send you updates about its pre-installed security software.

In total, that’s six mandatory agreements and 17 optional ones.

Of course, performance is what really makes or breaks a budget laptop. The base Aspire 5 configuration, listed at $399.99 on Acer’s website, can come with a Core i3-1005G1 or an AMD Ryzen 3 4300U (both with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD). There are a number of models at different price points, including some with touchscreens. The system we’re looking at is listed at $549.99 on Amazon and has Intel’s four-core Core i5-1035G1, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. A system with the same specs and a six-core Ryzen 5 4500U is currently listed on Acer’s website for the same price (though it’s hard to find and looks to be sold out on Amazon as of this writing).

It’s important to caveat here that I haven’t tried the AMD system yet — but the six-core 4500U is an impressive chip. In the $799 HP Envy x360 13 (which also has 8GB of RAM), it easily delivered the fantastic performance I’d expect from a Core i7, and it could even run Overwatch on its High settings at over 60fps. Make no mistake: the Intel Aspire 5 didn’t give me any problems during my various office work, social media, emailing, and the like. But performance wasn’t quite as zippy as it was on the AMD Envy. And I got the sense that the thing was chugging — I could almost always hear the fans spinning, even when I was just running a few Chrome tabs. I wouldn’t have wanted to try anything more intense (and unlike Intel’s new Iris Plus graphics, its UHD graphics aren’t a good choice for anything but the lightest gaming).

That’s before we even talk about the battery life. This Aspire 5 averaged four hours and 49 minutes of my daily workload (12-15 Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify streaming, and occasional Zoom calls on the Battery Saver profile at 200 nits of brightness). That’s not good, and it’s especially not enough for students who are out and about all day. AMD processors, by contrast, have been killing it on battery: the 4500U-powered Envy could churn out eight hours of my typical workload while the Swift 3 with a Ryzen 7 4700U got up to seven hours, and the 4800U-powered IdeaPad Slim 7 achieved a monstrous 13 and a half hours.

Final note: there’s some bloatware. I got some annoying Norton pop-ups and occasional notifications from various other programs that came loaded onto the Aspire. These aren’t the end of the world at this price point, but note that you may have to take some time to uninstall if the alerts are bothering you.

So, look, the Aspire 5 gets the job done. It works. It does what you need it to (at least until the battery runs out). There are even a couple areas where it’s punching above its weight class — the audio is great, and it’s nice to have a fingerprint reader.

But if you can get all those benefits plus a six-core AMD processor for the same (or a comparable) price, I see no reason not to go that route instead if you’re wed to the 15-inch system. AMD systems are hard to find, but I recommend digging around or waiting until one becomes available. And if you’re willing to spend a bit more for the Ryzen-powered Swift 3, you’ll see a noticeable difference in build quality and portability as well as multiple extra hours of battery life. For students and on-the-go workers, I think that’s more than worth the cost.

[grimsdottir]

arsuf replied to your post “I keep telling myself I need to play a multiplayer  fps/tps ‘cause...”

If you decide to get TD2 on PS4 we can certainly play sometime! :)

ragingdory replied to your post “ragingdory replied to your post: I keep telling...”

I actually uninstalled Overwatch ages ago but The Division 2 sounds fun, I'll look into it! Won't be able to make it this weekend though since I'm finally visiting my family~

merin replied to your post “I keep telling myself I need to play a multiplayer  fps/tps ‘cause...”

i just downloaded apex if you wanna play together some time ��

I’m definitely getting TD2, Agnė, so we’ll play together soon! Ha! I did too! If you get it, we can play with Agnė too, if that’s possible~ :’) Sweet!! I’d love to play with you Zan!

[valoisfulcanelli]

I believe it was you who said you sometimes have problems running your games in the sims 3. By chance, have you ever had an issue with your game playing for about 8 seconds, then constantly stopping for about 5 seconds before playing again for another 8 seconds? I don't have that much CC in the game, but I was wondering if you ever ran into this and know of some tips to resolving it... If not, then I guess I'll just have to try Google again since EA isn't helping me whatsoever *glares at EA*

Well, EA are hardly going to tell you that their game runs like a sack of shit sometimes, are they? ;)

Some computer-related things to check first of all, before we get into the more game-specific stuff:

What are you playing the game on? Desktop PC or laptop? If it’s a laptop, check that it’s not overheating, especially if you’re playing for extended periods of time. If you get a cooling pad, make sure it’s one with an external power supply (that you plug into a wall socket) and not one with a USB that you plug into the laptop itself. (A USB-powered cooling pad will only make the laptop work harder to power it, and therefore heat up even more!)

Have you simply been playing for a long period of time (more than a couple of hours) when the issue happens? If so, save the game and restart. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Do you have enough RAM, or is your RAM failing? Run a memory test (warning: it’ll take a long time) to see if it’s okay.

How is the health of your hard drive? Run a chkdsk scan on it to make sure you have no bad sectors. A chkdsk with repair is your best option. Again, it will take a long time, but this is something you should do with older computers every now and then anyway. Hard drive failures can be slow (with random odd symptoms) or sudden and catastrophic, and the older the drive, the more likely it is to fail.

Finally, for the computer-related stuff (before we go into the Sims-related stuff) make sure that you’ve run a full virus scan AND a malware scan, both with updated definitions.

I’ll put the rest behind a cut, because it’s going to get lengthy.

The next advice is Sims-related, and it’s all going to depend on how you have your CC installed: either through the launcher itself (ie: you’ve installed sims3pack files through the launcher) or in a Mods folder (which is for package files), or a combination of both. A Mods folder will be in the following location:

C Drive > Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3 > Mods

(Exact location will depend on your OS.)

Before we dive into that, just go into your game and check the graphics settings you’re using, under Options. If you’re running too high a setting for what your computer can handle, sometimes turning it down a notch can make all the difference. But, if that doesn’t work…

First, gather together all of the CC that you have installed (you did keep copies, right?) and run it through two tools:

for sims3pack files, examine each one with Custard. You’ll need to do them individually. (Tutorial for using Custard.)

for package files, examine them with Dashboard. These can be done in one fell swoop, if you put them all into a single folder. (Tutorial for using Dashboard.)

You’re looking mainly for anything highlighted in RED or BLUE. Red is a corrupt file, and needs to be removed, and blue is a Sims 2 file (believe me, sometimes it’s not obvious!) If you find any of those, remove them from your game (either via the launcher or take them out of your Mods folder). Yellow ‘conflict’ files can be mostly ignored.

Don’t examine player-created world sims3packs with Custard. They will automatically show up as red, but that doesn’t mean they’re corrupt.

If you have any lots or player-created worlds installed, remove them (via the launcher. Does the game run smoothly now? Then there’s an issue with one of those. If they contain CC (eg: if a lot was uploaded containing multiple CC items) then it could be just a single one of those CC items causing the problem. I can give you further instructions on how to fix that, if it turns out to be what’s causing the issue.

Check any downloaded Sims, too. Back up their files and remove them via the launcher.

If you have a Mods folder, install the following two Mods:

NRaas Overwatch

NRaas Error Trap

Overwatch will just keep an eye on your game, removing things that can cause lag, such as a build-up of NPC cars and taxis that don’t get deleted at the end of each day, or it will un-stick unroutable ‘stuck’ NPC Sims that can cause tremendous lag issues. The default time it will do this is 3am each day in your game (at which point you may notice a small pause, then it will notify you what it’s removed). Overwatch is a mod that you should really keep installed all the time, if possible, as it helps your game run more smoothly. If the 3am notifications bug you, you can stop being notified by simply shift-clicking on any computer in the game, selecting NRaas > Overwatch > Settings and setting ‘display nightly notifications’ to ‘false’.

Error Trap will log a file to your C Drive folder (listed above) which you can then open in a text editor such as Notepad++ to see what it’s found. This will help you to pinpoint issues with your game, with the world itself, etc. 

Play your game for a while with those two mods installed, and check your C > EA > Sims 3 folder periodically while playing–especially if you encounter that massive lag issue–to see if Error Trap has logged a problem.

If you don’t have a Mods folder, here’s how to get one installed (it’s actually the best way to handle mods and CC, and you’ll need one in order to use the NRaas mods listed above).

If none of the above work, then try the following:

Note down all of the CC you have installed. If you’ve got a decent filing system on the go, then you probably have it all in a backup folder anyway, but just jot down the essentials: the clothing, skins, etc that you don’t want to run your game without.

Create a new folder somewhere (on your desktop, for example) and put all of that CC in it.

Then, uninstall all of your installed CC. Every last bit of it.

Check your Downloads folder (C > EA > Sims 3 again) and if there’s any CC in it, move that CC to your Desktop backup folder.

If you created a Mods folder, move it into that desktop backup folder as well.

Go to the C > EA > Sims 3 folder again and delete the following files:

CasPartCache.package 

compositorCache.package 

scriptCache.package 

simCompositorCache.package 

socialCache.package 

Restart Sims 3 and load up a new game in the default Sunset Valley world. Choose any townie family and play them for a little while, and see if the lag returns. If it does, then your last resort is a complete re-set of the game (without uninstalling). Tutorial link here.

Hopefully a combination of all those will fix the issue. If even the last one doesn’t work, then you may have some hardware problems (to do with your computer itself) so it could be time for an overhaul there.

If this does fix the issue, then come back to me and I’ll walk you through (assuming you don’t already do this) reinstalling all of your CC and what you should do with any other CC, lots, Sims, worlds, etc before you install them :)

[1kungfujew]

So after 2K hrs and over 100$ in warframe i finally was able to uninstall it and quit playing cold turkey. When warframe first came out i tried it and didnt really have any fun so i had stopped playing. Had i known i had metaphorically just taken a shot of crack and came out un-addicted i would never had picked the game back up again. A few months later my brother convinced me to pick the game up cause they had made improvements to the game. So i did. It was enjoyable i would play it with my brother and when i wasn’t playing other games i owned. However it slowly began pushing itself over the other games i was playing to where i would play my other games for an hour or two then spend the rest of my time playing Warframe. I would also play it in-between my homework assignments for my college courses. It was around the end of my third semester at college when the stress was really hitting me with my gamedesign course that i began playing it more. I ended up failing the course and decided to take a semester off to try and figure things out, and here is where i fell off the deep end. So my sister has Dysautonomia, which we found shortly after my vacation semester started. My sister would pass out or she couldn't move her legs and was an all around mess. With both of my parents working during the day i was home due to my semester off. She is better now, still has problems but its mostly controlled now. However for that semester i was my sisters care giver. Making her meals and helping her around the house. Not being able to focus on anything due to my constant worry i turned to the one thing that i enjoyed and could drop at a moments notice which were video games. Mostly warframe. So although i had felt apathetic through all of it i was starting to deal with some heavy depression with the stress of school and home games like warframe that are constantly trying to make you feel good grabs my attention. I failed even more classes the next semester i had lost all intrest in almost everything, I was pretty much glued to warframe. I stopped doing my homework and was just shoving warframe in my face. I had greatly surpassed my brother in hours in this game and was actually starting to loose interest in it as well. I wasnt even having fun anymore. It wasn’t that i could play warframe but that i HAD to play. I could miss the next timed exclusive, what if someone in the ingame clan needed help. Playing the game became a chore almost like a job. So i became a complete mess. So its upsetting to see things like timed exclusives and lootboxes and “extra” content that needs to be payed for in games that i have already bought like Destiny2 and Overwatch. It sucks because i have tones of games i have yet to play, Software and instruments i want to learn, but this shit very effectively grabs my attention and keeps me playing for hours on end. I hate so much about what is happening in the gaming industry right now. Heres a bonus Fire emblem heroes managed to get me to drop over 100$ in it and that game isnt even fun unlike its hand held counterparts. Be careful people with what you play. It only takes one transaction one “spin of the wheel” to get you sucked in. A 1$ purchase quickly becomes 5$ then 20$ and then your spending more of not just money but your time.

[dorothyd89]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

http://ift.tt/2oZ4c43

http://ift.tt/2o5E0Hm

http://ift.tt/2oLxN4n http://ift.tt/2oMbX18 http://ift.tt/2ol2ddg

[johnclapperne]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[almajonesnjna]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain��t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[albertcaldwellne]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[ruthellisneda]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[joshuabradleyn]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[neilmillerne]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

http://ift.tt/2otGAYP

[fitnetpro]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape published first on http://ift.tt/2kRppy7

[sportsandfitnessinfo]

New Post has been published on http://fitnessandhealthpros.com/fitness/positive-peer-pressure-how-to-leverage-your-squad-to-get-in-shape/

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $ 5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $ 50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $ 5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $ 5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

Originally at :Blog – Nerd Fitness Written By : Steve

#Leverage, #Peer, #Positive, #Pressure, #Shape, #Squad #Fitness

[dorothyd89]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

###

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[dorothyd89]

Positive Peer Pressure: How to Leverage Your Squad to Get In Shape

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

“Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.

“Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”

“Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”

“Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

Scruffy-looking nerfherder

Scalawag

Cotton-headed ninny muggins

Ragamuffin

Amoeba

Hooligan

Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

“Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].

“Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”

“I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

“Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”

“Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”

“Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”

“Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community

Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.

Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete

Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.

Repeat

Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

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