Help us design a fair exercise competition!

April 27, 2009 1:27 PM

Help us design a fair exercise competition!

My cousin and I have both decided to put an effort into incorporating more exercise into our daily life. Instead of working toward some kind of tangible reward, we agree that competition would be a good motivating factor.

We are both women at nearly the exact same age (27) with very similar physical builds and goals. Our chosen exercises include a variety of things including bicycling, running (C25K), strength exercises and "leisure exercises" such as golfing or walking the dog.

In the past, we have tried doing a competition based on cumulative minutes spent at the gym, but this turned out to be somewhat lopsided when we found we had different levels of activity going head-to-head, such as forty minutes of walking and light strength exercises versus thirty minutes of intense cardio.

We like to record our efforts on a shared Google spreadsheet. How can we "score" our activities fairly? Would it make sense to have different tiers of exercises worth different points? What would the tiers be based on - something such as calories burned per hour?

In summary, we are looking for a way to compete for fitness based on effort, rather than weight-loss or achievements. Have you had a similar plan that was successful? How can we make this as fair as possible?

Thanks in advance!

posted by bristolcat to health & fitness (8 comments total)

If you both could commit to heart rate monitors, you could compete in average heart rate X time.

So if you're walking for an hour at 105 bpm that could give you 105 x 60 = 6300 while running at 150 bpm would only take 42 minutes to get the same score.

You'd probably want to set a lower threshold so you couldn't just log a hour of watching tv at 70 bpm.
posted by advicepig at 1:39 PM on April 27

To build on advicepig's comment (especially his final caveat), you could use (heart rate - resting heart rate) * time. So if your resting heart rate is 70 bpm, the hour walking might be (105-70)*60=2100, and you would only need 26 minutes of running at 150 bpm for the same score.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:29 PM on April 27

You could have weekly (or whatever) workout-based competitions. Do whatever you want most of the time and once a week you both do the same workout. For example, fastest time to run a mile, most pushups in five minutes, etc. Crossfit uses these scored-type of workouts to motivate people.
posted by Durin's Bane at 2:43 PM on April 27

There are many online databases that estimate calories burned for a specific activity. If the goal is weight loss, then this might be a good comparison.
posted by chrisamiller at 2:46 PM on April 27

Since you want to base this on effort rather than achievement, you will probably have to establish somewhat arbitrary weighting systems for different kinds of exercises. One idea is to multiply the time spent on any particular activity by some agreed-upon unit. For example:

- Walking the dog; golf = time x1
- Jogging, light cycling = time x1.5
- Sprint interval training = time x2.5

Thus 2 hours of golf = 80 minutes of jogging = 48 minutes of sprint interval training.

You can (and probably should) change the exact weighting system to reflect how hard you work, but as long as you agree ahead of time, the system is pretty fair. If you can't find some objective way (such as calories burned) to score the tiers, then determine your own. This also allows you to establish incentives for particular kinds of exercises. In this case, sprinting for an hour is worth considerably more than golfing for an hour, so with limited time you might prefer to do the latter. Figure out what you least like to do and score those activities higher.
posted by googly at 3:35 PM on April 27

Oops - should read "with limited time you might prefer to do the former."
posted by googly at 3:48 PM on April 27

100 push-ups
200 sit-ups
200 squats

If you participated in all three together, there would be a lot of room for competition. First one to reach 200, who scores higher on weekly or biweekly tests, etc. The site lets you log your results as you go.
posted by hermitosis at 4:17 PM on April 27

I whole-heartedly agree with Durin's Bane. Measuring average heart rate, calories burned or time spent at the gym is a waste of time. There are a few different ways you can go about this.

My first preference for this sort of thing is a weekly competition, that way you have a short-term goal to aim for every week that will make you push yourself while you are at the gym. CrossFit workouts would be great for this. Of course, it would be best if you followed CrossFit but then again I drank the Kool-Aid and am biased. Take a look at crossfit.com for an idea what I'm talking about.

If you'd rather not do a CrossFit workout, max effort lifting or various races would be good for this.
posted by Loto at 5:34 PM on April 27