▲ ▼ Buddy Training for anything and everything
When I'm training for something say for a weight loss milestone or a new language; I usually give up midway due to lack of motivation.
I know there are several apps for training which put us against several other users and challenges us to rise up in the rankings. But being an introvert, those kind of apps just rises my anxiety and doesn't help me with my training.
I was thinking, if there was a virtual buddy system i.e. someone real who trains along with us for mutual milestones, what ever it may be; say learning cooking, learning programming, physical training etc. that can be highly productive.
You may say, why not ask your friend to train with you? Well, friendships come with packages and biases. I don't think we can have absolute focus in training for something with an existing friend all of a sudden, if at all there's such a friend for everyone.
Besides, an app which pairs us with some random individual for mutual training is a great way to make friends who share common interests.
Let me know if you would like to use a virtual buddy training and if there are any apps like that already.
Hey! Has anyone here checked out Supporti https://getsupporti.com? It's a service (via mobile app) that pairs strangers together 1:1 for a week at time to hold each other accountable to daily habits. It's made to address the exact issue OP identified with friends/family members - sometimes it's awkward for them to hold you accountable. Curious to hear your thoughts!
I think I'm late to the party, but I'm working on something in this area — accountability groups. Right now the focus is developers, but we will eventually expand it. The way it works:
- you pay for a spot in a group (limit 6 per group)
- groups run 30 days using Telegram
- you have to post 1 update per day (i.e. "I went to the gym")
- for each day you don't post, you get charged a penalty fee
We've already run a few for things like building side projects and it's worked really well. I think it could really help with something like exercising or working out too.
You can check it out here: https://dip.chat
Hi! I built something very similar to this. The app is called GoalGroup ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/goalgroup/id1518901461 ). You can join people with the same goals, support each other by sending messages, and grow your streak over time. Additionally, it's very uplifting as you message people as your group does better; I'd love if you checked it out and let me know what you think!
This seems to do what I want! Thanks Jibran, I will check it out. Does it offer recommendation of strangers with similar goals to pair or should the users do it manually with their friends?
Hi everybody!
I think that we've just launched an app that is pretty much similar to what you described. It calls WorkoutNe and it is 1:1 live workouts with random partners from all over the world.
We have combined social facilitation and Japanese Kaizen practice to create an environment with the easiest threshold to enter regular physical activity on the market. Commitment to a real partner motivates you to come to training, and a simple exercise makes the process easy and joyful, so that you want to continue and gradually increase the physical activity.
Here you can read more:
— https://workoutme.app
— https://www.producthunt.com/posts/workoutme
Hope to see you on workouts! ;)
Excellent! Exactly what I wanted for workouts. I hope such apps get created for training in pair for anything and everything.
Thank you for sharing.
I don't know for sure, but maybe you'll find our service co-train.space helpful. We've just started and as of now it allows to train with friends (through video conferencing) and to watch the same synchronized youtube video at the same time. We were thinking about adding a feature which will allow to find a group of people with the same interests so they could organize workouts together.
Hey co-train.space is really cool! Guess it's a buddy training for workouts.
Can you include an option for anyone to open existing room for strangers (with some filters e.g. gender, age etc. including 'any' as option) so that someone without a friend can include/join a room.
Also, I really hope other interests are included soon. All the best!
Thanks for the suggestion! It's already in our "ToDo" list! What interest exactly do you mean here: " I really hope other interests are included soon"?
Hi Ekaterina,
Off topic - There seems to be already another product offering similar solution in the name of cotrain.space and the only differentiator in the domain being the hyphen; there will be inevitable transfer of audience with whoever perform better and unnecessary confusion. This guide for naming a Startup/Product I've written can be helpful to you incase you wish to change the name - https://hitstartup.com/how-to-name-our-startup/.
Thanks for your feedback! Well cotrain.space offer a different product but I agree that there can be confusion among users. Will check out your guide!
this would be totally awesome but the only issue is that we would stop using the app when things got hard. and a random nobody motivator isnt really going to be able to push us because we really dont care about them and they wont ultimately care about us.
so that why people hire coaches. a) you're paying them b) they're doing it because they're getting paid.
its still a good idea though and it could still work but just throwing my two cents. i would use it. at least try to but i also know my brain would coward away at the first hiccup.
That was a very good reasoning. I think guilt of not letting your partner/buddy down might play a crucial role, like what opposite of a leaderboard does to keep us motivated with several tasks.
Peer 2 Peer training might not be for everyone, but I guess someone who decides to give it a shot might hold on to it if the chemistry between the peers work out.
We only tell for sure once someone builds a solution for this, which I wish happens soon.
This is one of those things which seem essential, like someone must have already built an app for this; but couldn't get a fix on it immediately.
I will definitely use this for learning new stuff, without the social pressure of comparing my progress with a large group of people but at the same time someone else keeping me motivated because their progress would likely be same as mine.
Hey! I think I'm late to this by a lot, but definitely checkout https://hours.zone ! It's exactly what you need for this scenario, more so for tasks that you have to do on a computer, not necessarily for exercise haha. Definitely check it out! It's free and requires no sign up :)
Hey thanks for sharing, but it gives 'Internal Server Error' when I try to start a session.
If I join a gym, I would use this. I am not sure if I would use this for anything else.