If Strava makes it more fun for some people, then that's absolutely fantastic. However, I see a lot of people (new cyclists in particular)that want to micromanage all of their exercise, and it seems like it causes them anxiety.
I lift weights, and as someone who is not bulking (nor have I for a few years), I don't keep track of my lifting. I just lift in the volume and weight that feels good to me. Exercise science is kind of a wasteland anyway, so detailed data on one's workouts isn't even particularly useful information.
This has never worked for me. The extra push is exhausting, and then I use that as an excuse to skip the next day, and eventually the habit breaks.
Don't overexert yourself, do only the amount that feels good and keep it easy so that you're not turned off when you need to do it again the next day.
Once you've built up a habit, you can slowly ramp it up, but trying to go too fast has always caused me to stop altogether. If you go slowly enough that you don't notice the additional exertion, you're much more likely to keep your habit.
Contrary to popular soundbytes, you actually can improve without pushing yourself too hard. It's weird going from barely being able to run half a mile to running five miles without getting seriously winded, but it does work, and you don't ever need to feel winded in the process. If you start to feel bad, stop. Don't beat yourself up if you didn't get as far as you did yesterday, just do it again tomorrow.
I was only ever able to do this slowly. Overexerting myself always failed.
As for fun... Eh. I've gotten to the point where I feel restless if I haven't gone running, so then I go run and shower, and then I feel great. But the restless itching feeling is the habit that makes me want to go, not fun in the moment. Maybe running is weird.
Find something you like! It can be any activity that requires some exertion! Canoeing! Trail hiking! Boxing! Street hockey! Soccer? Bouldering! There's so many different forms of sports and activities and there's going to be one both fun and challenging for you enough to make it part of your daily life. That's what you need.
That's not my argument at all. In fact I'm reducing the entry cost to achieving a fit lifestyle and explaining what's actually important.
You don't need any apps, you don't need to pay a monthly subscription for a digital service. Maybe you might have to pay a membership fee at a gym or a boxing club or some place you can go to do to the thing you want to do. The local canoe club, who knows.
I'm proposing these apps are like fad diets, people will pay for them, see they don't work, and move on to the next thing, perpetuating failure and bad outcomes. I predict this $500m investment will blow up as a failure, that was more the point I was trying to make.
People just need to fix their behavior. They need to find an activity they like, prioritize it, create a routine, and make it part of their life. People have been doing this since before apps existed, and it's all it takes, and apps can't do that. You have to do it for yourself.
For me, as a longtime occasional cyclist (get into it for a few years, stop, restart, etc), once upon a time (1 year) competitive college athlete, but mostly lazy slob.. it involved my wife buying the Peloton bike .... then 6 or 8 months later when I was regularly biking to work, but still gaining weight... started seeing a personal trainer.. he encouraged me to track what I eat, and I've now been using myfitnesspal for 3 years. You could point to any one of these things as being what did it for me; obviously the structure and advice from seeing a trainer was crucial, but #1 on that list for me was MFP, so yes, an app (and a free one at that!) The feedback loop of what I inputted there showing up on the scale the next week was addictive. It was the first time anything really "worked" for me. #2 on that list is the Peloton, in particular once I started doing Power Zone training, where I could join a team, stick to a schedule, and quantify performance gains that I can now see when I set personal records up local climbs on my road bike. I'm also in a running club and compete on the road and cross-country.
Again, everyone's path is different, and I absolutely could have done any of this on my own, but I'm 39 years old, and the reality is, I didn't until I started using an iPhone app. And the data and quantifiable results of my various forms of training are what keeps me going, and reinforces those habits.
> what it takes to be strong and fit cannot be derived from apps. You have to know how to prioritize, fitness has to be in the top of that priority list, you have to have the skills to create and stick to a routine. You have to know how to manage your time, how to get enough sleep, how to eat, how to move your body - like how to hip hinge for example - what activity you enjoy, how to achieve goals. A fitness app isn't going to do any of these things for you.
Powerlifting as a sport is full of gimmicks and fads, the post struck out to me as calling out these gimmicks and fads and to return to the basics and bare essentials with the lowest barrier of entry, which to me seems to be for a good reason as the fads often come across as gatekeeping the sport and raising the barrier to entry in general, which begs the question, is it gatekeeping to call out such gatekeeping behaviour? To put it another way, would it be gatekeeping to suggest that healthy weight people don't need to follow fad diets to remain at a healthy weight? Is it gatekeeping to call out often times harmful fad diets? Is it denigrating to the people following said diets? The implication seems to be that it's wrong to gatekeep even if the purpose is to caution against spending money on gimmicks or fads that might not be the best way to achieve a persons goals.
The quote says literally that you "have to" do all these things and they "cannot be derived from apps".
> This isn't entirely true of course as some apps have started incorporating programming and technique information as well as dietary information etc and can provide live coaching services at a premium, but this is starting to get beside the point.
It's not beside the point, it is the point. The quoted claim is wrong. Everything the quote claims you can't get out of an app, actually you can.
> the post struck out to me as calling out these gimmicks and fads and to return to the basics and bare essentials with the lowest barrier of entry, which to me seems to be for a good reason as the fads often come across as gatekeeping the sport and raising the barrier to entry in general
I don't see how offering an app to do x is gatekeeping, unless someone tries to suggest that that app is the only way to do x (which is not something I've seen happening). Whereas saying that you have to do x the traditional way and anything else is never going to work, is absolutely gatekeeping.
> To put it another way, would it be gatekeeping to suggest that healthy weight people don't need to follow fad diets to remain at a healthy weight? Is it gatekeeping to call out often times harmful fad diets?
If you claim that the only way to maintain a healthy weight is the way that you do it, that's gatekeeping. If a specific diet is harmful then by all means call it out, but if you start making blanket - and false - claims like diets can never help anyone, or all diets other than the one you like are fads, then that's gatekeeping.
> The implication seems to be that it's wrong to gatekeep even if the purpose is to caution against spending money on gimmicks or fads that might not be the best way to achieve a persons goals.
That wasn't the purpose that came through in that post.
People like the idea of doing something (in the case, becoming fit). They are not fit. This causes brain distress. Brain wants to do something about this dissonance, so brain says, "oh, I can buy a very expensive item that is a tool for becoming fit. Ahhhh, there is some relief to my dissonance." And then you buy the mirror and continue to not train, but your brain feels some sense of completion.
This factor has been studied. https://interruptions.net/literature/Wicklund-BASP81.pdf
This factor I have observed in my own behaviors first-hand.
So I agree with you, this is a far larger market than people who think about correct movement and actual gains.
> Lay people who are not into being fit are the audience for all these ridiculous things that don't help them get or stay fit because what it takes to be strong and fit cannot be derived from apps.
[citation needed]
The argument basically seems to boil down to "fat lazy slobs should just give up".
Everyone's "journey" (sorry, I hate the term, too) starts somewhere. This kind of thing is exactly what some people will need. I have no idea if $500M will turn out to be a good investment, nor what % of Mirror buyers will get into fitness long-term. But the reality is that some/many of them will, and it's pretty silly to imply that someone using a gadget to get into fitness cannot or will not learn to prioritize fitness, learn skills, how to manage their time, all these things you tout.