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Jane Fonda brought fitness into people’s homes nearly 40 years ago. Could an crowdsourcing app in 2018 do the same?
Why hire a personal trainer when you could just crowdsource your workout instead? Researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle University wanted to answer that question, so they created an app they say is just as effective as professionally-created workouts. The researchers presented their findings on April 25 at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems conference in Montreal.
Exercise has been linked to better mood, overall health and even higher likelihood of achieving one’s goals. But for those who are new to exercise and want some extra help getting started, it can be expensive, the researchers said.
At many major gyms in the U.S., personal trainers can cost $60 or more per hour. The researchers wanted to find a way to make exercise plans cheaper and wanted to test whether their online platform, CrowdFit, could help. (CrowdFit is currently a research prototype, and the researchers said they have no financial stake in CrowdFit.)
How it works: A person who wants to create an exercise plan creates a personal profile on the app, with information including their work schedule, interests and exercise preferences. Then, someone else on the app—who is not a fitness professional—creates a week-long exercise plan for them, based on exercise and health guidelines that CrowdFit provides.
At the end of the week of exercises, the user gives feedback, and the planner creates an updated schedule for the following week. There were 46 participants in the study, who were divided into three groups.
One group received exercise plans using CrowdFit from non-fitness experts. The researchers paid the planners $7 per plan. The second group got exercise plans from personal trainers. And the third group received exercise plans made by non-fitness experts, but on Google Docs rather than CrowdFit.
A team of experts — who all either had a bachelor’s degree in sport and exercise science and/or national certification in personal training — evaluated each plan. Based on these evaluations, the team determined the CrowdFit plans were as effective as the ones created by personal trainers. Their criteria: Whether they incorporated basic exercise principles, their compatibility with user preferences and schedules, and whether they included enough aerobic activity.
Participants also found them easier to understand than the professionally-created plans, the researchers said. “There may not yet be a substitute for a trainer prompting a person through a routine on the gym floor, but the role of the expert is expanding to become more collaborative,” said co-author Molly Welsh, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Seattle University.
Indeed, other apps and online programs have become popular—although many of them are, in fact, created by experts. Some of the most popular include MyFitnessPal, Fitocracy and Daily Burn. Prices for those range from free for some basic features to $10 to $20 per month for “premium” versions. Coaches on Fitocracy charge a minimum of $1 per day.
Of course, personal trainers, while more expensive, can provide benefits online programs can’t, such as correcting one’s form in real time, instructing how to use exercise equipment, giving motivation face-to-face, and helping to prevent any gym-related injuries. What’s more, the CrowdFit-generated exercise routines had some weaknesses. The plans should have included more stretching and more warm-ups and cool-downs, the researchers said.
But don’t people have enough on their plate with their own exercise routines? Why ask these non-fitness experts to create the plans at all? It helps them too, said Gary Hsieh, a co-author of the study amd an associate professor of human-centered design and engineering at the University of Washington. “There’s also an opportunity to increase these non-experts’ exercise knowledge, ultimately benefiting not just the users, but also the planners.”