US app Gym-Pact pays you to work out

If you’ve ever thought living a healthy, active lifestyle would be so much more appealing if you received some kind of reward for your efforts, then you’re in luck because a new application called Gym-Pact actually pays you for sticking to your work out goals.

You begin by downloading the app and then committing to a certain number of work outs per week. You then agree to pay money for each day you miss. Bear with us on this one… If you then manage to hit your goals you get a share of the money from those who didn’t.

Of course you can’t expect to quit your job and spend all day at the gym in an effort to get lots of cash. Gym-Pact takes 3% of the money and most people do stick to their goals because of the incentives at the end. You also can’t lie and say you went to the gym when you didn’t, the app checks your location at regular intervals, so unless you want to sit in the lobby and pretend you’re working out (which would be very sad indeed) you should probably just get on the treadmill.

Of course it’d be much better in the long run if you were motivated by the personal desire to be fit, healthy and happy rather than wanting to make a few extra pennies, but an app like Gym-Pact might just be the kick start some people need to get moving.

There are many issues with the app at the moment, it’s currently only in the US and it does depend on lots of other users signing up and committing to goals. However, we’re really interested to see how many users start committing to Gym-Pact goals in 2012, as its interesting take on gamification and cash incentives could pave the way for a new form of motivation in the future.

Available from iTunes for US users for free.

[Via OhGizmo]