Kids and Exercise

The statistics relating to children and obesity are grave and are projected to get worse. The bottom line is this: we, as adults, parents and policymakers, are responsible to ensure that children have better nutrition habits and that they are more physically active. Between television, computers, video games and other sedentary distractions, there are too few opportunities for children to go outside, be active or play sports and games.

Some innovative alternatives include combining video games and exercise at schools and programs with local running programs like the New York Road Runners, which resonate with students at schools as far away as South Africa. In general, progress is being made at the school-level.

We here at introPLAY are exploring ways to bring our exercise tracking and introLEAGUES to children through schools and other youth organizations. We are looking to create a private version of the introPLAY website for select schools that would involve exercise tracking and competitions for all the students. If you are an administrator and/or involved with physical education at a school and you are interested in finding out more about conducting a pilot program with introPLAY, please contact us.

introPLAY Now on Facebook Platform

introPLAY has just launched the Workout Olympiad application on the Facebook platform. Now, you can keep track of your workouts and stay active and fit with friends right from your Facebook account!

With the Workout Olympiad, Facebook users can:

• Enter workouts in 90 different sports and activities
• View recent workouts of friends or all Facebook users
• See how you stack up against friends and other Facebook users in the rankings
• Check your performance stats
• Write a workout blog using the Notes feature
• Keep on top of injuries using the Injury Report

The Workout Olympiad can be used as a standalone application in Facebook, or you can link it to your introPLAY account! Linked accounts automatically sync which means that when you enter a workout in the Workout Olympiad on Facebook, it automatically contributes to your introPLAY website trophies, introLEAGUE standings and your overall stats!

We hope by integrating your workout habits into Facebook, exercise can become more social and fun, and part of your daily routine.

Join now!

Link to the Workout Olympiad

New Features in introPLAY

We would like to announce two new features on introPLAY–improved visibility settings and better automatic team selection in introLEAGUES.

Click here to see the profile visibility settings. If that does not work, click on “Profile” and then “Account Settings” from your introPLAY account. There are now three options for visibility.

• Low. Only friends and participants in your introLEAGUES can see your profile and your workouts will not show up in the Wokrout Ticker.
• Medium. Your profile will be viewable by all Players who are logged into introPLAY.
• High. Your profile will be viewable by anyone, even if they are not logged into introPLAY. They can view your profle at http://players.introplay.com/profile/[username]/

Our second new feature is better automatic team selection in introLEAGUES. Now, if you do not get around to choosing teams, we will automatically set up two teams as evenly as possible based on historic performance of all Players in the introLEAGUE. That will ensure more evenly balanced teams!

Start an introLEAGUE today to take advantage of the new automatic team creation feature!

Keep Your Friends Healthy

You can have an impact on the health and wellness of your friends. By being healthy, you are setting an example. And when you see your friends follow your example, you will reinforce it for yourself. It’s a positive cycle for you and your friends. How can you show your commitment to fitness and health? Start an introLEAGUE and invite your friends from all over! A little bit of healthy competition can kick start everyone’s commitment to fitness.

A little while back, the New York Times featured an article entitled “Study Says Obesity Can Be Contagious.” The author discussed a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that covered 12,067 people for 32 year. The conclusion of the study was that “people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese.” Another interesting finding was that geographic proximity did not matter.

If unhealthy habits are contagious, then we should think the other way around: that seeing or knowing a healthy friend (or being that healthy friend) can reinforce those behaviors and habits among friends. In fact, the article pointed out that “the same effect seemed to occur for weight loss… But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years of the study, the result was an obesity epidemic.” We can reverse the cycle towards better health for ourselves and our friends.

For those of you who don’t know, introLEAGUES are exercise competitions on introPLAY. Think of them as fantasy sports, but for you and your actual workouts. Start an introLEAGUE, form teams, score introPOINTS for each workout and climb up the standings!

Link to New York Times article