Strength in Numbers: Social Media and Community Accountability

Are you on Facebook or Twitter?  Do you post on one (or both) after you finish workouts?

One of the best ways to keep a training program on track is to be accountable to someone other than yourself.  It works with sports teams, it works with early morning running partners, and it works with social media.

Just like it’s a lot harder to sleep through a pre-dawn run if you know your running buddy is out there on the corner waiting for you, it’s a lot harder to skip a workout when you’re recording your progress online.

That’s why we tie social media right into our apps — to give you the opportunity to tell the world that you’ve committed to a training program and that you are darn well going to see it through.

It isn’t to help you brag about how fast you’re getting or make your friends feel like slobs.  (These are simply added benefits.)  The real idea is just to help you say “Hey, I was out there doing my workouts this week…and I’ll do it next week, too.”

As people begin to share more and more online — whether it’s a close circle of friends on Facebook or pages of fellow runners posting under the @runhelper hashtag on Twitter — sharing our fitness goals, challenges, and victories becomes more and more commonplace.

Finish a run that you didn’t want to start?  Post about it.  You just might inspire someone glued to their couch, about to miss the day’s run.

Thinking about skipping one yourself?  Imagine how it would feel if you had to post about that.  “Dear Facebook and Twitter: tonight I didn’t run because I didn’t feel like it.  Now I’m mad about it.  Frowny face.”

There’s strength in numbers.  And the more people you can involve, even if it’s just an occasional tweet or status update, the better your chances of making it to the end.

If you have fitness-minded friends, they can be a great source of motivation as you work your way through your training plan.  If you don’t, the beauty of the internet is that they aren’t hard to find.  There are all sorts of opportunities to connect with people who have the same goals you do.

Remember: you never have to run alone.