Yes, that's right, you can pay for an app for you cell phone that will "fine" you when you fail to meet your planned gym workouts.
Gym Pact, a new program dreamed up by Zhang and fellow Harvard grad Geoff Oberhofer, charges you a penalty for skipping your workouts. It launches Jan. 1 at gympact.com.
"A gym membership is something you pay for at the beginning of the year or the beginning of the month, and there's no additional money on the line," Zhang says. "We wanted to tie a cash incentive to every single workout you do, week-by-week."
Here's how it works: You set a pact to get to the gym of your choice a certain number of times (minimum one day per week). You pick a fee to charge yourself for breaking your pact (minimum $5 per day missed). You download the Gym Pact app to your smart phone and check in when you get to the gym. (They'll use GPS to confirm you're actually there.) And when you fall short of your pact? They charge your credit card the pre-determined penalty.
Sure you could fool it by "checking in" at the gym and doing nothing (lots of folks seem to use the gym for checking e-mail rather than actually doing those bench presses...) but I guess it's better than nothing. Even better: having an actual person meet you at the gym. They are much harder to fool than cell phones.
