For years, companies have been vying for ways to motivate people to exercise. Today you can find apps that let you bet real money that you'll exercise at the time you specified. How's that for motivation? Well, it depends. Sometimes sleeping in a little more might be worth that $5 you put down.
But now, the next phase of motivational exercise products is moving from taking your money to giving you pain. Pain and Gain, right, Rock? A new bracelet called the Pavlok (for Dr. Pavlov, the physiologist who studied classical conditioning) is built with a sensor that will send an electric shock through the wearer and condition them into going to the gym, or another goal they've had in mind. The whole idea behind it is that you'll condition yourself into doing these things in order to escape the pain of the shock, to the point that you might not need the bracelet anymore. “Research shows that consistency is the key to forming a habit. When you use Pavlok to stick to your goals, you'll find that they become easier and eventually, automatic," the website for the product says. “At that point, use Pavlok to train your next habit and keep up your transformation into a better you.”
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Even though it looks like a bad Power Rangers morpher, the Pavlok records how many steps you take throughout your day, and if you come up short of your goal, you'll get a shock. It will also use GPS data to see if you made it to the gym or not. Pre-order it here.
