Geek Fitness Brigade

I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for a year now. Basically, I’m overweight and out of shape. I need to exercise, but I hate going to the gym or running. Both feel like pointless activities. I know they’re not, but they are just so boring.

So I had an idea, what if exercise was fun? How can it be fun? Well, if you’re doing something that gives you a work out, but isn’t just about working out. I first thought about sports, but usually hate playing in organized leagues because I’m so out of shape and uncoordinated. Plus, it seems to be pretty hard to find a team for some reason. You’d think it would be easy but the only thing I’ve ever found is groups in down town Houston. Nothing more local.

I started thinking about geek stuff. As a kid, how did we all use to get exercise? Playing. What did we play? We swung anything we could find and called it a lightsaber or a sword. We ran away from monsters chasing us. What do we do now? Play video games. What’s fun about video games? Gaining levels, completing achievements, completing quests. What if these things could be combined?

What if there was an organized group of people, that got together on a regular basic (3+ times a week) to do some fun activities, that required some physical exertion, and you could earn levels, ranks, awards, etc? So, say every Mon, Wed and Fri you met with this group, and each day you did something different. Maybe Monday, was weapon training. Use some foam swords and try to best each other. Wed, was a Zombie run, where you had to out run a zombie horde.

The longer you were with the group, the more you participated, you could earn ranks with them. Beating certain challenges got you an award (out run the zombies for 5min, win a 5min duel against two opponents, etc).

There are a lot of problems with this idea. First being, need to find people. Second, it’s very silly, geeky, and most people would find it stupid. Third, organizing it and getting whatever equipment was needed. It could even be some kind of business. But that would add a whole other level of complexity.

Would something like this be possible? Are there things like this out there (in Houston especially) that I just don’t know about? Have I crossed the line from Geek into Nerd?