Ban the Perfect Week Streak Badge

There are a few reasons to ban that one badge from the app.

  1. It encourages sick athletes to exercise.

  2. With the Workout Creator, training sessions are not necessarily coach sessions.

  3. I’m pretty sure that it’s not only in my community that it has become less common to do a workout together because the streak has to be secured.

  4. After a hell week you might want to take a week off from the coach and have fun with all the other things in the app. However, these are only accessible if you start a new Journey. And you’re back in the Perfect Week Streak :frowning:

I’m a huge fan of the badges (a thousand times better than levels or points in my opinion) but that one badge kills so much of what makes the app diverse.

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This could make an interesting conversation-I hope some other Athletes contribute their own views :+1:t2:

I will pin this to the featured board :+1:t2:

:clapclapstatic:

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I totally agree with all mentioned points.

I use the app since 3 months and I am in my second journey. After finishing the hell week, i thought that i can select a new journey and it officially starts the new journey when i do the first workout.

My idea was to get a free week from the coach and explore the other workouts and then start the next journey.

However, I directly saw that I would need to continue the training to keep my perfect week streak. So I changed my plan and did the journey. In addition, I had to change my training days due to some other tasks from work. As a result, i trained 9 days in a row (7 days hell week plus 2 days). I am doing fitness now for more than 5 years so I am confident to know what my body can do. However, it was still hard and I think for a beginner it might diificult to do this assessment (so there is a higher risk for injuries).

Furthermore, it would also be the task of a human coach to intervene a beginner from doing such a training style. I think the artificial coach also has this responsibility in a similar way. He should not only plan the trainings and adjust the weights, but also provids at least a warning when a break would be recommended (at least after a hell week^^).

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I also feel like the perfect week streak is kind of punishing you for looking after yourself when you’re sick or injured or just need recovery time after an intense session. I mean it’s nice seeing how many you got but it may be healthier to delete it.

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I never understand why things must be yes or no for all, it would be much better if each person could decide when they want the challenge or not.

For me the challenge motivates to keep going.

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As already stated in the “Training without Journey” thread I find totally agree that this badge should be removed.

@marcelo: Yes, challenges motivate but encouraging to do your workout even when injured is wrong and this is what a streak badge does. And yes, I can ignore the badge - as I actually do - but I guess a lot of atlethes do not feel very comfortable giving up on a 100 day streak…

Badges are not really a challenge, but a reward system for training.
I don’t think it should be rewarded for not listening to your body and giving it the breaks it needs.
I myself am the first to tell everyone to damn the badge, health comes first. And yet I try everything to get my own streak. From this point of view, resetting is a punishment for healthy action.

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What I don’t understand is why this should be a all or nothing.

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I agree with most of the ohter athletes’ views, I also felt discouraged after taking a week off after sickness. Maybe an option to explicitly do a “recovery” oder “deload week” - just as the hardcore journey does at the end - might be an alternative idea to abolishing the badge altogether.

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Don’t like the badge either, fully agree with Mel on all the points. It encourages behavior which shouldn’t be our intention.
On top you achieve the badge by doing 2 days a week or 5, that’s a huge difference as well.

The only good thing with that, it encourages consistency, which is important, but for that also a light yoga session/stretching should count too.

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I do agree with the points raised. However, I want to raise awareness in a different direction and I am going to write this provocatively on purpose, so please try to stick with me and don’t get offended, that’s really the last thing I want. Here it goes:
Why would you like to cheat by skipping a week and keeping the perfect week streak alive? If you can’t train for whatever reason, you didn’t do a perfect week and you lose your streak. And that is absolutely fine! No one is perfect, and sickness, injury, or rest are more important at this moment than they simply are. I guess the lesson I want to highlight is: It’s okay to start again with your streak and when it ends you start again. No big deal. I like to keep pushing for a longer streak than I had before, but if something comes in the way I’ll start again.

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Hi @martin.hysek, how are you?
I think people don’t think that way because it’s tempting to push a little further in order to get a streak.
I mean, working out while sick is not impossible, though harder and not healthy, so people might go beyond recommended .

I can also imagine people just cheating and pretending they worked out when they actually didn’t.
But I guess these people are not the ones at risk, rather, the most affected are the most motivated.

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I absolutely agree. Sticking to complete trainings only to get badge is not wise and may harm you. I look at it as reward for something I reached for doing extra not that as an aim I must reach at any cost. Othervise trainings start to look like job you do not like. Not as something you do for fun and keep you active.
Not perfect week this week - who cares? :person_shrugging:
Problem is not badge itself but how you look at it.

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I also agree with this.

I like the motivation it provides during a journey to stick to the prescribed session each week and help push through any potential laziness/tiredness. Removing it just feels a bit too patronising, like we need our hands held every step of the way. If someone cant listen to their body (sickness or illness) to the point that it is unhealthy just so that they can get a badge on an app then I think they would struggle with many other apps and aspects of life!

How about a half-way solution so that streak tracking is only active when in a training journey? This would at least remove the desire to go from a hell week straight in to another journey

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I had same thoughts too. The problem is that I do hate it as much as I love this badge. It does give a nudge to push myself when I want to skip because life happens. But because I actually can “skip” in a sense by lowering training days to 2 and reduce intensity it has been manageable so far.

  1. When I’m sick I just reduce training days to 2, pick the day of the week and time of the day when I feel decent and select “reduce intensity a lot”.
    It definitely helps with getting back on track - for me it is hard to judge when you are good to workout again, because most of the time you don’t wake up next day being 100%. It’s more like you’re feeling like 50%, then 60% until you’re fully recovered. It’s tempting to prolong this recovery even when you shouldn’t. So doing bare minimum because of the streak do help to evaluate your real condition. It’s not like we never feel like crap and do not want to train when we are not sick, but after the workout we feel better (if you can feel better after interval/HIIT ever :slight_smile: ) - streak gives a push these days too.

  2. and 3. not an issue to me - haven’t used workout creator and there’s no community where I live.

  3. Actually, I would love to get a month off after a hell week :wink: but that doesn’t mean that I should. Consistency is the key, isn’t it ? so why not, again, reduce exercise days to 2 and select “reduce intensity” if you want to take it easy?

So I do agree that streak sucks, but it is kind of the intent :slight_smile:

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Ultimately, the badge is actually a “disability of the full app experience”.
If you want to maintain the streak, you either keep the coaches sessions with the full coach experience (4 to 5 days a week), but then do without a number of features such as the workout creator, intervals and self -chosen gods or you can reduce the coach sessions (slower process on the main feature of this product) to just to be able to use the nice side features if you still plan rest days (which are very important).
Or you totally whip on that badge.
So as it is currently implemented, it doesn’t sound right. :thinking:

I always felt like freeletics is not meant to be used with other means of training. Coach is not flexible enough to incorporate things (like occasional gym) that are outside of the app. If freeletics is not the only “serious” workouts that you do then streaks are hard and shouldn’t matter to the person anyway.
This is also the reason why I don’t use workout creator - I cannot add exercises that are not part of the app and I don’t need extra workouts outside of what coach prescribes (I can increase workouts per week for this or ask coach for a harder workout) so I don’t see a point of it.

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Same here. I train alone and just use the coach it’s these small things that sometimes make the difference between not training and going for it, even if with an adapted session. I appreciate the OP’s original concerns but I feel they don’t apply to everyone and removing it would not improve the app, but indeed make it worse.

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I like the perfect week badges, as they help me to finish my workouts per week. Getting this badge keeps me going in times, when only internal motivation will not do the job.

Ofcourse it is harsh when something gets in the way and I need to restart that streak, but once it is going, it keeps me going.

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I agree with all four points in the first post. There needs to be a better way than the Perfect Week Streak Badge to encourage free athletes to keep training.