The Power of Freeletics

3.1 Freeletics Through the Lens of the Behavior Model for Persuasive Design (Fogg 2009)

One helpful models for the systematic thinking about behavior change is the so-called Fogg Behavior Model (FBM). The FBM was designed to understand and create persuasive technologies to furthermore identify mechanism that support users showing the desired behavior. The FBM postulates that the desired behavior will occur when three necessary elements, i. e., motivation, ability, triggers, converge at the same time. Furthermore, each of the three factors has subcomponents that influence the level of persuasiveness.

Motivation. Accordingly to the model, a person must be sufficiently motivated to show a target behavior. Sensation, Anticipation and Belonging, each with two sides, are the three core motivators of the FBM which apply to every human being. Sensation is characterized by pleasure and pain, two powerful motivators which are primitive responses with only little thinking or anticipation. Anticipation is characterized by hope and fear. Both are focused on an outcome, like the anticipation of something good or the anticipation of loss. The third and last core motivator Belonging is a social dimension and is characterized by social acceptance and social rejection and has a huge impact on our social behavior.

Ability. At the same time a person has to hold the ability to show a certain behavior. Increasing ability is about facilitating the desired behavior. That is why Fogg defines simplicity as a chain with six parts which are firmly linked to each other and must occur at the same time – otherwise the target behavior isn’t easy to show. The six parts are Time, Money, Physical Effort, Brain Cycles, Social Deviance and Non-Routine. This means a task shouldn’t require much time, shouldn’t cost much money or require much physical effort like walking all the way from Munich to Berlin instead of taking a plane. Furthermore the desired behavior shouldn’t cause someone to think hard, be socially deviant or to face a behavior that is not routine. All these factors vary by the individual and the given context and are a function of a person’s scarcest resources. This implies that designers should focus on reducing the barriers for performing a task and make it easier to do instead of focusing on motivation only.

Triggers. To perform a target behavior beneath motivation and ability it is also important to trigger a person to show the desired behavior. The FBM names three types of triggers: sparks, facilitators and signals. All in all a trigger is something like a video, text or graphic that reminds or tells people to show a behavior right now. While a spark contains a motivational element, like the three core motivators, a facilitator shows people that the desired behavior is easy to do. On the contrary a signal doesn’t have the intention to motivate or simplify a task. If a user is highly motivated and has the ability to perform a task, triggers like sparks or facilitators might be annoying or trigger reactance. In this case a signal that only works like a well-timed reminder might be appropriate and more effective.

Analyzed with the Fogg Behavior Modell, Freeletics fulfills all the aspects required to increase the likeliness of performing a target behavior (see also Figure 1).

Figure 1

Freeletics through the lens of the Behavior Model for Persuasive Design (Fogg 2009).

Figure 2

Examples from the Freeletics poster motivation campaign (source: https://www.facebook.com/Freeletics-1528873414043049/photos/).

In the field of Motivation Freeletics uses all three core motivators of the FBM to motivate their customers. For example the first core motivator Sensation is used in a lot of publicity material like in one of the official Freeletics Motivation Videos on YouTube called “Pain is temporary”. The video is described with the following text:

Some people think Freeletics is easy. But easy is not what we are aiming for. Freeletics is tough. Effort is what we demand. Pain is our fuel. Passion keeps us going. And in the end, glory awaits us. This is Freeletics.

(YouTube.com 2015)

This example shows that Freeletics is playfully dealing with the topic pain, true to the motto no gain without pain. At the same moment pain seems to be necessary to reach glory, to reach a better body and a better performance – a pleasure every Free Athlete is hoping to achieve. This also points out that the second core motivator Anticipation is a huge part of the advertising strategy of Freeletics. The aspect of hope, i. e., the hope for a better body, is not only considered by the well-trained models in the videos, it is also part of the so-called transformation videos on YouTube, which are posted by users to show their personal training success.

Besides that, the fear of failure is directly addressed in the Freeletics poster motivation campaign. You may see me struggle, but you will never see me fail or strength doesn’t come from winning, your struggles develop your strength are just two of many mottos dealing with this topic. The third core motivator Belonging is not only part of the aforementioned poster campaign, it is also a huge part of the whole Freeletics identity. As described before, a special phenomenon of Freeletics is that a big number of so-called Free Athletes are organized via social platforms like Facebook where, for example, joint training sessions are organized. Nearly every bigger city in Germany has its own Freeletics community which every user can join via Facebook or offline. Free Athletes even have their own handshake called “ClapClap” to welcome, to motivate or to show their support for each other.

But what about the Simplicity Factors every persuasive product should fulfill? Of course Freeletics isn’t an easy sport to do, but is the mobile application easy to use? There is a free and a paid version of Freeletics available, so it is a cheap or even a free sport that everyone with a mobile phone and internet access can do. Furthermore, there is a wide variety of time that is needed. The workouts usually take about 5 to 45 minutes and every user can decide how often he wants to do Freeletics. Moreover it doesn’t require a huge physical effort to download the app via the Google Play Store and to get ready for the first workout, because no additional equipment is necessary. Additionally the workouts are characterized by simple practice routine, including instructions on how to perform the exercises and video material. Finally, no matter how great someone’s performance and exercise progress is, doing Freeletics won’t lead to being social deviant. Much more a Free Athlete seems to be part of a community that supports and motivates each other.

Facebook, poster campaigns and transformation videos are just some Triggers that motivate and simplify the use of Freeletics. If a Free Athlete is already motivated and has the ability to do Freeletics, well-timed reminders in form of a short email are used as a signal to trigger the desired behavior.

All in all it seems like the FBM is a good method to understand the success of mobile applications – and that the Freeletics founders had a good understanding (or intuition?) of theories of behavior change. Of course it is necessary to keep in mind that all three postulated factors must converge at the same time and will have a different impact on every single user. But overall, the three factors certainly form a good basis for increasing the probability of satisfied users.

3.2 Features of “Top Ranked” Fitness Apps (Conroy et al. 2014)

To understand the success of Freeletics we also took a deeper look at the variety of existing fitness apps, typical features of those apps, and the used techniques to foster a behavior change. A recent review by Conroy et al. (2014) examined the use of (psychological) behavior change techniques in market top-ranked physical activity apps. Their aim was to provide criteria for scientists and developers as well as practitioners and physicians on how to evaluate the quality of current apps regarding the physical activity. The authors identified the top-ranked “health and fitness” apps (in August 2013) for two major online marketplaces: Apple iTunes (for iOS) and Google Play (for Android). The data was conducted based on an independent coding of the descriptions of these top 50 paid and top 50 free apps of the “health and fitness” category. As a Coding-System they used the CALO-RE taxonomy (Michie et al. 2011). This taxonomy (consisting of forty-three behavior change techniques) provides a common basis for the organization, identification, and implementation of behavior change techniques that effectively work within interventions.

The study of Conroy et al. (2014) then identified the ten most commonly used behavior change techniques among the top 50 ranked apps (Figure 3, left). As one can see, providing instructions on how to perform behavior, a model that demonstrates the behavior, and providing feedback on performance were the three most common features of top ranked apps within the category of health and fitness.

Figure 3

The ten most common techniques of behavior change within the top ranked apps in the category sports and health, their frequency of occurrence (based on Conroy et al. 2014) and examples of their implementation within Freeletics (based on our theoretical analysis).

We then checked Freeletics against the success factors identified by Conroy et al. (2014) (Figure 3, middle). It showed that Freeletics actually implements the identified psychological techniques of behavior change – even all of them (see Figure 3, right for some examples). For example, Freeletics implements the less common technique “Prompt review of outcome goals” and on the same time “Provide feedback on performance” in a very unique way. In the paid version, this is realized by a so called “coach”, giving you feedback on your performance directly after accomplishing your exercise. Moreover, the coach provides an individually adapted fitness plan for the next week depending on your last performance. Also, Freeletics provides videos, pictures and even written instructions on how to perform the exercises. They include social support via a “ClapClap”-Button similar to the “Like”-Button on Facebook. Social comparison is furthermore gained through grading users on different levels in comparison to themselves. As one can see, even the less frequently used techniques of behavior change in the top ranked apps are implemented within the successful fitness app Freeletics (… can this be coincidental?).

4.1 Methods

Sample. Participants were recruited via Freeletics groups on Facebook, university-based research groups and individual invitation. The survey was online for four weeks and after wiping out drop-outs the overall sample consisted of 113 participants, thereof 42 % men, the average age was 28 years, 30 % were students and 70 % were employed.

Measures. We gathered information about demographic data (e. g., gender, age, educational level), Freeletics (e. g. usage behavior, reasons for usage) and different psychological motives of potential relevance. One measure was the Need to Belong Scale of Leary (Leary et al. 2013), assessing the “desire to form and maintain enduring interpersonal attachments.”’ It contains ten items (e. g., “I want other people to accept me”). For each statement the agreement or disagreement had to be indicated on a 5-point scale. After recoding reverse formulated items, a total value is calculated by summing up the score of each item of a participant with high scores resulting in a high need to belong. A second measure we applied was the Sport Motivation Scale (Mallett et al. 2007), consisting of 24 items which inquire the reason for which the person is presently practicing her / his sport. Some of the items were adapted so that we could ask for the reason why they practiced Freeletics instead of practicing sports in general (e. g., “Because participation in Freeletics is consistent with my deepest principles”). Participants indicated on a 7-point scale how much the statements correspond with their personal reasons to use Freeletics. Finally, participants could state further reasons to use Freeletics in a free textbox. Content analysis and categorization allowed us to identify the most central reasons for usage.

4.2 Results

One participant was excluded for the further analysis because of more than 20 % missing values regarding the scales. So our final sample for the further analysis consisted of 112 persons. Among these individuals, 80 % used Freeletics several times a week. Eysenbach (2012) screened 101 articles with over 83 different apps concerning the typical app-based intervention in the healthcare and sports sector. The authors found out that the typical app is used only once a week. Compared to this the usage of Freeletics is more frequent. Furthermore 76 % of our participants used the fee-based version of Freeletics, 51 % felt as a part of the community, 86 % were in contact with others in portals, and 67 % worked out alone.

The average score of the Need to Belong Scale across all participants was 32.05 the median value was 32, which accords to a typical value found in previous studies. However, it is notable that there was a broad range of score values (SD = 4.69): the minimum score value was 18, the maximum was 44, given a theoretical scale range from 10 to 50. In the present sample, 19 % of the participants got a score value above 35, indicating a high relevance of interpersonal attachment. This corresponds to the advertising slogans of Freeletics like “Whenever.Wherever.Together”, “Tough.Together.Free” or “We are family. We are friends. We are free athletes”. Freeletics obviously offers good possibilities for those with a high need for relatedness and social support. A median split and contrast of participants with rather high need to belong (score value > 32) versus rather low need to belong (score value ≤ 32) indicated interesting differences regarding the importance of comparing oneself to others (surveyed on a 5-point scale). Among those with a high need to belong, 26 % answered that it was (very) important for them to measure their success in relation to the success of other people, the mean value in this group was M = 2.75, SD = 1.12. Among those with a low need to belong, only 12 % found comparing their success to others (very) important and the mean value was tendentially lower (M = 2.36, SD = 1.05, T(110) = 1.94, p = .05).

Moreover we analyzed the results of the Sport Motivation Scale. The scale consists of six subscales (e. g. Amotivation (lack of motivation), Intrinsic Motivation) with four items each. We decided to have a specific look at the items with the lowest average values (i. e., lowest agreement) and the items with the highest average values (i. e., highest agreement) along the theoretical scale range from 1–7. This was to identify the most characteristic motivational aspects among Freeletics users. Not surprisingly, the lowest agreement was found for the four items of the Amotivation subscale, with average values ranging from 1.34 to 2.02 (e. g., “I don’t know if I want to continue to invest my time and effort as much in Freeletics anymore”, M = 1.97, SD = 1.37). In contrast, the items with the highest agreement (average values from 5.36 to 6.18) were from the subscales Introjected Regulation, Intrinsic Motivation and Identified Regulation. The statement with the highest agreement was “Because it is absolutely necessary to do sports if one wants to be in shape” (M = 6.18, SD = 1.39) from the Introjected Regulation subscale, indicating that the users include external beliefs or ideals in their own. Altogether, it thus seems that the Freeletics users see themselves to be motivated to work out and continue training with Freeletics. On the other hand, felt external pressure or doing sports to avoid feelings of guilt may also play an important role. Future research will be necessary to gain deeper insights into the motivation of Freeletics users and potential differences to typical users of other fitness apps.

Among the further mentioned reasons for using Freeletics, the most frequent mentions were flexibility, increase in performance, work out together, increase / maintain physical fitness, effective training and fun. A typical representative statement was: “I use Freeletics because it makes me achieve more – it is my lifestyle. I am on my way to the shape of my life and Freeletics is the map that points my way. I couldn’t live without this sport anymore.” For many, Freeletics seems to be more than just a sports mobile application, including many different aspects beyond training. In fact, 71 % of our survey participants consider Freeletics as an expression of lifestyle.