Pokemon GO App Starts Sore Leg Outbreak

Lifestyle By Catrina Linhard Jul 14, 2016
Pokemon GO App Starts Sore Leg Outbreak

As of two weeks ago, Pokemon was a ghost to this world — something most millennials would joke about on a #ThrowbackThursday referencing their impressive card collections in the 90’s, right along with POGS, Skip-Its, and your obsession with Spice World.

As of today, the Pokemon GO app is already making millions of dollars a day and has surpassed Candy Crush as the biggest mobile app game with over 21 million daily active users in the US. It’s crushed Twitter — which has been around for a decade — in daily active users and it’s well on its way to catching up with and surpassing Google Maps and Snapchat as well. It’s safe to say the world is addicted.

The CEO of Niantic, the company behind Pokemon GO, explained in a Business Insider article that the app was created to get people out of the house and on their feet more often. You can’t catch many Pokemon from the comfort of your couch.

According to Business Insider, the team behind the app had these three main goals:

  1. Exercise: A lot of fitness apps come with a lot of “baggage” that end up making you feel like “a failed Olympic athlete” when you’re just trying to get fit, Hanke says. “Pokémon Go” is designed to get you up and moving by promising you Pokémon as rewards, rather than placing pressure on you.
  2. “To see the world with new eyes”: The game is intended to “give you a little nudge” toward cool and interesting things in your neighborhood by turning real-life landmarks and historical sites into Pokéstops and gyms where players power up and battle. By encouraging exploration, “Pokémon Go” can “make your life better in some small way,” Hanke says.
  3. Breaking the ice: All over the world, players are organizing “Pokémon Go” outings, cruising around their area, and trawling for Pokémon. At higher levels, players need to team up with fellow players to conquer those gyms. This is by design: Hanke describes “Pokémon Go” as an “icebreaker” that “gives people a reason to spend time together.”

Whether or not you agree with the idea of playing Pokemon as a workout, many on the Twittersphere seem to acknowledge that for them, it’s been quite the leg burner… even Tommy Chong is behind it.

The Pokemon app gives users incentives to do more walking like forcing you to walk 5k in order to hatch an egg to receive an extra Pokemon. Maybe your dog can start getting extra long walks too.

So, as long as you’re not part of the group that’s using hacks, drones and other cheating tools to get out of walking, it does do a good job of getting people out more, and is no longer a ghost of of the 90’s. 

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Catrina Linhard is a LA transplant from Colorado where she spent 9 years competitive skiing then 5 years coaching youth alpine skiers. As a born and bred outdoor enthusiast with a background in journalism and itch for travel, Catrina...  READ MORE

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