Build → 10,000 steps a day
The 10,000-step target started as a 1965 Japanese pedometer marketing campaign. The science behind daily movement is real. Your follow-through is not. Lockin fixes the follow-through.
Suggested starting contract
$5/day against missing your daily target of 10,000 steps.
The default is 10,000 steps, but you can lower it to a number you have not yet hit consistently for two weeks straight. Committing to a target you already hit most days defeats the purpose.
Lockin requests read-only access to your step data. It cannot write to your health platforms or access any other health categories. You grant access once during setup and revoke it any time from your phone's privacy settings.
Inside the 7-step wizard, tap 'Set deadline' to pick the time of day by which your step target must be reached. The default is 23:59 local time — the end of the calendar day — which gives you maximum flexibility. Choose a custom earlier time, for example 8:00pm or 6:00pm, to lock in morning- and afternoon-walk discipline rather than relying on a late-night gap-closing loop. Steps logged after the deadline do not count toward that day. The deadline is set once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract; it cannot be changed mid-contract. A tighter deadline raises the difficulty and unlocks higher Locks and XP rewards.
Pick an amount that creates real discomfort if forfeited — enough to make you stand up before your deadline — but not so large that you abandon the contract after one miss.
Choose the organization that receives your forfeited stakes. Lockin's vetted list spans climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy. Picking a cause you actively dislike donating to sharpens the loss-aversion effect.
A full 20-day contract is the recommended length for steps habits — the first week usually involves route and schedule adjustments before a reliable pattern emerges, leaving roughly two more weeks of clean execution to lock the routine in.
Lockin sends two server-triggered pushes per day on every active contract: a morning reminder at 8:00am local time so the day's target is on your radar before the schedule fills, and a warning roughly an hour before your deadline so you still have time to close the gap if you are short. There is no other notification timing — no mid-afternoon nudge, no progress-aware ping. The two pushes are enabled by default; keep notifications turned on at the OS level for them to fire.
From Lockin's data
Most beta users on steps contracts find that 8,000 is a more sustainable starting target than 10,000, particularly in the first two weeks. Users who begin at a target they already hit roughly half the time tend to stay on contract longer than users who open with a stretch goal they have never reached.
"I had tried every app and every streak tracker. The difference was that missing a day with Lockin meant my money went somewhere I did not want it to go. That was the only thing that got me off the couch at 9:45 on a Tuesday night."
— Anonymous beta user, steps challenge, 6 weeks active
The 10,000-step number originated as a marketing name for a 1965 Japanese pedometer, not a clinical finding. What the research does show is that daily step count has a meaningful dose-response relationship with health outcomes. Saint-Maurice et al., publishing in JAMA in 2020, found significant mortality risk reduction between roughly 4,000 and 8,000 steps per day in US adults, with benefits continuing at higher counts. Dr. James Levine's NEAT research at Mayo Clinic confirms that ambient daily movement — the kind accumulated through steps — accounts for a larger share of daily energy expenditure than most people expect. Whether your target is 7,500 or 12,000 matters less than whether you consistently hit whatever number you commit to.
Lockin reads the step total recorded by Apple HealthKit on iOS or Google Fit and Health Connect on Android as of midnight in your local time zone. Any device or app that writes step data to those native health platforms contributes to your total — including your phone's built-in motion sensor, an Apple Watch, a Garmin running watch, a Fitbit, or a Whoop. Lockin does not manually verify gait or movement type. If your health platform recorded it as a step, Lockin counts it.
Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.
Lockin's steps challenge type relies on Apple HealthKit and Google Fit step-count data, which works well for ambulatory movement but may not reflect other forms of daily activity. If you use a wheelchair with an Apple Watch, Apple Health can record wheelchair push counts separately from steps — but Lockin's steps contract currently reads step totals, not push counts. For users whose primary movement does not register as steps, a workout challenge is likely a better fit. Lockin's workout challenges use your phone camera and on-device pose detection to verify exercises like seated upper-body movements, with no manual entry required. You could also pair a location challenge — for example, a daily geofenced visit to a park or community center — to anchor consistent outdoor movement. Lockin's accountability mechanism works across multiple verification types; steps is just one option.
Every steps contract has a per-day deadline — the time of day by which your step target must be reached. The default is 23:59 local time, the end of the calendar day. Inside the 7-step setup wizard you can tap 'Set deadline' and pick any earlier time on a 24-hour picker, for example 8:00pm or 6:00pm, to force the count to happen before the evening collapses into the couch. Steps logged after the deadline do not retroactively rescue the day. The deadline is locked in once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled day for the life of the contract — it cannot be edited mid-contract, which is the same logic that keeps the target and the stake fixed. Tighter deadlines raise the difficulty of the contract and unlock higher Locks and XP rewards, so an earlier cutoff is rewarded as well as harder.
Free to download. You set the target, the stake, and the charity.
Author
The Lockin Team — Lockin Editorial
Last verified