Build → going to the gym
Most gym habits die between week four and week eight — not because you lack willpower, but because identity forms slower than effort. Lockin attaches a real financial cost to skipping, bridging the gap until the gym becomes automatic.
Suggested starting contract
$5/day against missing your daily target of 1 gym visit.
Install the app on iOS or Android, create an account, and connect a payment method. The whole process takes under three minutes.
Set your daily or weekly gym-visit target — for example, one gym visit per day or four visits per week. Choose a target that is genuinely achievable given your current schedule.
Search for your gym by name or address, confirm the location on the map, and Lockin saves the geofenced perimeter. Each location challenge is tied to a single gym, so pick the facility you train at most consistently.
Every Location contract has a per-day deadline by which the check-in plus the required dwell time must complete. The default is 23:59 in your local timezone — end of day. Tap Set deadline in the wizard and use the 24h time picker to lock in an earlier slot, for example 8:00pm if you want to protect an after-work training window. Tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. The deadline is set once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled day.
Decide how much money goes on the line per contract period. The stake is your accountability deposit — hit your target and it returns to you. Miss it and the bulk of your stake goes to your chosen charity.
Select a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list, organized by category — climate, mental health, animal welfare, digital literacy, and others. This is where your money goes if you forfeit.
Review the terms, confirm your stake, and start the contract. From this point, when you arrive at the gym you tap the check-in button on your contract card — Lockin shimmers the button once your phone is inside the geofence as a cue — which records the visit and starts the dwell-time timer.
From Lockin's data
Among Lockin beta users running gym contracts, those who specify a consistent target time of day — a morning session before work or a fixed post-work slot — complete their contracts more often than those with open-ended schedules. Beta data also shows that users who start with a single weekly visit before scaling up tend to maintain their contracts longer than those who begin with an aggressive daily target.
"I had started and quit the gym four times in three years. The difference this time was knowing that skipping would send money to a cause I care about — suddenly the couch was the more expensive option."
— Anonymous beta user, gym challenge, 9 weeks active
Every Location contract has a per-day deadline by which the gym check-in and the required dwell time must complete. The default is 23:59 in your local timezone — end of day. During contract setup you can tap Set deadline and pick any earlier time using a 24h picker, for example 8:00pm to protect an after-work session. The deadline is set once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled day; you do not change it day-to-day. An earlier deadline raises the difficulty and the reward — tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. Like other contract terms, the deadline is fixed for the active contract — you cannot edit it mid-contract.
If you miss a visit and fall short of your contract target for that period, the bulk of your stake is forfeited to the charity you chose when setting up the contract. A small platform fee covers payment processing and Lockin operations. The forfeiture is automatic — there is no appeal process, which is the point. Knowing the cost is real and immediate is what makes the contract effective.
Lockin contracts are intentionally rigid because flexibility is where most accountability systems collapse. There is no pause feature and no exception for illness or injury — once a contract is active, every scheduled day either logs a qualifying visit or triggers the forfeit. The right move is to plan your rest days into the schedule from the start: if you train four days a week, pick those four specific days at setup so the other three are simply unscheduled rather than missed. The schedule you commit to is what Lockin verifies against, so size it to what you can realistically hit.
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.
Yes, your phone needs to have location services enabled and be physically inside the geofenced perimeter when you check in. The geofence is drawn around your gym's location when you set up the contract. When you arrive, the check-in button on your contract card shimmers to signal that your phone is inside the perimeter — tapping it is what records the entry and starts the dwell-time timer. If your contract has a minimum dwell time (typically 20 minutes or more), you must stay inside the geofence until the timer reaches that threshold; if you leave before the minimum elapses, the visit does not count. For dwell targets longer than two hours, Lockin prompts a re-check-in every two hours to re-verify the location and keep the timer running. Airplane mode or disabled location services break the verification chain, so the visit will not be logged. Lockin only accesses your location during active contract windows — it does not track your movements outside those periods. You can review and revoke the location permission at any time in your phone's app settings.
Free to download. You set the target, the stake, and the charity.
Author
The Lockin Team — Lockin Editorial
Last verified