Build → weight training three times a week
Getting to the gym twice a week is easy. The third session — when fatigue has stacked up and the couch is already warm — is where consistency lives or dies. Lockin turns that third visit into a financial obligation so the decision stops being optional.
Suggested starting contract
$10/day against missing your daily target of 3 sessions per week.
Sign up with your email or Apple ID. The onboarding flow takes under three minutes and walks you through how the accountability contract works before you commit to anything.
Type your gym's name or address and Lockin places a geofence around the facility. Review the boundary on the map and adjust if the default perimeter clips a parking lot or neighboring business.
Choose the three specific days each week you'll train — for example Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Each scheduled day is verified independently. You also set the minimum dwell time per visit yourself; 30 minutes is a common starting point for most strength training routines.
Every Location contract has a per-day deadline by which the check-in plus the dwell-time threshold 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 9:00pm to protect a post-work training window. Tighter deadlines unlock higher Locks and XP rewards. The deadline is set once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled training day.
Pick the amount of money you want on the line each week. Higher stakes create stronger accountability. You can start at $10 and adjust after your first contract cycle.
Choose where your forfeited stake goes if you miss sessions. Categories include climate action, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy. Pick a cause you genuinely care about — that specificity strengthens the commitment.
Your first contract window opens immediately. When you arrive at the gym, open Lockin and tap the check-in button on your contract card — it shimmers once your phone is inside the geofence — to start the dwell-time timer for that session.
From Lockin's data
Among Lockin beta users running gym-attendance contracts, three-session-per-week commitments showed meaningfully higher completion rates than open-ended or daily contracts — a pattern consistent with research showing that specific, bounded targets reduce decision fatigue on individual days. Contracts that defined a minimum dwell time completed more often than those with no dwell threshold, suggesting that precise stakes reduce ambiguity about whether a visit actually counted.
"I had trained twice a week for most of my twenties and told myself that was fine. The Lockin contract made me realize I was rationalizing every Thursday away. Three weeks in, the third session stopped feeling optional — the forfeit made the calculus obvious."
— Anonymous beta user, weight training challenge, 6 weeks active
Every Location contract has a per-day deadline by which the gym check-in and dwell-time threshold 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 9:00pm to protect a post-work training window. The deadline is set once at contract creation and applies to every scheduled training 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 the days you commit to, the deadline is fixed for the active contract and cannot be edited mid-contract.
Brad Schoenfeld, Dan Ogborn, and James Krieger's 2016 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine found that training a muscle group at least twice per week produces superior hypertrophy outcomes versus once per week when total volume is equated. Three sessions per week extends that frequency advantage while keeping recovery windows manageable. The difference between two and three sessions per week is not dramatic in any single week — it compounds over months. Greg Nuckols of Stronger By Science has documented that even short training gaps cause measurable strength regression in novices. The third session is where the long-run gains either accumulate or erode.
Each session you scheduled at setup is verified independently. Miss the day you committed to — say Wednesday — and the bulk of the stake on that scheduled day forfeits to the charity you chose; completing Monday and Friday does not cover for it. The contract checks attendance against the specific days you picked, not a rolling weekly count. Lockin deducts a small platform fee to cover processing and operations, with the remainder going to your selected charity. The full stake amount and forfeit conditions are shown clearly before you confirm the contract, so there are no surprises. You can review your contract terms at any time in the app.
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, with one important caveat. You set a minimum dwell time inside the gym's geofenced perimeter when you create the contract, and a visit only counts as a completed session once that timer is met. You start the timer by tapping the check-in button on your contract card once your phone is inside the geofence — the button shimmers as a visual cue when you are in range. The duration is up to you; 30 minutes is a common starting point. The contract verifies whatever you committed to, so a five-minute detour to the vending machine does not count, and neither does a walk-through. What Lockin does not track is what you do during that time. It does not monitor exercises performed, sets completed, or effort level. The stake is on attendance — the behavioral variable that most consistently predicts whether training actually happens. Verifying the quality of every workout would require a different challenge type or wearable integration. The premise of this contract is that showing up consistently, at the duration you set, is the bottleneck worth solving.
Free to download. You set the target, the stake, and the charity.