We’re excited to announce a big update to RuckIt: Streaks & Patches are now live.
This feature is built to celebrate your consistency, mark your milestones, and keep you motivated—not punish you for having a life.
Most fitness apps rely on streaks and badges that reset to zero the moment you miss a day. That might keep you glued to a screen, but it doesn’t build lasting fitness. Research shows that progress tracking and meaningful milestones work best when they build competence, reinforce habit loops, and adapt to real-life schedules (Cugelman, 2013; Meyer et al., 2019).
That’s why we designed Streaks & Patches differently. Instead of rigid daily counters, we track weekly streaks, total rucks, and distance milestones—because real progress isn’t all-or-nothing.
Weekly streaks: Stay consistent across weeks without the stress of daily resets.
Ruck counts: Every ruck matters, whether it’s short or long.
Distance milestones: Watch your endurance add up, mile by mile.
Weight patches: Earn milestones as you build up from 5 to 25 pounds and beyond.
Experience patches: Unlock achievements like Night Owl or Mountain when you take your rucking to new places and times.
Each patch is a marker of real accomplishment, not just another digital trinket.
Research shows that gamification boosts motivation most effectively when it emphasizes progress, not punishment (Johnson et al., 2016; Sardi et al., 2017). By focusing on competence, consistency, and visible milestones, RuckIt’s Streaks & Patches keep you engaged week after week, month after month.
And because every rucker’s journey is different, the system adapts whether you’re just starting out or training for advanced challenges.
We’re proud to bring Streaks & Patches to the RuckIt community. They’re designed for real life, built from real research, and made to keep you moving forward without burning out.
Update your app and start your first streak today. The patches are waiting.
Cugelman, B. (2013). Gamification: What it is and why it matters to digital health behavior change. JMIR Serious Games, 1(1), e3.
Johnson, D., Deterding, S., Kuhn, K. A., Staneva, A., Stoyanov, S., & Hides, L. (2016). Gamification for health and wellbeing: A systematic review of the literature. Internet Interventions, 6, 89–106.
Koivisto, J., & Hamari, J. (2019). The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research. International Journal of Information Management, 45, 191–210.
Looyestyn, J., Kernot, J., Boshoff, K., Ryan, J., Edney, S., & Maher, C. (2017). Does gamification increase engagement with online programs? A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 12(3), e0173403.
Meyer, J., Hein, J., & Höfer, M. (2019). Gamification in physical activity apps: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 7(6), e11198.
Sardi, L., Idri, A., & Fernández-Alemán, J. L. (2017). A systematic review of gamification in e-Health. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 71, 31–48.
Zuckerman, O., & Gal-Oz, A. (2014). Deconstructing gamification: evaluating the effectiveness of continuous measurement, virtual rewards, and social comparison for promoting physical activity. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18(7), 1705–1719.