The Honesty Problem in Fitness Challenges
Every fitness challenge platform has the same dirty secret: most of them can't actually verify that anyone did the workout.
Self-reported reps? People round up. Step counters? Shake your phone. Basic motion detection? Bounce on the couch. For brands investing in sponsored fitness challenges — corporate wellness programs, marathon training campaigns, product activations — this credibility gap is a dealbreaker. If you can't prove participants actually exercised, your engagement metrics are fiction.
Cadoo built something different.
CadooVision: A Personal Trainer That Never Blinks
CadooVision is Cadoo's proprietary computer vision system. It analyzes workout videos frame-by-frame using Google MediaPipe pose estimation to extract 33 body keypoints per frame — every joint, every angle, every rep.
It doesn't just count movements. It evaluates how well you moved.
Here's the pipeline:
- Record: User opens Cadoo, positions their phone, and records their workout. A guided overlay ensures the camera can see their full body.
- Detect: CadooVision runs MediaPipe Pose to extract 33 skeleton keypoints per frame. It auto-detects which side of the body is most visible — users don't need to worry about camera placement.
- Count: Signal processing tracks the distance between specific joint pairs over time. Peaks and valleys in that signal = individual reps. Each rep gets precise frame boundaries, not arbitrary windows.
- Score: For every rep, CadooVision calculates joint angles and scores them against biomechanical standards. Each rep gets a 0–100% form score.
- Credit: Reps below 60% form are thrown out. The remaining reps are multiplied by their average form score. Good form = more credit. Bad form = less credit. Fake reps = zero credit.
What CadooVision Checks For Each Exercise
Pushups
- Depth (40% of score): Did your elbows bend to 90 degrees? Half-reps get penalized.
- Lockout (25%): Did your arms fully extend at the top? Partial extensions lose points.
- Body Line (35%): Was your body straight from shoulders to ankles? Sagging hips or piking up gets caught.
Squats
- Depth (40%): Did your knees reach parallel? Quarter-squats score near zero.
- Lockout (25%): Did you stand fully upright between reps?
- Torso (35%): Did you maintain an upright torso? Collapsing forward is penalized.
Situps
- Range of Motion (45%): Did your trunk angle change by at least 40 degrees? Barely lifting off the ground scores zero.
- Knee Stability (30%): Did your knees stay bent at ~90 degrees? Flailing legs lose points.
- Control (25%): Was the movement smooth? Jerky, momentum-based situps are penalized.
The Anti-Cheat Credit Formula
This is where form scoring becomes fraud prevention. Here's a real example:
A user does 20 pushups. CadooVision analyzes each one:
- 3 reps score below 60% form — discarded entirely
- 17 reps pass the threshold, averaging 82% form
- Credited reps = 17 x 0.82 = 13.94 reps
This means:
- Garbage reps get thrown out — you can't game the system with arm-waving
- Sloppy form hurts your credit — the average pulls your number down
- Good form is rewarded — a clean set of 15 reps can credit higher than a sloppy set of 20
- The incentive is always to exercise correctly
Why This Matters for Fitness Brands
Verified engagement, not vanity metrics
When your brand sponsors a fitness challenge on Cadoo, you get verified, form-scored exercise data. Not "this person said they did 30 pushups." You get: "This person did 24 pushups at 85% average form, earning 20.4 credited reps." That's a metric you can report on.
Accountability drives retention
Cadoo's challenges involve real stakes — users put money on the line and earn it back by completing verified workouts. Form scoring raises the bar from "did they move?" to "did they move correctly?" — which drives genuine habit formation.
Scalable personal training
CadooVision does what a personal trainer does — counts reps and evaluates form — but for thousands of users simultaneously. No wearable required. No gym membership. Just a phone camera.
A coaching feedback loop
Users see exactly which reps counted, their form score, and how many credited reps they earned. Over time, they learn that going deeper on pushups or keeping their back straight on squats earns more credit (and more money). Your brand sponsors the thing that makes people better at exercise.
What Makes CadooVision Different
| Feature | Basic Rep Counter | CadooVision |
|---|---|---|
| Counts reps | Yes | Yes |
| Verifies form quality | No | Yes — per-rep angle-based scoring |
| Adapts to camera angle | No | Yes — auto-detects visible side |
| Anti-cheat built in | No | Yes — 60% minimum + credit formula |
| Works on any phone | Varies | Yes — just needs a camera |
| Requires wearable | Often | No |
| Per-rep granularity | No | Yes — individual form scores per rep |
What's Next: From Scoring to Real-Time Coaching
CadooVision already runs on-device during practice reps, giving users positioning feedback before they record. The next step is live coaching during the actual workout:
- "Go deeper on your pushups"
- "Stand all the way up between squats"
- "Keep your knees stable during situps"
Every Cadoo game becomes a guided workout experience — not just a verification tool.
Ready to Build Verified Fitness Challenges?
Whether you're a brand planning a product activation, a corporate wellness manager designing an employee challenge, or a fitness company that needs verified engagement — Cadoo's form-verified challenges deliver results you can trust.
Play a game today: cadoo.io
For partnerships and brand activations: partnerships@cadoo.com
