P.O. Box 1853
Johnson City, TN 37604-1853
Phone: (423) 926-1583
GoTryBe offers a one day free trial. This promo code is in the speech bubble on this page.
It is also possible to try GoTryBe on a monthly basis for $.99 with the code KIDSFITNESS Check here for more details.
GoTryBe is $19.95 with the code GETFIT
GoTryBe is an online, interactive wellness site for the whole family. There are three different levels: elementary, middle school, and high school age. Their mission is to help youth learn to get active, try new things and be healthy.
GoTryBe features 4 daily activities: workout, nutrition, motivation, and wellness.
The workouts are actual videos led by instructors and designed to get children (and adults) up and moving. The user has the ability to customize a workout by choosing videos in the areas of warm up, cardio, strength, and flexibility. These videos range in length from 2 to 7 minutes. You can choose one video in each of the categories, except for cardio where you can have 3. As shown in the screen below the user has the choice of several videos for each category. If the mouse is hovered over the video thumbnails there is a brief description of what is done, length of video, and difficulty of that video. To add a video to the workout, simply drag the thumbnail into the top bar.
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| Sample screen for choosing workout videos |
The nutrition, motivation, and wellness activities are short video clips sharing tidbit size information in one of those categories and then giving the user a question to answer about what they just saw. The questions are simple recall and either multiple choice or true false.
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| Sample of nutrition activity |
Each account also has an avatar which the player can dress. Clothes and accessories are purchased with points earned from completing the daily activities. Articles of clothing, footwear, accessories, and pets are all available. There are several styles of clothing available as the user can choose different colors for them as well.
How we Used GoTryBe
Both my 7 and 10 year olds have GoTryBe accounts. We only have a desktop computer in our living room, so all three of us would do the workouts together from that computer. We would make the exercise video full screen so it was easier to see. One day we would use one childs' account and the next the other account. This way they both had the opportunity to earn the points for completing the workout and we didn't exhaust ourselves each day. I usually let the other child do the nutrition, motivation, and wellness activities each day. Both of them enjoyed the program and asked to use quite frequently.
I really like the concept and execution of the workouts. The workout videos offer varying degrees of difficulty which I found to be very helpful. We purposely started out with easier workouts and I think before long we will be able to try to harder ones. I have seen improvement in my stamina and a lot of the exercises are easier to do.
The style of the avatars was a little too hip for me, but I tend to like more classic designs. I don't think they were too outlandish, though. I like the format of only being able to buy items for the avatars by earning points. From my Mom point of view, I prefer activities where the children have to do something to earn a "reward". This gives them a built in limit of what they can do.
One thing we found difficult was some of the workout videos were often slow or choppy. While we have a DSL connection it is slower, so I am not sure whether it is my connection or the videos themselves.
We did not use the shout out or friending aspects available. My children listed each other as friends, but that was the extent of our using it.
I thought some of the wellness, nutrition, and motivation clips didn't contain a lot of useful information or they came across as lame, but my children didn't have any complaints.
I wish I had known about GoTryBe last fall and winter as the weather is not conducive to outside activities where we live at that time of the year. This would have been a great way to get the wiggles out and refresh sluggish brains. GoTrybe would also be useful to families who want to help their children become more active but have circumstances which limit participation in formal recreation programs.
Read what other members of the TOS Crew had to say on the crew blog.
Disclaimer: I received a free trial of the product in exchange for my honest review. I have not been compensated in any other way and all opinions expressed here are solely my own.
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