Long-distance workout buddy: how to keep each other moving

Your partner works in another city, your parents live 200 km away, your best friend moved away. The walks you used to take together stopped, and often so did the movement.

The good news: a buddy doesn’t have to be standing next to you to make a difference. It helps when something depends on you and you have a way to let each other know.

Below: what research says, plus six practical tips, from a daily check-in to talking with your parents about exercise without it sounding like a lecture.

What research says: your buddy doesn’t have to be in the room

People keep going longer for the team

Psychologists call it the Köhler effect: the weaker member of a team puts in more effort than you’d expect from how they perform alone. Feltz et al. (2011) tested it in an exercise game in which participants held a plank. The partner was only on a screen and always better — and in every version with a partner, people held out significantly longer than without one.

Exercise bikes told a similar story. In an experiment by Irwin et al. (2012), 58 young women with an average age of 20.5 cycled on six separate days.

When the pair’s result was set by whoever stopped first, they exercised for 21.89 minutes on average. Next to a virtual partner with no shared result, it was 19.77 minutes; alone, 10.6 minutes.

For the record: these are lab experiments with short tasks, not months of walking. The studies don’t agree on whether the “weakest link counts” rule itself is what helps — in the 2011 study, it was no more motivating than simply exercising side by side. What these experiments did confirm, again and again: people keep going longer with a partner than without one.

One more detail: the partner who helps most is somewhat better — not by a lot, but not just barely either. In Feltz et al. (2012), with 135 college students, participants lasted longest with a moderately better partner. With a slightly or much better partner, the benefit was smaller.

Encouragement can backfire

Irwin et al. (2013) had 115 people do planks, either alone or with a partner over the internet. Teams lasted longer than individuals.

But when the stronger partner gave verbal encouragement during the exercise, people held out 31.14 seconds less on average than without it. The authors suggest that encouragement can feel as if it’s aimed at someone other than the person exercising.

Research on couples points the same way. Küng et al. (2025) followed 99 couples with overweight for 14 days using accelerometers and daily questionnaires. On days when one partner persuaded and motivated the other, the other partner was more active.

Pressure — nagging and coercing — wasn’t linked to either partner’s activity, but it was linked to a worse mood in whoever did the pushing. This is an analysis of daily records, so it shows a link, not cause and effect.

In a seven-week study of 113 couples, people whose partners criticized and pressured them more were less active later on (Hohl et al., 2018). Again, it’s only a link, but neither study connected pressure with more activity. So encouragement can help, as long as it doesn’t sound like judgment or supervision.

Reporting to someone helps

A meta-analysis by Harkin et al. (2016) pooled 138 experiments with 19,951 participants. It wasn’t only about exercise but about reaching goals in general.

Interventions that got people to regularly monitor their own progress improved goal attainment. The effect was larger when people reported their results to someone or made them public, and when they physically recorded them.

Family as a team

The BE FIT randomized trial (Patel et al., 2017) enrolled 200 adults from 94 families, with an average age of 55.4. Everyone had a step goal and daily feedback by text message or email.

Families in the game group also played for shared points. Each day, one member was drawn at random, and if that person had missed their goal the day before, the family lost points. Everyone had five “lifeline” days for illness or days when exercise just wasn’t possible.

Over 12 weeks, participants in the game group met their goal on 53% of days, the control group on 32%. Their average daily step count rose by 1,661 from the start, compared with 636 for the control group.

After the game ended, the effect faded but stayed higher than in the control group. It’s not a study of families living apart, but it shows that playing for shared points gets a family moving.

Six tips that work across the miles

1. Set the bar for the weaker one’s bad day

A shared goal has to be doable even on a day when nobody feels like it. If it’s set too high, the weaker of the two may soon drop out — and take the other’s motivation with them.

A modest daily minimum works better — say, a few thousand steps or 20 minutes of any kind of movement — and anyone who wants more can add more. How to set up a group challenge that lasts is covered in Step challenge with friends or family.

2. A daily check-in that costs nothing

Agree on one signal: an emoji, “done,” a photo of your shoes by the door. No numbers, no explanations. It’s about regularity, not content — ten seconds a day, no performance reports.

3. Walk “together” over the phone

Call each other and each walk your own route. A call with your mom or partner that would otherwise happen on the couch turns into half an hour of walking.

It works best as a fixed ritual: Sunday call = Sunday walk. Earbuds in, phone in your pocket.

4. A shared streak with someone who doesn’t want to share data

Not everyone wants the other person to see their steps. Parents may feel checked up on, a partner may turn it into a competition. In that case, it helps to track just yes or no: are we both done for today?

That’s also how the shared streak in the Tada! app works. Your buddy only sees your nickname, your color and whether you’re done for today — no steps, minutes, times or places. The streak only grows on days when you both make it (how a shared streak works).

For family, you can start a group of up to 5 people that holds up even on a day when one of you is missing. If you’d rather see the other person’s exact numbers, you need a different app — the ones that share steps are compared in Step counter app for couples and friends. If you each have a different phone, see How to share steps between iPhone and Android.

5. With your parents, talk about yourself, not them

“You should really move more” almost never works. This works better:

• Ask for help. “I need a walking buddy, or I’ll never stick with it.” People who know a shared result depends on them try harder — that’s the core of the Köhler effect.
• Don’t comment on their weight or health, and don’t compare them with the neighbors.
• Let them choose what counts: walking the dog, getting groceries on foot, the trip to the post office.
• Set up their phone when you visit, then leave it alone. According to Apple, the iPhone counts steps with its built-in sensors and saves them to the Health app on its own.

If they have health conditions, they should talk to their doctor about the right amount of exercise.

6. Plan for gaps

Illness, a work trip, a weekend with the grandkids. Agree in advance on what happens when one day doesn’t work out — otherwise the first gap ends the whole thing. Why one missed day won’t ruin a habit is explained in Missed a day?

One streak for two, even when you live apart In Tada!, you and your buddy share a streak that only grows on days when you’re both done. The other person only sees your nickname, your color and whether you’re done for today — no steps, no location. Download for iPhone

Frequently asked questions

Does a virtual buddy help, or does it have to be a real person?

A virtual one helps, but a real one helps more. In Feltz et al. (2014), with 120 college students, even a computer-generated partner made people keep going longer. With a partner they believed was a real person, though, they lasted longer still.

How do I motivate my partner from a distance without being annoying?

Invite, don’t instruct. An invitation (“I’m heading out, want to come? I’ll call you”) beats a reminder that they’re behind today. In research on couples, persuasion was linked to the partner being more active; pressure wasn’t.

Sources

1. Feltz, D. L., Kerr, N. L., Irwin, B. C. (2011). Buddy up: the Köhler effect applied to health games. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33(4), 506–526. link
2. Irwin, B. C., Scorniaenchi, J., Kerr, N. L., Eisenmann, J. C., Feltz, D. L. (2012). Aerobic exercise is promoted when individual performance affects the group: a test of the Kohler motivation gain effect. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 44(2), 151–159. link
3. Feltz, D. L., Irwin, B., Kerr, N. (2012). Two-player partnered exergame for obesity prevention: using discrepancy in players’ abilities as a strategy to motivate physical activity. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 6(4), 820–827. link
4. Irwin, B. C., Feltz, D. L., Kerr, N. L. (2013). Silence is golden: effect of encouragement in motivating the weak link in an online exercise video game. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(6), e104. link
5. Küng, P., Berli, C., Höhener, P. S., Tobias, R., Scholz, U. (2025). Health-related social control in overweight romantic couples: daily associations with physical activity and affect for targets and agents. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 59(1), kaae093. link
6. Hohl, D. H., Lüscher, J., Keller, J., Heuse, S., Scholz, U., Luszczynska, A., Knoll, N. (2018). Inter-relations among negative social control, self-efficacy, and physical activity in healthy couples. British Journal of Health Psychology, 23(3), 580–596. link
7. Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198–229. link
8. Patel, M. S., Benjamin, E. J., Volpp, K. G., et al. (2017). Effect of a Game-Based Intervention Designed to Enhance Social Incentives to Increase Physical Activity Among Families: The BE FIT Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(11), 1586–1593. link
9. Feltz, D. L., Forlenza, S. T., Winn, B., Kerr, N. L. (2014). Cyber Buddy Is Better than No Buddy: A Test of the Köhler Motivation Effect in Exergames. Games for Health Journal, 3(2), 98–105. link
10. Apple (2026). Intro to Health data on iPhone. iPhone User Guide. link
11. Tada! (2026). How a shared streak works. Tada! Help. link
12. Tada! (2026). Groups. Tada! Help. link