The Optimal Aging Podcast
Millions of people over age 50 represent the biggest consumer market in history for fitness, nutrition, travel, recreation and more. But most businesses don't know how to market to them. We'll interview entrepreneurs, business leaders and innovators to discuss this exciting opportunity.
The Optimal Aging Podcast
How to Measure and Improve Mobility after Age 50? There's an App for That
Unlock the secrets to optimal mobility and injury prevention for those over 50 with Andrew Menter, the visionary CEO of Physmodo. Discover how a simple overhead squat assessment captured through your smartphone can revolutionize fitness routines by measuring and enhancing mobility, stability, posture, and symmetry. Andrew enlightens us on the concept of movement as a vital sign and the paramount importance of addressing asymmetry to stave off injuries. This conversation is brimming with actionable insights for both fitness enthusiasts and professionals eager to maximize their potential and well-being.
We also trace the fascinating evolution of motion tracking technology, from the cumbersome days of Xbox Kinect to today's sleek, software-driven solutions. Andrew shares how strategic partnerships with fitness pioneers like TRX and Stretch Lab helped refine Physmodo's cutting-edge technology, making it accessible for fitness chains and small gyms alike. The pandemic-driven shift from a hardware-software hybrid to a purely software approach is particularly noteworthy, demonstrating adaptability and innovation. Tune in to learn how the Physmodo app can be seamlessly integrated into your fitness regime or professional practice, and how it stands to transform the landscape of personal training and health optimization.
Online Resources
Physmodo
Andrew Menter on LinkedIn
Prime Fit Content – Engage the over-50 market
No doubt you've heard the old saying you can't improve what you can't measure. It's truism in business and fitness right In just about everything, I suppose. Well, my guest today has a new way to quickly and easily measure and improve mobility, which is so important for everyone trying to get fit or improve their athletic performance. It's especially so for fitness clients over 50. And I wonder how many gyms and studios out there take the time to focus on this for their incoming active adults and also for their current clients. Do you take the time? Do you have a reliable measuring tool? Can you bake it into your fitness or physical therapy offerings? So it's a value to you and to your clients?
Jay Croft:Welcome to Optimal Aging, the show about fitness, health and well-being for people over 50. Each week, we explore what healthy living means for millions of people in this lucrative yet underserved market, with a focus on communications, content and making powerful connections. I'm your host, jay Croft of Prime Fit Content, and my guest this week is Andrew Mentor, the founder and CEO of Physmodo. Andrew's company has created an easy-to-use smartphone app to help improve workouts, mobility and performance for your clients and for you. It's an extra way to engage with your members and give them meaningful results. Andrew is a pioneer in fitness technology, known for his innovative approach to movement assessments and his commitment to enhancing human performance. He's a former successful athlete himself in tennis, rugby and Ironman triathlons, and he recently joined the Over 50 Demo too. Andrew has a law degree and an MBA and was an investment banker before founding Physmodo. We talk about the power and potential of the Physmodo app, how it came to be and the particular opportunities for the Fitness Over 50 community. Modo's technology, which is easy and fun to use on your smartphone, improves mobility, stability, posture and symmetry for active adults.
Jay Croft:I know you'll enjoy my conversation with Andrew, mentor of Physmodo here. It is, andrew, nice to see you. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you, jay, great to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about your app, Physmodo. Just the name alone is a lot of fun. But it's not just fun. It's also really important because it helps fitness consumers and fitness professionals do more and better assessments, which is so important for everybody, but particularly, I think, for the over 50 market. So tell us the basic backstory of Physmodo and what it is and where you're at right now and the rollout of it.
Andrew Menter:Sure, I always steal from one of the smartest guys I've ever met, who was the sports scientist Chris Frankel at TRX. He's now moved on and he coined the phrase movement is a vital sign. And following that up with you you can't manage movement if you don't measure it. So the third one is movement is the forgotten component of fitness.
Jay Croft:And.
Andrew Menter:I think the point is, I don't think that there's a lack of understanding that movement is important. I just think it's. You know, unlike some of your wearable devices where you can wake up and see your HRV and sleep and oxidation and so forth, it's more difficult to track movement. So what we tried to do, the objective, was hey, let's be able to measure how you're moving quickly and then show you where you have maybe some poor movement patterns and then give you a couple corrective protocols, exercises to train and fix. So now we're able to see how you're moving, where you have some issues, and it becomes a nice preventive tool to help hopefully, reduce getting injured. 54% of Americans reported musculoskeletal healthcare visits every year. It's number one reason for a healthcare visit 31% circulatory, 28% respiratory, 13% diabetic. But what about how you move? Yeah, we wanted to make a screen that's very scalable, and that's what we started out with in 2016.
Jay Croft:Okay, and this is an app, and I downloaded the app and I used it my own self yesterday, which made me feel very intelligent, I must say, and I didn't like my score. We're going to talk about my score here in a minute, but basically tell the folks what this app does it basically? Well, I'll tell them a little bit. It takes a little video of you doing three squats overheads, where you put your hands over your head while you're squatting. You do it three times in front of the camera and it assesses your mobility, your posture, your stability and gives you then a score on how well you did on this. And then it gives you workouts to improve your scores in those categories. Is that right? Have I successfully described it?
Andrew Menter:Almost all of it. The one domain that you missed as part of your overall score is symmetry, and we want to see that you're not necessarily favoring one side or the other. The number one cause for injury is previous injury. I can't help you there, but the number two cause of injury is asymmetry.
Jay Croft:Really.
Andrew Menter:So we want you to be fairly even as you work up between your left and your right side and have more of that balance because, as you're probably very well aware, if you're falling and getting injured and breaking a hip after you're 65, that's not good, no, at any age, but particularly as you get older. So let's try and prevent that from happening.
Jay Croft:So what's the value of doing these assessments? What good is this information?
Andrew Menter:Traditional way of training, at least when, or personal training, when I started a long time ago, it's like all right, let's come in, for this is leg day and this is, you know, just an arm day or something like that. And here's your prescribed programming and you know, from week to week maybe I slightly increase it here and there. But if you're giving me something like a deadlift on the schedule, shouldn't you know how my lower body is feeling that day? So maybe my average score is a 50 and we do have you know average score is 50. So we don't do grade school scoring, which is maybe why you were upset with your score.
Jay Croft:Maybe it wasn't that bad. Yeah, I'll take it.
Andrew Menter:So, yeah, exactly, it makes you feel better. I don't. I never break 50 cause my body's a mess. Okay so, but yeah. So, if my, if, if my score is a 50 and I, you know I rock in one day and I'm getting a 34, while you, as the trainer, know something is wrong. So if I have poor hip mobility, my ankle dorsiflexion, whatever it may be, you're going to, as a trainer, want to adjust my workout. I don't see how a trainer or coach or anybody assigns exercises, the weight associated with, without knowing how your body's working. So we establish a baseline for how you're moving and then, based on how you're doing, I can adjust your training for that day.
Andrew Menter:Even if you're not training, it's good to know. For example, let me back up. So back, people have back problems. A lot of people have back problems. If you have one of three things poor hip mobility, hamstring, flexibility or core, there's a greater likelihood that you're going to have back problems. So if I have hip mobility issues, I may not have any back issues today, but I will. So let's highlight that. Let's work on your hip mobility and there's less chance you're going to get a back injury. So information for the trainer coach to know about the client and adjust programming as necessary based on that as necessary.
Jay Croft:Based on that and there's also the consumer app which I downloaded I can do this even if I'm just at home and I'm not going to work out today, I'm not going to see my trainer today. How useful is that to me, just as an ordinary person going about my business, that my score is high or low?
Andrew Menter:or what have you. There's a couple of things, especially with more remote training. I think this is having the consumer app is more and more important because you aren't in the gym doing your one-on-one training in person. I don't know what the numbers are exactly right now, but they're significantly higher for remote. You see some of these apps and they have hundreds of thousands of subscribers that are doing remote personal training and they'll never even meet their coach or trainer in person. Whether you are doing the screens at a gym or if you're in front of a coach or remotely, your trainer is getting all of your information, irrespective of where you do the screen. So, yeah, if you're working with a trainer, then as a trainer, I'd want to see how you're moving every day. So just spend 30 seconds, do your screen every day and then I'm tracking how you're doing. And it's a great engagement tool because if I'm working with you and I know you're, I'm mixing three share average. To make you happy, jake, let's say your average is 65 and I don't see you.
Andrew Menter:Or maybe it's completely remote and I see one day that you got a 52. Because something's going on. I don't know if you had a tough workout or you just got done driving eight hours, but now it's an engagement tool. I can reach out to you and say hey, jay, I see you're struggling today. What's going?
Jay Croft:on. I see a lot of potential in this for gyms and trainers that work with the older market and by older I just mean like 50 and above. But because mobility can diminish of course as we get older and balance and posture and gait and back pain and all these things can exacerbate with time. Am I correct in thinking that this could help trainers and gym owners help their clients with those kinds of issues?
Andrew Menter:Yeah, a hundred percent. Some of the wearables out there and the things that they're measuring and you know the coaches are getting. There's an ability to share all your information with a coach or trainer and then, based on your numbers, we can have interventions as a coach.
Andrew Menter:So if you come in with an extremely low HRV, for instance. I'm not going to give you an extremely difficult workout because I know you're struggling today, or at least your wearable suggests so. But again it's coming back to what we talked about at the beginning. It's hard to. You can't manage someone's movement and how their body's feeling if you're not measuring it. So, yeah, we want you to have. I want to know that your shoulder is sore today because I don't want to give you something a heavy push, press and raise your chance of a slap, tear or a rotator cuff or something with your shoulder.
Andrew Menter:So I keep mentioning this wearable because it's not dissimilar. It's just we're looking at different metrics. We're looking at how your body's functioning muscles and joints versus organs and nervous systems and so forth.
Jay Croft:A lot of people I know in the fitness industry who work with older people are going to be really interested in this because they want to get as much information as possible about each person that they're dealing with. Tell me about the evolution of the app or the company, because you've been around a few years but it has changed a little bit. Yeah.
Andrew Menter:Yeah, we started in 2016 and there was no chance of doing anything on a mobile device at that time.
Jay Croft:Nor was it as important.
Andrew Menter:A lot of people were training, certainly at a physical location.
Jay Croft:You mean before COVID, when more people were actually going to the gym or to the studio rather than now. Is that what you?
Andrew Menter:mean, yeah, and actually now I think the numbers for people going to the gym is back to pre-COVID levels, but there's also been a much larger population that are doing remote training.
Jay Croft:Yeah.
Andrew Menter:But let's you know, backing up to 2016, most people are familiar with the Xbox and you know you could do fun stuff. So you have your dancing stuff and video games of I don't know, baseball or tennis. And they had the Kinect called the Kinect camera 3D camera that where the Xbox was tracking different joints. So if I'm playing a baseball game or tennis or dancing or whatever it was, recognizing my wrist and my elbow and my shoulder, just really mapping your body through, kind of a skeleton and that's the way the video games are able to operate.
Andrew Menter:So what we did and some other companies did was we took that 3d camera and applied it to trying to assess how you're moving. We want to track how you move, we want to do it quickly. You want to do it quickly, we want to do it objectively. That's the way it's always been. Now, the biggest challenge eight years ago was that, yeah, we had this depth camera that was, by itself, the Kinect camera. Then we had a 24-inch touchscreen Dell monitor. Now it's separate from the depth camera. So then we had to put this in a kiosk and look really, really cool, but that kind of bulky, a little cumbersome, not very scalable.
Andrew Menter:We partnered with TRX and, starting in 2017, they sold they sold a ton of this, you know, to gyms, um, where, with special ops, we ended up going to the university of Tennessee, uh, a lot of places. But you know it wasn't terribly scalable when you have to send a bunch of hardware to to locations. And, yeah, we were kind of a hybrid hardware software company and, yeah, I think what's great is that we got validation, that people like the screen. It got a lot of value out of it and, working with TRX, we got a lot of brand recognition but also recognition of what we do. So even though we're not working directly with TRX anymore, people know what our screen is is.
Andrew Menter:As technology and the phone and the all mobile devices got better, we said, okay, let's take the same concept we had and make this a little simpler and become really a true software company. And so we a lot of the time during covid to transition from this kiosk dev camera, dell monitor into a single device and there was a lot of development that went around that we're as accurate with the front camera as we are with the true 3D camera, and that was exciting.
Jay Croft:Okay, I want to back up a minute. You mentioned TRX, so tell us as much as you can about other partnerships that you have and who your main clients are, because I downloaded this and people listening to this can download the app, but you're also still involved commercially right With the app.
Andrew Menter:Right now we're not targeting a B2C and the app is not nearly as effective as if you are working as a client with a trainer or a coach, there's just a lot of features then, but, for instance, if you're downloading Jay's, downloading the app, and you're not working with anyone, it's kind of cool.
Andrew Menter:You can track your movement, and I'm not discounting the value of that at all, I'm just saying if you were working with someone, then you know that person could then see your scores and actually give you specific workouts to deal with.
Andrew Menter:Okay, different things. As far as partnerships, our largest one is with stretch lab, which is part of Exponential, as many know, and they're growing like crazy and they're probably approaching 500 locations at this point, and so it's a great engagement tool. So anybody that has a membership can go in there and do our screen and then the flexologists, as they call the people stretching you there, can then work with you on, maybe what's going on, and that may affect how I want to stretch you today. So, yeah, jay, your shoulder's a little worse today than usual, so let's maybe do a little more focus on there. So I talked earlier about how, if your lower body's messed up, you may want to change, not have a heavy deadlift to hair or whatever the programming is, you know, and same with situations like whether it's just in stretch lab or chiropractic or it would be as it may, but we're in. We're in all their locations. It's a great engagement tool and something that's included in membership.
Jay Croft:And are you in any businesses that focus on this slightly older market?
Andrew Menter:We are with a company called Exercise Coach and it's great. It's a strength workout and it's 20 minutes and they have great technology that uses the machines you may see at a gym, but it's using all this kind of cool technology. You go in there 20 minutes each workout, two or three times a week and that's doing a lot for your strength. And whether or not they're targeting the older demographic, the fact is that's who it is. I think it's people you don't want to go in the gym for an hour and be with bodybuilders and people doing heavy lifting, maybe intimidating. This is great. It's one-on-one. They're able to track your strength. That's great technology. And now, look, it's what I say earlier movement is a forgotten component of fitness. Well, now they're adding movement to it, and that is not mutually exclusive from your strength training. Look, I'm not going to tell you to go at 80% on your push press today if your shoulder's jacked up Right Makes perfect sense.
Jay Croft:Now, let's say I'm a mom and pop gym owner. Would this be of use to me as well, or do I need to be a part of a big operation, a big chain? Tell me about that.
Andrew Menter:No, we're with a small group, for instance in Canada, and they only have three locations and they're trying, like many gyms, trying to drive personal training business, and so I think what a lot of gyms do is when a new member comes in, they'll give a body count test. And that's to say, okay, you're at 22% body fat, come in and do a bunch of sessions and we'll try and get you to whatever 18, 18%.
Andrew Menter:And so that's great. The thing is, it's going to take some time to see some progression in getting your body count better. Besides that, it's not just how much you're working out, that's probably going to be dictated your body count, more so on your nutrition. That said, when you come as a new member, potential new member, let's give you a movement screen. It's going to take 30 seconds, it's really not invasive at all and, again, based on any issue you have, I think there's an ability to say, all right, you have this, this and this issue. Let's get a number of personal training sessions and improve that and, frankly, you can get whatever score you want. Be interesting to do. Whatever score you don't like, jay, do some of the X corrective exercises and you can rescreen and get a better score in five or 10 minutes.
Jay Croft:Okay, I don't own a gym, I'm not a trainer. I really get excited whenever I go somewhere and they can assess me or give me specific, real information about myself, like the in-body exams that give you that body fat percentage that you were talking about and those kinds of things. I think people like that because it's fun and it's kind of geeky and high tech and whatnot, but it's also personal and then it's motivating. If I've been going to this gym for a month and my bathroom scale says I still weigh the same and I go to this gym that I've been going to for a month and I'm frustrated and I want to quit and they say, well, let's look at your in-body. Well, you're down three percentage points in body fat or whatever it might be. Or let's look at your Physmodo score Gosh, you have so much more mobility and your balance is better and all these things can be really motivating to show actual progress, right.
Andrew Menter:It is, and you'll see people that like to improve on their own scores and also it becomes pretty competitive. So at IHRSA the biggest fitness show, I'd say, in the US the first year when we were with TRX, in two days we did almost 1,000 screens and it was a multi-day expo and so we had people that would come back and want to see if they were better for one day or the other. We even had some people doing a screen, then using some of the TRX, using the strap, to do some correctives and come back and re screen, and then we would have people come back the next day with a friend. We had a year where we even had leaderboard, so people were trying to do I believe it was the 40 atomic pushups and one other exercise and get scored 50% of your scores. That 50% was on your movement score and people won stuff. But yeah, it becomes, people want to improve, people want to compete and that's just what we've seen.
Jay Croft:When I did mine yesterday the first time I did it, I was mostly focused on reading the screen and making sure I was standing in the right position and all of that, and I just kind of did a I guess a shallow squat. I wasn't really going for it and my score was so bad I thought wait a second, can I do this again? And yes, you can. And I did and it was much better and I I felt like a much more athletic person after that second attempt.
Andrew Menter:It's funny you said that I'll interject for a second there. Yeah, please. People think that you know all these athletic in shape, people are getting at the best score and we see just the opposite. Really, Get these super powerful, strong folks that just can't move and those are the ones that are more susceptible to injury because they're working really hard and it's strong and powerful and fast, but you can't move. You're in trouble.
Jay Croft:Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Or I have a friend who plays tennis all the time. She's 60, plays tennis two or three times a week but he's so stiff I don't think he can turn around. I don't think he can look over his shoulder. His mobility is so limited and he's always in pain and I'm always trying to get him to work on that. Make it fun Anytime. You can make it fun and competitive, I think you're going to reach people. So, speaking of being an athletic person, you are an athletic person. You used to play rugby and your academic background is pretty interesting. You have a law degree and an MBA. Tell me a little bit about your story and how and why you got to develop this app to help people improve their mobility. How active are you now? You look like you're in good shape, but you mentioned that you have an injury here or there. So what are you doing these days?
Andrew Menter:I played college tennis and I played rugby Actually, I did that as well in college and then, after ultimately ended up doing a lot of Ironman stuff and did reasonably well, I got to Kona and did the world championships, had a nice race and decided I'm going to call quits there. But that messed up my body too. I mean, hunched down on a bike for 112 miles will do it. So my lower body mobility was a joke. And then add some CrossFit to that. I ended up getting a slap tear, a ruptured bicep tendon, I tore my Achilles. I now tore my meniscus. Ruptured bicep tendon I tore my Achilles. I now tore my meniscus. And I just think it's from years and years of beating up my body.
Andrew Menter:I had a company before this that was working with college health centers doing billing and software, and it was an interesting business that I ended up getting crushed on, which was a very, very nice lesson not a nice lesson, but it was a lesson and I just didn't have a whole lot of passion for that, which I think probably led to me not performing as well. My job is as I could have. I have a lot of passion. This is partly driven from my own experience, and then you know the people like Chris Frankl and the and the folks that understand the importance of movement and trying to provide a tool for an obvious problem.
Jay Croft:Like I said, it's really fun, and I keep focusing on fun, which I don't mean to diminish the value of it from a layman's point of view. It's very engaging, which is important, I think. Hey tell the folks where they can learn more about your app and what you're working on.
Andrew Menter:Yeah, I just recommend anyone going to our website at com, p-h-y-s-m-o-d-ocom, and yeah, I think everything's there com Very good.
Jay Croft:Well, listen, thanks so much for explaining this with me and sharing the app with me, and I'm going to show it to the trainers at the gym I go to and see what they have to say about it. It's a really cool tool. So good luck with everything and thanks again. Yeah, Thank you, Jay, and I hope you'll subscribe, tell a friend and write a review. All of that helps me grow my audience. You can learn more about me and my content business at primefitcontentcom. You can send me an email at jay at primefitcontentcom. That's jay J-A-Y at primefitcontentcom. I'm also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, so you can find me anywhere you like and be in touch. No-transcript.
