Ep 28 - The Future of Fitness - Interview with Train Fitness Co-Founder Andrew Just

In this episode, Allison talks with Andrew Just, Train Fitness Co-Founder, about Train's development of the first   first-ever hands-free workout-tracking app, which uses artificial intelligence to detect exercises and track reps as users go through their workout.  While there is a lot of technology available for tracking cardio workouts, Train has developed the first app that require NO MANUAL INPUTS to track your resistance training workouts.  That's right, no more using your phone, spreadsheets,  or pen and paper to track your reps and weights.

Andrew explains how he was once a cardio junky, but once he started doing more resistance training he quickly realized technology was lacking for tracking strength training workouts.  So Andrew and his business partner worked tirelessly to create a fitness app. that utilizes artificial intelligence so users can track their workouts and progress, hands-free.   

Andrew and Allison also talk what the future of fitness looks like - you don't want to miss their discussion!

For more information and to download Train's app, visit www.trainfitness.ai.

Want a personalized nutrition and exercise plan for achieving your weight loss and fitness goals?  Join us in October for our Metabolic Makeover programs. Get on the waitlist today! https://view.flodesk.com/pages/61d8a436b0306b55f06cbe98
Schedule a free, 15-minute weight loss consultation call with Couture Fitness Coaching:   https://calendly.com/couture_fitness/weight-loss-strategy-call
Connect with us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching and check out our website https://www.couturefitnesscoaching.com/
Sign up for our Weekly Bee Healthy News (recipes, tips, tricks, etc.):  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/621539c6e0eda1a0d870bcf1
 

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it. Follow us for more tips, tricks, and support in our private Facebook Group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30.

Take our FREE quiz: What's Sabotaging Your Metabolism?

Follow us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching

Check at our website and blog.

Grab our free mini course - The REAL Reason you can't lose weight

Want to start boosting your metabolism today? Buy our $79 DIY, self-paced "Master Your Metabolism" course.

Want customized plan for boosting your metabolism? Learn more about our 1:1 coaching

Reserve your spot with a Couture Coach: Buy a 1:1 coaching package

Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Welcome to the Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30 Podcast. I'm Joe. And I'm Allison. And we're your co hosts and the founders of Couture Fitness and Lifestyle Coaching. We're on a quest to help women design lives they love and bodies they adore. We were fed up with the dieting industry and decided to create something different. We're starting a calories up revolution where women are nourished, their metabolisms are healed and their bodies and brains start working for them in the battle against weight loss. If you feel like your metabolism is wrecked, and you want to lose weight once and for all, you are in the right place. All right. Welcome, everyone. You've got Allison here today, and I have a guest that I'm excited to bring on that I will introduce in just a minute, I want to start just by reminding everybody that we are currently signing people up for our one on one coaching programs. So if you sign up to receive fitness and nutrition coaching from us, you will get a customized program that is designed very specifically for you. So we send when somebody buys a program, the first thing they get is they get sent a really detailed questionnaire, and your plan is going to be designed based on your answers to that questionnaire. So you're going to get assigned to one of our amazing personal coaches who's going to create your plan, do check ins weekly with you make adjustments if they're needed. And then we also offer meetings twice a week, once is a it's a q&a. So you can call in and ask any questions that you might have. And then the other is prepared content, a lot of it's around mindset. Some of it is practical fitness and nutrition information. All of those zoom meetings are recorded. And you can watch the replays if you miss them. But I just want to add that all of our programs, as I already mentioned, are super customized to you. So if you need help, maybe repairing your metabolism, maybe you've been under eating or doing too much cardio for years or months, we can help you with that if you're somebody who just needs accountability to stick to a plan, we can provide that if you're just overwhelmed with all of the fitness and nutrition information that is circulating on social media and on the internet. And you want help weeding through that and figuring out what really matters to help get you results, we can help with that too. So if you want to work with us, I would say go to our website, couture fitness coaching.com There will be a pop up on there where you can add your name to our waitlist that will not hold you to anything no obligation if you add yourself to our waitlist and then you'll get sent an email where you can set up a free console call with us, you can also just go straight to our website and set up a console call. If you scroll down on the main page, you'll see a link to set up a console call from there as well. So let's get right into the meat of what we're going to be talking about today. So like I mentioned, I've got a guest on with me who is the founder behind some really cool technology that I have just learned about. So we've got Andrew just from trained fitness here today. Welcome, Andrew. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for coming on. So train fitness has some really cool technology that is focused on strength training, which I think is really new that we know there's so much out there that focuses on cardio, I think because it's a pretty easy thing to track. But I haven't yet seen anything like this related to strength training. So Andrew, you're going to do a much better job than I will at explaining your company and your product. So why don't you just tell everybody a little bit more about train fitness and your product? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. So yeah, hi, everyone. My name is Andrew. I'm the co founder of train fitness, based out of Toronto, Canada. And we are the first application that automatically tracks your strength based workout cans free using only the motion of your smartwatch and artificial intelligence. So where a lot of other fitness apps that you might use to track a strength based or anaerobic based exercise will allow you to record your workout. They require a lot of tedious and manual input. So you're inputting the exercise type, how many reps how much weight you did, your rest time, you know your increments, things like that, that are very difficult and time consuming to input while you're trying to just focus on your workout. What we've done is we've actually built an application that monitors the motion of your smartwatch and in our case, the Apple Watch for right now. And just by wearing the Apple watch on your wrist, we look at the way your wrist moves through 3d space. And we're able to automatically detect what type of exercise you're doing as well as count your reps. So you walk into the gym, you press start workout. And if you start doing bicep curls, we're going to automatically detect those bicep curls and start counting the reps for you. If you start doing a back squat or a front squat or push up or pull up or sit up or a lot raise or 110 other different exercises, the app will kind of magically detect what you're doing. There's no video required. It's just simply based off the way that your wrist moves through 3d space. And we allow you to track that similar to How you might track a run, or a bike ride on Strava? Yeah, when I saw the video of how this works, I was absolutely amazed, I couldn't believe that it could detect, you know what movement you were doing, because some of them were pretty similar. Um, so I think that's amazing. And one thing I love about this is that it is that I am aware of the first product that automatically tracks strength training. So you know, we all know that there are so many different tools out there that can track cardio, just because it's really easy to do. I mean, I personally, I wear a step counter, I like to know how many steps I'm getting. But most of these trackers, they you know, they emphasize cardio over strength training, and anybody who has listened to our podcast for a while now will know that we are huge proponents of strength training, I would always rather have somebody fit in their strength training before they fit in, like their cardio or their steps, I would say that is number one priority for anybody who wants to change the shape of their body lose weight and keep it off for the long term, prevent injuries and just generally be healthier, I would say strength training is where it's at. So I love that we now have an easy way to track this. So question about your product. So is there a nice little way? Like if I wanted to see, well, what did I do yesterday? Or what did I do last week? Can I can I see that as well. Exactly. And that's, that's totally an elephant. So in the in the same way that, you know, there are so many tools out there to track cardio, we're just trying to even the playing field and bring those same tools to the strength training space. So at the very core of our products, it's you know, this ability to track your workout so that you can see your, you know, what exercise you did, how many reps how much weight your rest time, you know all these interesting facts about your workout. But where things get really exciting is okay, you've now saved your workout. What do I do with that data now? And how can I use it? And how can it help me become a better athlete be more healthy, you know, recover from an injury quicker or anything of that sort? And I think so we offer a bunch of tools within the application range. And for the very basic side of just being able to track your history. Look at previous workouts that you've done looking at a calendar of, you know, how many minutes have I done strength training this week? How much volume have I lifted this week? And is it improving over previous weeks, and we allow you to get even more granular so let's say you actually want to start breaking down your analysis by muscle group or by exercise tight, you know, I might be able to say, Okay, well, how many reps have I done on my quads versus my biceps in the last two months and MI working out port different parts of my body proportionally, or I might be able to say, how much volume have I lifted over the last, you know, eight months. And you know, as I'm sure a lot of your listeners are aware, one of the key aspects of strength training is progressive overload. So if you're trying to build strength and become a stronger person, the core principle that is just over time, you need to be progressively overloading your muscles. And often the way you do that is by more reps or higher weight. And we offer a really simple tool to say, Well, hey, if you list lifted 20,000 pounds with your legs last week, well, why don't we shoot for 21,000 or 21,500 this week, and progressively push that bar a little bit further. So not only are you tracking your results, but I think the most important thing is, is you're seeing your progress, and you're seeing the results. One of the things I really struggled with strength training when I started is I felt like I was going the right direction. But I never really knew when I could never really remember, you know, was I lifting? Am I lifting more now than I was six months ago? You know, maybe I kind of felt a little bit healthier and a little bit stronger. But there's no concrete definitive answer where now using train fitness, what I'll do is I'll say Well, hey, I benched. You know, maybe 185 pounds for 12 reps today. And six months ago, I was doing 135 pounds for eight reps. And that's a very clear, distinct progression. And that progress feels good. And personally, it keeps me very motivated. Ya know, that's super cool. And yes, we are very big proponents of progressive overload constantly trying to, you know, maybe add one more rep or push yourself to go a little bit heavier, I would love to be able to easily go back and see like, you know, what was I doing 1010 reps of shoulder press with, like, five years ago versus now? I don't think I have to see but your product sounds like it would definitely be able to tell me that. Definitely. Go ahead. No, I was gonna say maybe one last thing I'll add to is is we're not just focused only on you know, of course that helps for people that want to you know, gain mass or get stronger. But one of the things we focus on a lot as well as is what about people that love performing anaerobic exercise for other reasons, maybe to recover from an injury or to get more toned or things like that. So we're working in features right now, that will actually give you like real time recommendations on how you can improve your workouts and how many reps you should do for different goals for different people. So if you are coming into the strength training world, say, Hey, I'm just trying to stay healthy because I'm a marathon runner, and I know I can only do cardio, but I'm not necessarily trying to woke up. We also have built some tools to support that as well. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I sometimes forget that. You know, not everybody is obsessed with trying to put on more muscle like myself. Exactly. So that's great. Yeah. So what was the inspiration behind train fitness and your product? Yeah, so I actually grew up as a pretty hardcore cardio junkie. When I was younger, I was racing triathlons competitively. And I was super, super focused cycling and running are my two main sports, done a few marathons and very big cyclist as well and loved triathlons and did that for about seven or eight years. And it wasn't until probably about five years ago that I really started realizing the value and my interest in anaerobic or strength training and just how much better I felt, you know, even for my for my cardio, but then just like my general well being about mixing both cardio and strength. And as I started getting more and more involved in the strength training, I think like my biggest realization was, I was very data hungry when I was focused on cardio. So think like most triathletes, we love our tech, and we love our gadgets. So power meters on the bikes, heart rate, monitors, GPS, watches, you know, tracking splits, you know, heart rate, variability, elevation gain, like all of these numbers, I just love to consume them. And there's so many tools, as we mentioned earlier tools and technology and software to be able to do all this stuff on the cardio side. And I love that when I moved more towards the striker side, I think I was very disappointed to realize that all those tools I've learned to love just don't exist on the strength side. And there was no way for me to automatically track my workouts. So I started manually logging them, I tried using Excel or Google Sheets, I tried using, you know, existing applications. And I think what I found is the process of tracking my strength workout was so tiring and cumbersome that it actually made me like working out less, because instead of just focusing on, you know, my workout and getting in the zone and letting my mind wander and just kind of using it as a way to release stress. I'm constantly sitting there like punching numbers into my cell phone, and then a push notification comes up when I get distracted. And next thing you know, I've been on Instagram for seven minutes. And I've totally forgotten about my workout. And I hated that. So then I ultimately just ended up stopping tracking of my workouts. But I also didn't like that that wasn't a solution either. So really, what it came down to is I was like there needs to be a way to automatically track your workout. And it needs to be so hands free that it feels effortless for the user so that everyone can do it. And I think like that's where the idea came. At the same time, I was starting to do research and development and programming in the artificial intelligence space. And I realized that this was a problem that I thought could be solved with artificial intelligence or machine learning. And when we put the two together after an initial prototype was designed, I kind of had conviction that this could be a really exciting product. Okay, that's awesome. Yeah. Do you have a programming background as well, then? So it's good question not actually formally. So I studied finance for my undergrad. And I've never actually taken any formal education in software development. Now, having said that, from a very young age, I actually started doing web design and mobile app development, I was just super interested in the space and I started playing around the space and went deeper and deeper into it. So I had been when I started, the company been pretty far into the kind of software development space for probably about 10 years at the time, but it was all kind of self taught. You know, I was watching YouTube videos about how to code and things like that and trying to emulate other developers never through formal education. That's interesting. So we have very similar backgrounds. So my day job, my call it my real job, I am a programmer, as well. degree. So I am a self taught programmer. So I do SAS and Python and SQL. Awesome. little tangent here. Python is what our back end is written in. Yes, very terrible. Okay. So I'm just curious, where do you see fitness and specifically strength training going in the next 10 years from like a technological and social perspective. So there's a couple big paradigm shifts that I think fitness is going to have over the next decade. One is probably quite obvious. And that's connected fitness. I think we've already started to experience that. And I think number two that I think is maybe less obvious, and that's social in fitness. So maybe to kind of talk about the first one on connected fitness. We're starting to see you know, some of these companies popping up like peloton or mirror or tonal that are starting to bridge that gap. And I think it's fantastic. But I think we're only just like scratching the surface on where we will go. And I think the reason you see this is because a lot of the incumbents like big box store gyms or other fitness players, it's just they're slower to move and adopt. It's a very expensive space. No equipment in a large box store gym can cost millions of dollars and it's not very easy to just, you know, get rid of that one day and put smart equipment in the very next day. Having said that, though, I do think over the next decade you'll start to see players particularly in the wearable space like ourselves but then also the computer vision space. So using cameras to track workouts, smart sensors and things like that connected clothing, things like that, that are really going to change the way that the fitness space works. And I see a world where in a decade from now, if you want to improve a specific exercise or you know, learn how to do yoga or anything like that, it'll actually be connected or smart Fitness First, in the same way that if I wanted to, I don't know learn how to program, I would probably look at online courses. First, I think the same thing is going to start happening with fitness. For sure. I think the second one is around social, I think there's a couple of players out there that have started to scratch the surface on social. So Strava is obviously one of the biggest social players right now. But then you'll also see things like peloton who's brought community a little bit to fitness and even things like you know, SoulCycle that's kind of made fitness a social in person experience, I truly do think we're only scratching the surface on this. I think humans are a very, very social, we're very social beings. And I think the number one biggest reinforcement and accountability measure towards fitness is actually social pressure. You know, nothing makes me want to work out more than knowing that my peers are also working out and bettering themselves and you know, staying healthy. And I think the more that you ingrain social and fitness and they become one kind of cohesive unit, the more we'll see people not only doing fitness as a means to stay healthy, but actually enjoying it and making it become an everyday part of their lives. I love that. I hope that remains true. We'll have to listen to this 10 years from now and exactly how right you are. Okay, so what is next for train fitness specifically? Yeah, so for right now, what we've been focusing on is our tracking technology to automatically track workouts, I think there's kind of two big milestones for us coming up. Number one is to not only provide tracking, but as you start to provide coaching, and that's something that's on our radar for next six or 12 months. So not only can we say, hey, we detected that you performed eight dumbbell Incline Bench Press reps, but how can we actually say, how was your form? How was your tempo? How was your range of motion? How is your velocity? And how can we actually start to recommend when you add up your weight or decrease your weight. And what's really cool about our product is because we're tracking your motion, not only are we able to say how many reps and you know what type of exercise, but we also get some pretty interesting stats like your velocity, which is very helpful for velocity based training, your acceleration, and we can also see a range of motion, which is incredibly powerful when you look at exercises like a squat, for example, where one of the common mistakes is not enough range of motion, or not enough depth in the squat. But we can also look at your time under tension and how quickly your tempo how quickly you're performing some of these reps. And so while I don't think train fitness will ever necessarily quite replace an in person, personal trainer, I think there's a lot of things that we can we can work very closely with personal trainers. And that's something we're excited about where, you know, maybe you're seeing a personal trainer, you know, twice a week, but you're actually working out four times a week. And this is a great tool to kind of provide personal trainers this like synthetic vision so they can they can see how their clients are performing. You know, what are they actually doing the exercises, but how can you give your clients recommendations and review what they're doing when you're not necessarily they're not in front of you. So the coaching aspect is one that we're very excited about to kind of roll out over the next quarter or two or three quarters. Beyond that we've actually started to set our sights for adjacent anaerobic sports, so martial arts, boxing, Pilates, yoga, things like that things that are anaerobic in nature, but that are not traditional strength training that can include things like CrossFit, or HIIT exercises, how do we start supporting some of these adjacent sports so that if you're not necessarily pumping iron in the gym, but you're really big in bar or Pilates, or something similar? How can we provide the same level of tracking and support for those exercises? I'm curious though, my two oldest girls are competitive gymnast, and I could see this being super useful in gymnastics, like, you know, it knows you're doing a back handspring and maybe it can tell you, you need to fix this and it or whatever like that could I don't know I could see it going there someday to that would be totally those types of sports are like diving totally. And I think you know, I'm definitely not an expert in the in the gymnasts side of things. But certainly I can imagine a huge component of a lot of the jumps and a lot of what's happening in gymnastics has to do with how much force are you jumping with? How high in the air? Are you going? How does that compare to last week or last month and these are all things that you can actually track very well using the accelerometer on a smartwatch or an Apple Watch and you can certainly start to see like how am I different moves changing over time? And am I going the right direction? What do I need to focus on? And you know, while we're definitely not there yet, that's that's definitely a space. I could see us moving into. Yeah, I just was thinking about that as we're talking. Totally, totally cool. Okay. Well, so for anybody who is also thinks this sounds like a really amazing product, how can they learn more about about your product and if they are wanting to try it out? How can they try it out? Yeah, so The best spot to find this is probably on our website. We are on the app store right now. But the easiest place to get there is probably through our website. So our website is trained fitness.ai. So TR ai n fit any ss.ai That's best place to find us in the top right corner of our website, you'll see a link to the app store and then you can download from there. Currently, we are only supporting the Apple Watch. So unfortunately, Samsung Garmin other app or other smartwatches coming soon, but not available quite yet. And then we are only supporting the Apple Watch Series four and higher just just due to some technical constraints. But if you do have an Apple watch that was purchased within the last three or four years, then you definitely can use our app. And we support over 110 different exercises right now. So you know, leg exercises, bodyweight stuff, if you want to workout at home, all your traditional strength training exercises we support basically any common exercise you would perform in the gym, whether with cables or machine, dumbbells, barbells, we support them. Awesome. And we definitely have is a discussion we have with clients often like what is the best way to track your workouts. And I know that can range from literally writing it down on a piece of paper to putting something in Excel to having some sort of app but this is definitely something that we will be mentioning to our clients if somebody is interested in having something that's a little bit more automated, just like our Google step counter. So this is exactly cool. Okay, do you have anything else you want to add before we wrap things up? No, I think this is awesome. It's been a pleasure to be on the show. So thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for coming on and talking about what I think is very cutting edge product. I think we'll be hearing like you said a lot more about about this and some, you know, similar type of things in the next several years. Problem. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm gonna wrap things up just to remind everybody if you are interested in getting a plan customized to you just go to our website, join the waitlist, schedule a call and we can chat with you and see if you think our program might be a good fit. So, Andrew, thank you for coming on and telling us about your product. That's all we've got for you guys today. Bye, everyone. That's what we've got for you today about how you can invest in your metabolism and start losing weight by eating more and exercising less. Trust us you aren't too old and it's never too late. If you want to learn more about this topic, head over to our Facebook group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30. You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook at Couture Fitness Coaching. And if you want to work with us, join us for our next 12 weeks session.