Short introduction:
Hi! My name’s Leon. I’m the Product Director of Fitain — a new health & Fitness app to create, share, find and monetise exercise plans. Beginners can find plans created by pros, intermediates can create their own plans (train themselves) & professionals can train clients on/offline using ‘pro tools’. So there’s something for everyone — we flip tradition on its head. My medium takes you through the journey :).
My task: to architect, build & film a 2000+ exercise library
I was in charge of creating a comprehensive exercise library (arguably the biggest asset we currently have). So had to go all out! This included project management, UX research, competitor analysis and loads of spreadsheets.. We needed to accommodate for various types of health professionals: PT’s, Physiotherapists, Sports Coaches etc. Here’s the lessons learnt from this experience.
1. Do your research! — know what you’re getting into
You probs thought like me: it’s as simple as finding a space, finding people and filming exercises right? Riight? Wrong. If IT has taught me anything, users see the tip of the iceberg. In previous posts I’ve mentioned with a tech startup you build everything from scratch. So with that in mind, there’s layers to this — let’s break it down…
2. Identify the competitors — meet or beat them
What were they doing? How many exercises did they have? How do we meet or beat them? What types of exercises were fitness-based libraries doing vs physio-based vs yoga-based? A gap I acknowledged was senior & mobility exercises. These have been completely neglected in general. But we filled that as demonstrated below by Ryan Dunn — Fresh 4 Life Fitness:
So that’s when I said “1400 minimum, but 2000 is the target — let’s go”. Please to report the official count is 2016!
3. Learn by doing — draw on your old knowledge
If users could log metrics against exercises, there had to be some sort of database. My apprenticeship touched on relational databases (SQL) — but you really learn by doing it yourself. I wan’t to keep this high level but with each exercise, I had to wire up the anatomical movement, muscles used, force, impact and so on… Not to mention drawing upon my previous PT (Personal Trainer) knowledge and do further research.
4. Learn from mistakes — reiterate & redo.
At this point the dataset was complete and ready to move to the next step. But something incredible happened…
During the pandemic, they built a gym but was waiting for their equipment to arrive from China. By chance, our CEO went for a walk and saw this empty space. They had a 3 month gap and we had an exercise library so they said “go for it”. We showed them the app and they were really keen to get involved.
Now, with this space we did a series of test runs which was an iterative process. Sometimes the angles were wrong, lighting off, camera settings wrong, editing settings wrong.. with each iteration you identify the mistakes and improve the next time.
Glad to say we have no more of these moments…
5. Control the things within your control:
Acknowledge the things you can control and accept the things you can’t. These were controllable problems with solutions:
Problem: We had models cancel last minute but we planned for the scenario.
Solution: I demonstrated a majority of the exercises so we just continued…
Problem: On the first week we realised quickly we had no equipment.
Solution: So I dipped into my savings and bought basically a mini gym (most the equipment you see is mine).
Problem: The machine equipment at Gainz kept being pushed back.
Solution: We focussed on functional/bodyweight exercises and really exhausted our options.
The list goes on but you get the point..
In a nutshell — keep calm and carry on.
6. Think ahead — get organised
Touched on this earlier but learning basic skills on Monday.com, smoothened this process… Hands down its awesome! Here’s how I set it up:
At the top, I changed each view to it’s day and filtered by its tag.
7. Under promise over deliver
In principle this is just setting expectations. Did you meet them or not? I got away with these because they were internal. If this was client work then it may be a different story. But let’s learn together:
Example 1: For each day we set a target of 100 exercises. Realistically on average we hit 70. So we overpromised and under delivered.
What I should’ve said: “Realistically we’ll do 50 a day”.
Example 2: I thought setting up a cable machine would take 30mins. Nope — this took nearly 2 hours!! The process literally brought me to tears — story on that later.
What I should’ve said: “I’ll but 3 hours aside for this”.
If you think something will take you a day, times that by 3 minimum (so say 3 days). If it takes you 2, perfect — you’ve underpromised and over delivered.
8. Humility & competence are winning combinations:
In the past, I’ve had great working relationships with these people. Not only are they competent but they’re humble, which makes them rememberable. So I put 2 and 2 together… we have a cool app (which they knew about), free space for limited time, its a community driven app — get them involved! We’ll always give homage to those who helped.
Gainz Fit — Leeds
They’ve been incredible! Humble, family oriented, professional — I’m sure we were meant to meet.
Fresh 4 Life Fitness — Leeds
From our MVPs, this man has been supporting us with feedback. We showed him the real thing recently and his face expression was priceless! Seeing that — makes it all worth it in the end.
Apex Fitness — Leeds
Another person from our MVPs was Dario. He’s had our back from the beginning and knew the potential of Fitain. We’ve got him involved in quite a bit!
We want these people to win and anyone who helps. They’ve been humble, willing, honest and we want our business relationship to deepen. Find who you can trust and bring them along with you — super important!
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