The Internet of Fitness

By Brad Seraphin

Sitting is the new smoking, and the increase in computer based jobs means we are spending less time outdoors and more time stationary. Some studies show that when you are over 25 years of age, each hour spent sitting reduces your lifespan by 22 minutes. By comparison, each cigarette reduces your expected lifespan by only 11 minutes. In 2000, approximately 50% of jobs required sitting all day, whereas in 1970 this number was 20%. 2000 was 15 years ago.

Does anyone feel like getting some exercise?

Scott Rushforth, a 30 year old full-stack developer for 0x7a69, did.

Considered to be “the best” amongst his peers, Rushforth’s dedication to his craft bordered on addiction; sitting with access to a computer terminal was his morphine.

“Programming all day means sitting all day,” said Rushforth. “Sitting all day doesn't feel like it kills you, but it slowly does, and after 10 years of it you really feel like crap.”

His fitness and health suffered, and he was not alone. Fellow hacker and 0x7a69 founder Tanguy De Courson shared his concerns.

“I'm almost 15 years deep into programming and Tanguy is 20 years in,” said Rushforth. “Tanguy is always buying new gadgets. We were at a Vegas convention when Tanguy showed me a Jawbone and convinced me to get one. It slowly grew on me.”

Jawbone makes a popular wearable device that can provide insight into how users sleep, move and eat.

“We both used Jawbone’s mobile application to track what each other was doing,” said Rushforth. “Over time we began to get really competitive with each other and try to keep up with one another.”

‘If you’re not first, you’re last,’ De Courson taunted Rushforth.

“When the Jawbone broke, I went out and got a Fitbit,” said Rushforth. “At the time, the Fitbit was supposed to be more reliable, so I figured I would give it a shot. Upon buying it, I realized I would not be able to participate with Tanguy anymore, and it instantly stopped being fun.”

Rushforth and De Courson discovered the frustration of competing using different devices, one using a Jawbone, the other on a Fitbit. As they saw it, there were over 50 different wearables on a market bound to increase and fragment over time. All the major players were banking on Social as a key driver of activity, but fragmentation was working against them. So, being the hackers they were, they began integrating and didn’t stop with Jawbone and Fitbit.

Apple’s Health app uses the iPhone and Apple Watch to display health and fitness data. Apple’s HealthKit allows developers to make different health and fitness apps that share data with each other. For example, the data from a blood pressure app can be automatically shared with your doctor. Or a nutrition app can tell other fitness apps how many calories you consume each day.

Google Fit uses all Android Wear devices to access your walking, running and cycling activity. It provides performanced based goals for duration, distance, calories burned or steps and displays progress. Users can set custom goals and connect third party devices and apps to aggregate data.

Strava is a community of athletes connecting and competing with each other via mobile and online apps. Strava lets you track your rides and runs via your iPhone, Android or dedicated GPS device to analyze and quantify your performance.

Runkeeper is an App that uses your phone’s GPS technology to track distance, time, pace, calories burned and route maps. Data is synced to Runkeeper.com where history is saved and a number of fitness and social tools are available.

Samsung’s S Health is your personal fitness coach. It sets targets, tracks activity including health & fitness targets.

“Tanguy originally came up with the idea to unite all the wearable trackers, so that anyone could compete with anyone,” said Rushforth.

Whereas most wearables were focused on just step tracking, Rushforth and De Courson’s vision was broader. Step tracking wasn’t capable of comparing a 20 mile bike ride to a walk around the block.

“Only looking at steps is a short sighted way of looking at fitness,” said Rushforth. “What about bike riding, kayaking, yoga, or boxing? We want to support everything and track all the data. I don’t care what your doing as long as it is an activity.”

Activity.Club was born and Rushforth and De Courson were the first users.

After months of beta testing, Rushforth and De Courson fine tuned a dynamic system to award points for true physical effort, not just steps, allowing people in different areas of health and fitness to compete socially.

By developing a patent pending algorithm to normalize the performances of couch potatoes and pro athletes, Activity.Club allows a Lance Armstrong to compete with a Homer Simpson. Increasing Activity.Club downloads validated the social component of fitness technology that many industry leaders tried to capture.

While Rushforth and De Courson provided technical support to the growing community, the community was providing its founders with fitness motivation.

“The motivation just builds on itself because you feel much better about yourself and then other friends get hooked and have similar results,” said Rushforth. “Activity.Club puts that front and center, and even lets people respond in real time from other notifications to encourage their friends. Once you follow even 20 people, it’s almost guaranteed that if you go for a walk around the block someone will notice and give you a high five.”

Rushforth and De Courson got active. Very active. In a little more than a year, Rushforth shed 70 lbs from a soft 240 to lean 170. De Courson, a man of similar stature, dropped 60 pounds. Both men described their transformations as life saving.

“Co-workers might not compliment you for taking a lunch walk, but if 3 weeks of that helps you lose 5-10 pounds, suddenly people notice,” said Rushforth. “And if you keep that up for 10 months and drop 70 pounds, people are non-stop complimenting you and telling you ‘you look great.’ I think that’s why Activity.Club is so important.”