Gym Journey

Context

More and more people are going to gyms rather than creating exercise regimes of their own. They seem to be happy to pay for the gym experience. More and more people are paying for personal trainers. They want the individual service.

Gyms are by their nature boring. Instead of changing scenery you get monotony when on a running/step/cycling/rowing/climbing machine. Gyms have responded by installing multimedia systems (sound and images) to distract attention away from the workout.
Workouts are more directed and beneficial where there is a performance goal. Modern equipment has measurement and feedback systems to a limited extent.

Problem

How can we make the gym experience more realistic and more enjoyable? How can we make training programs targeted and focussed?

Solution

Two strands comprise the solution. Firstly, a centralised system can monitor the performance of a user across a number of apparatus and this information can be combined with standard health statistics gathered from the user periodically. This data can then be processed and analysed, providing a customised report which could provide the user with information generally provided by a personal trainer. In essence this is replacing the personal trainer. Secondly, apparatus can be modified by allowing different AV programmes to be selected which take the user on a journey while exercising. The feedback can provide encouragement and enjoyment to the user. This makes the AV environment more than just distractions – they become reinforcements.

Inspiration

For some reason I was fascinated with the idea of climbing a ladder that extended for all eternity. Maybe I was in a dud job at the time. The idea then morphed into a ladder that was always moving down where you had to keep climbing to keep on it. Every so often you were informed of how far you had climbed without climbing at all. Oh yes, it must have been a dud job.
These thoughts were combined with the little I knew of gym equipment. I remembered seeing a climbing machine which provided a good workout for the whole body. It too suffered the same problem of the endless ladder – you went nowhere.

One morning I awoke and decided that it would be neat to combine virtual reality with exercise. Why couldn’t you climb a mountain instead of the endless ladder? Why couldn’t you run along a riverside instead of along a treadmill? Why couldn’t you row along the Upper Thames instead of staring at a wall?

The visuals could motivate you to succeed. Nothing beats the view at the top of the mountain now does it? Sure beats an LED blinking away at you.

Implementation

Programme databases. User databases. AV content. Modified hardware. Gym licensing. In short, it looked like too much work. This was a big project.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This was a good idea but unfortunately it was a very expensive one. Gym equipment is not cheap and is difficult to customise unless you are a manufacturer of the equipment. Also, one such manufacturer had done all of the work already. Good luck to them, as they seemed to have a comprehensive system at the time.

http://www.ifit.com
http://interbiz.ca.com/Press/CaseStudies/pdf/ICON.pdf

Business Model

This is a value add for the manufacturers of the hardware and for gym owners. The cost should be born by them and then ultimately the consumer.

Outcome

I did nothing on this as (i) it was too expensive and (ii) done already.

Tags
idea
gym
multimedia