Above and Beyond Fitness and Wellbeing Training Skill

• 

  Welcome to Above and Beyond Fitness

• 

  PARQ Complete advice

• 

  PARQ Questionnaire for APL users to quickly review

• 

  Part One of Three of the Fitness Test

• 

  Motivation from completing the fitness test!

• 

  Exercise Round APL

• 

  Question Round Trivia

• 

  The available program levels

Inspiration

Having been training with Juan now for four years, I know first hand how important physical activity in all stages of life can be. Five years ago I was rushed to the hospital with a suspected heart attack and as a 35 year old that had always taken his body for granted, this was a rude awaking for why a sedimentary computer programmer needed to get out of his chair more, lose some weight and most importantly, get active. After a month long recovery, I decided I needed to get serious about my health, joined a gym and have never looked back.

Knowing that Juan trains everyone from the 18 year old newbies to an 85 year old lady looking to keep mobile, we discussed how we could combine our skills to create what has become the Above and Beyond Fitness and Wellbeing Training skill.

What we came up with was a plan to combine our years of expertise in fitness coaching and games development, to specifically target exercise and brain games for over 55s, whether they are beginners looking to make a healthy change or an existing fitness enthusiast looking for an alternative workout to try at home.

What it does

Our skill is a health and well-being training skill aimed at over 55s to aid in mobility and improve cognition. It combines full body workout routines with brain training games to give a full mind and body exercise routine with every session they complete. We have designed four tiers of program ranging from novice through to professional, all broken into four sets of a 12 week course giving a full four years of workouts if the user wants to take the full journey like I did. For now, the skill submitted is the most important session; Novice Tier, Session One.

To ensure suitability, the skill starts with an industry standard PAR-Q test that assesses the users health before proceeding with any exercises and confirms that they are not currently experiencing any one of seven conditions that might mean they are unable to continue. If they do have a precondition, the skill simply recommends discussing this with a doctor prior to beginning an exercise program, where it confirm their response as and when they return.

Users are able to complete a short fitness test which measures three key performance variables; Cardiovascular Ability, Muscular Endurance and Flexibility. They are scored across the three rounds, which is used initially to determine which skill level is best for them. In future we will use this to measure their improvement as they complete each full program with us.

To begin, the user will pick either Novice, Moderate, Advanced or Professional level for their fitness tier. At present the hackathon submission only showcases the first novice lesson but Juan has the full workout plans designed for all four levels which we plan to integrate soon after submission.

Combined with the workout are multiple types of brain training games, ranging from memory games to cognitive improvement tasks that finish off each cooldown period within our training. The user scores a combination of points from their exercise reps and their brain training to get an overall performance score for each session, finishing with a well done and review of their days training.

How we built it

Juan and I sat down and discussed the overall structure of what a system would look like that combined physical mobility improvement exercises with brain training. As a fitness coach, Juan has trained multiple clients over 55, so he designed targetted workout routines just like he would in the gym but specifically with a home environment in mind. Once we had this outlined, Juan completed a full list of exercise types for each session whilst I worked on the skeleton code in Node.js and got my head around the Alexa Skills SDK as this was my first time using it!

By the time I had created the HelloWorld.js, Juan had already begun planning our novice tier and was busy creating a full 12 week program just like he would for a new client of our target age range!

I planned a simple memory game that would form the basis of our first quiz by specifically picking 70s trivia to create something that would appeal to our target demographic. Juan picked 8 exercises that should be possible for a novice user and continued to build a list of exercises, equipment and rep ranges for future programs.

As we integrated these, it was evident we really needed to use the APL and create screens to explain the rounds further for users with devices with this enabled. Our explanations were getting good, but the Amazon screens really do help with hints for each round. We went on to combine Juans own promotional shots with his branding to create screenshots for every exercise, then did the same for the questions. The array of different presets in the APL made it very easy for us to get high quality screens going with minimal effort..

The final build of the skill has 2 rounds of 8 exercises and 9 questions, a point scoring system and performance based language routes of encouragement to ensure the user is always motivated to do their best. We also have our PAR-Q questionnaire and our fitness test complete, with multiple types of APL screens for supported devices and even a video tutorial for one exercise!

Challenges we ran into

In all my years of developing… twenty one and counting… the paradigm shift in developing a Vocal User Interface was really something I wasn’t expecting to a) struggle with and b) enjoy so much by the end of it. The closest Ive come was the first time I installed Xcode many moons ago and started learning Objective C, but the development cycle was very difficult to get my head into at first and I had moments where I wondered whether Alexa Skills development was something for me.

Similarly, VUI really does require a fine ear as well as a linguistic flair. I’ve dabbled in TTS so SSML is familiar to me now, but you really do have to listen to the language you use over and over again to ensure it flows correctly. The biggest challenge in this regards though, was the time it takes to "debug" vocabulary and not code!

The biggest headache was actually Skill Invocation. It would appear that Above and Beyond Fitness is a popular name, and the “and” part was problematic so after a few hours of trial and error, we had to settle on beyond fitness trainer for our submission. We have contacted Amazon and hope to be able to use our actual brand name in the near future.

Finally, we really didn’t leave enough time for the video presentation and after a mad panic and a two day crash course in After Effects, we were able to create something we think shows off everything in the right ways!

Amendment To add fuel to the video fire, our full video (Original Above and Beyond Skill Overview) that broke down the project entry and had all the lovely transitions in it didn't showcase the app usage didn't include a comprehensive skill overview so on the final day of the hackathon, we had to create a new video that did! That crash course in After Effects really did come in handy!!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re both genuinely glad we didn’t give up on our goal as what we have achieved for a hackathon is something we are both extremely proud of. The nuances of creating a VUI aside, the overall aesthetic of the skill flows really nicely and the combination of brain training and workouts with the screens we’ve put in it have been well received by friends and family who have all commented on “how professional” the skill is, in spite of this somewhat being what we’ve both done our entire careers!

Likewise, I’m personally very proud of our video submission. On the Wednesday morning of the week of submission I had my head in my hands wondering what I was going to do and after 2 very long days, I managed to piece together our full trailer.

What we learned

Where do you start?! The main thing aside from a new technology, a new development paradigm and a new video editing tool, is that Juan and I can work together to create a really awesome product and that ultimately, hard work and dedication to finishing something you’ve started can pay off in the end.

We’ve been talking about collaborating on an “app” every year we’ve been training together and we hope this is the start of a long and successful partnership together!

What's next for Above and Beyond Fitness and Wellbeing Training Skill

We now plan to convert the very hacky code to run from a database directly so that the rest of the workout routines can be managed by Juan in future. This will mean every tier of program will have a fully functional 12 week program, a subscription model integrated, as well as the ability to purchase our equipment lists curated on Amazon directly from the skill.

Due to the time constraints, we only managed to get a single training video tutorial integrated, but we will eventually have all the clips completed and integrated for every exercise in the app.

We will be working on more brain game types such as cognitive improvement and exploring the best possible way to use APL screens for this.

As the programs go live, we will also look to improve our monitoring services with the ability for the user to track their weight loss, their waist measurement and even their diet.

Finally, and as Juan trains clients of all age ranges, we definitely plan on creating further skills for all ages as we’re sure that everyone can benefit from some additional brain training, not just over 55s!

Built With

• amazon
• api
• node.js
• sql