Inspiration
I've been injured playing sports, and I have plenty of friends who have, too. We all asked ourselves the same thing: How bad is it? Do I need to go see someone? How long should I sit out? Most of us didn't have an athletic trainer to ask, so we either came back too soon and re-injured ourselves or stayed out longer than we should have. I wanted to create an app that could answer those questions and help you get back.
What it does
Ready to Play gets athletes back in action after a sports injury, from the first day until they are playing again.
- Injury check: you tap where it hurts on a 3D body model (ankle, wrist, shoulder or hamstring) and answer a few quick questions.
- Return date: a detailed day-by-day plan with a predicted return date. The plan has a 25% buffer built in, so when the return date changes, it tends to move earlier.
- Daily check-ins: rapid-fire "how do you feel" questions matched to your injury. The plan evolves as you answer.
- Guided exercises: 3–4 daily, each demonstrated once by an animated 3D model, followed by 3 rounds of 30 seconds on, 5 seconds off.
- Care finder: points you to the best place nearby to get checked out, plus pain-relief products for your injury and stage.
- Motivation: a buddy mascot grows as you recover, there's confetti when you fully recover, and a strength mode afterward takes you from mouse to gorilla.
How we built it
The app is made with React and Three.js, using Vite, deployed on Vercel. The 3D injury picker and exercise demos use rigged anatomy models from BodyParts3D, animated with a custom motion engine I built for the exercises. Injury rules, questions, and exercises are stored in JSON, and all user data stays in the browser. I used Claude as an AI coding assistant to build the app, but I was responsible for the design, features, and user testing. For the demo video, I animated a phone in Blender, then used an AI-assisted video editing workflow (modeled on the YouTube AI Video Editing System) to edit the video.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was making the app feel clean and unique. AI naturally churns out basic "AI slop": cluttered screens, overwordy text, cookie-cutter layouts. I ripped out everything I could, rebuilt the recovery plan when it got too complex, cut down the words on each screen, and fought for a playful, bubbly feel until it felt like a real app.
The Blender animation was the second major challenge. My first version showed the phone standing in front of a flat orange wall with a camera that didn't move, which was very underwhelming. I had to get the floating background pieces, the camera motion, and the glassy effect just right.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Animated 3D exercise demos that show exactly how to do each move
- A recovery plan that changes daily based on how your injury feels
- Two full visual themes, playful and dark athletic, that you can toggle between
- A polished demo video with a custom Blender animation
What we learned
I learned how to work with 3D models and animation on the web, how to design a plan that responds to user input, and that on a screen, less is more. I also learned how to use AI well: it's fast, but it only gets good when you keep pushing it to a higher standard.
What's next for Ready to Play
The real next step is launching Ready to Play to the world so any athlete can use it, not just as a hackathon demo. Ready to Play installs on a phone as simply as any other app, so we can get it into athletes' hands fast.
Start in our community. We'll begin by sharing it with teammates, friends, and local teams. Watching real athletes use the app on real injuries will show us what's working, what's confusing, and what's missing. We'll include a quick way to send feedback from inside the app.
Cover more injuries. We're starting with ankles, wrists, shoulders and hamstrings. Next we want to add knees, backs, elbows and other common sports injuries, each with its own questions, recovery timeline and 3D exercises.
Take your progress anywhere. We'll add account sync so your recovery plan moves with you from device to device, and you won't lose it if you switch phones or clear your browser.
Keep you motivated. We'll add reminders for daily check-ins and workouts, because recovery only works when you stick with it.
Improve the plan. As more people use the app, their check-ins will help us fine-tune the timelines and exercise steps to make return dates even more accurate.
Expand to more places. After proving it works in our community, we plan to expand to other schools and sports clubs, so athletes without access to an athletic trainer still have a guide to get back on the field.
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