Online classes by Voopty

Ultimate toolkit for online fitness instructors

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Inspiration

Since the quarantine started the only option to workout with an instructor is Zoom/Skype/Hangout. Limited overview of the whole class, bad music quality, no shared stopwatch, etc. There are some Zoom plugins developed for a business meeting or education but none for workouts.

What it does

Equips online fitness instructors with digital tools required to run a class - Stopwatch, Interval timers(TABATA, EMOM), Metronom, Movement Demos, Instructions how to play high-quality music via Zoom to everyone on the class

How I built it

  1. We collected the initial set of requirements from our coach friends merged it with our personal experience as their clients.
  2. We used nodejs, react, mongodb, aws
  3. We tried the prototype during our workouts and realized that the visual preview of an exercise can improve UX and added it to OnClass.
  4. The final app would be Zoom plugin which fixes audio settings for a fitness class and adds necessary tools to the coach.

Challenges I ran into

  1. The main challenge was to move existing codebase from private bitbucket to public Github.
  2. Initially, we wanted to make it electron app, but windows app came up crappy, so we decided to present the app as a web page

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We showed the app to instructors and they started to use it without waiting for it to become a product. TABATA is the most popular feature.

What I learned

  1. We dived deep into Zoom audio settings to solve bad music quality during a Zoom Fitness class.
  2. How to build Zoom plugins

What's next for Online classes by Voopty

  1. Generate explanatory content for fitness instructors on how to fix music on zoom class and set up proper screen sharing.
  2. Finish a Zoom plugin.
  3. More tools for instructors, use remote control during a session and design their own workouts.
  4. Came up with a business monetization plan. Maybe just copy it from https://teachable.com/
  5. We collected a big backlog already from coaches to whom we introduced the app to. Implement some of that.

Added to our project during hack:now

We based the prototype on Nastya’s app “WOD Insight” for competitive CrossFit athletes. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wod-insight-watch/id1495895643

We added the following:

  1. Created web app https://onclass.voopty.com/app-root
  2. Added metronome
  3. Add movement demoing features
  4. Adjust layout to look good on bigger screens via zoom sessions
  5. Created YOGA warmup routine with demo content
  6. Created Ballet warmup routine with demo content
  7. Removed all "WOD Insight" features for personal rep counting

All the CrossFit stuff are inherited from WOD Insight

Why we believe the project could be big

  1. Fitness industry in the US only has $80B annual profit. Online training before the pandemic was a tiny fraction, but it has been forced to grow.
  2. With the proper toolset, many trainers and trainees would love to workout remotely. Just because it is convenient, safer, and not geographically bound.
  3. People bought a lot of fitness equipment during the quarantine - dumbbells, ab mats, resistance bands, some even bought barbells. Many would prefer to keep using it after the quarantine. For others, it creates one more $1B idea - a marketplace for used fitness equipment people willing to sell after the quarantine ;) (FYI sales of dumbbells went 525% up on quarantine https://meetglimpse.com/covid19/)

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