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With a focus on building a healthier world, how does your platform customize fitness plans for people with different health conditions?
On the Flex app, you can select workouts for your mood, fitness level, equipment constraints, or energy levels. If you’re dealing with a health condition, we have plenty of lower-impact workouts available for free and paid users. Something like our low-impact cardio program, for example, would be ideal when facing a health condition.
Flex also integrates with Apple Health for users that have that app. Apple Health has very comprehensive health tracking, including things like medical conditions which you can share with the app. So if you’re using these tools, Flex can come up with workouts that are suitable for you when factoring in any health conditions you declare.
Your app emphasizes muscle building and weight loss; can you explain how your app adapts workout plans for users with varying fitness levels?
Flex progresses as you do. Features like auto progression adapt to add or lower weight and resistance as our users advance in their workouts.
Content-wise, we always try to include variations or modifications to the exercises in our blog articles for users with varying fitness levels.
So say we were talking about push-ups. Generally, in our web content, we would include a traditional version, plus a modified kneeling version for less advanced users and maybe a plyometric version for long-time gymgoers.
We don’t place value on one variation as being the “right” version. The right version is the one that works best for your body as it is and the one that will help you make steady improvements!
Considering the wide range of articles on your blog, does your platform offer any guided content or programs for specific fitness goals like “heart-shaped butt” or “Greek God workout”?
Absolutely! Our website includes both goal-oriented workouts and more general fitness content. Although in the gym, your biggest competitor is yourself, there’s no harm in getting inspired by others along your fitness journey.
We do have targeted workouts for specific physiques like a heart-shaped butt or a Greek god body. Even a workout inspired by Spiderman star Tom Holland.
That being said, for those who are just starting out with fitness and don’t have defined fitness goals in mind yet, we’ve got some great introductory content that just breaks down the basics of simple exercises.
Fitness shouldn’t be intimidating. Even if you don’t have lofty aesthetic goals and simply want to move more, there’s information on the Flex platform that is made for you too.
How does your company’s location in Canada influence the fitness content and programs you offer? Do you tailor them to different regional health trends or seasonal activities?
At the moment, we don’t have Canada-specific content. Our platform is available around the world and users can always explore our leaderboards to see relevant trends or other user scores within their areas, so we’re hoping this helps foster a sense of community regionally.
Could you detail how user feedback has shaped the development of your app’s features, such as the auto progression or plate calculator?
Especially in the development stage, our users help us define what features are a hit and which ones could use some tweaks. Providing an open forum for feedback helps us build a dedicated community too. We find that people are more passionate about our app since they really feel like their input is being heard and implemented for the better.
The plate calculator and auto progression, specifically, were features I came up with to enhance my own workouts. So I guess, in a sense, they are user-informed since I do use the app to improve my workouts too! In my mind, a founder should be the most passionate user and advocate for their product to put themselves in other users’ shoes.
What measures does your company take to ensure the accuracy and safety of the fitness advice provided in your articles and app?
There’s a lot of “credible” information out there in the fitness world that can make it tricky to know what’s accurate or not. While we do explore resources from content creators, fitness coaches, and personal trainers in the research phase, ultimately, we want to verify that all the information we publish is rooted in scientific fact.
Our articles cite peer-reviewed and scholarly scientific papers and provide a list of references for people who are eager to dive further into the literature. We’re constantly curious, so to the best of our ability, we aim to stay informed on current and emerging research in the fitness and health science sectors.
As a remote team, what strategies do you employ to maintain effective collaboration and innovation in the digital fitness space?
Luckily, the bulk of our team lives in Vancouver or Toronto, so there’s not too much of a time zone divide. We try to schedule our meetings at times that are convenient for everyone, but much of our work can be done asynchronously. As long as the product meets our standards, we believe in letting our people work on timelines that feel most productive for them. So far it’s been working out well!
One of our main feedback points that customers have mentioned is that Flex helps them maintain consistency. For instance, here’s an example of an Apple Store review we got:
“I’ve very often struggled to maintain a consistent workout routine without relying on a trainer.
The smart progression and auto-tracking have really helped me see tangible progress in my training. It’s taken a lot of the effort out of planning my workouts, making going to the gym much easier and [more] enjoyable.
I would recommend this to anyone who struggles to track and maintain a consistent workout plan.”
Here’s another very kind testimonial one of our users shared. This person has been weight training for 12 years:
“Try it out for free, but if you have an Apple Watch, you’ll definitely want to pay for it. The logging on the watch has changed my ability to stay focused and keep my phone away while working out.
Overall, an amazing app if you want a highly customizable, simple interface logging app that doesn’t push a specific training style or set of workouts.”
Part of the reason we do what we do at Flex is not about fitness at all, it’s about encouraging habit-building and showing up for yourself (and your community!).
Although working out is the best thing you can do for your physical body, creating better habits and sharing passions with like-minded people is just as important. We believe that fitness is for life and feedback that tells us users are sticking with their workouts warms our hearts and shows us we’re on the right track.
