We’re in the midst of an at-home fitness revolution. It began pre-COVID, but was put into overdrive when the pandemic shut down gyms and sent the world into lockdown. People raced to buy stationary bikes, treadmills, free weights — even jump ropes — in the hopes of creating a fitness oasis in their homes. Fitness companies rushed to offer their classes online and fitness influencers on social media went viral.

At the same time, as a society, we became more keenly aware of the connection between our physical wellbeing and our mental health. Isolation forced everyone to face the harsh reality of a sedentary life and how it contributes to anxiety and depression. Suddenly, having fitness tools available at home wasn’t just a nice-to-have. It was a life line.

What we saw post-COVID was the beginning of the democratization of health and fitness, and it was incredibly promising. But it was also just version one, a spasm of solutions thrown at an enormous problem, and it unearthed a range of new challenges that innovative startups are now addressing.

One challenge is that most of today’s at-home fitness hardware is bulky, ugly, and expensive. Stationary bikes and treadmills take up a lot of space, and unless your house is big enough to have a workout room, it is unlikely to match your decor. And that’s assuming you use them consistently. For many people these large devices fall into disuse and become glorified clothing racks.

Today’s offerings have also lacked variety. If you spend thousands of dollars investing in a Peloton bike, for instance, the only thing you can do is ride. You can log your workouts, but only if they fit into the app’s specific biking regimen. What about the person who likes to mix in an outdoor run or a pick-up game of soccer on Saturday? Today’s tools typically offer one exercise, usually cardio. If you get bored? Too bad. What’s more, to date, no at-home fitness platform has offered a comprehensive, affordable solution for weight training, even though working with weights has been proven to build bone strength, reduce back pain, and even sharpen your mind.

For co-founders Izzy Holder and Tony Adams, it was time to develop the next version of at-home fitness, something that offers greater variety, customization, and also looks sleek and minimal in smaller homes where space is a premium.

Izzy Holder and Tony Adams met in business school in France after working in investment banking and private equity in London for many years. Self-described fitness fanatics, the two became friends while training for a Spartan Race with 60 of their business school classmates.

“We worked very long hours, and getting out to the gym was my oasis, and key to maintaining my mental health,” says Adams.

As they trained, they bonded over their frustrations of staying fit during the COVID-19 pandemic. They both enjoyed the freedom that came from working out at home, but chafed against the virtual offerings. YouTube was too random. Peloton was big, expensive, and a bit boring. Treadmills didn’t fit into their city apartments or offer enough variety. What they really wanted was to workout with free weights, but they were expensive to order and lacked the accountability of other fitness apps. They also wanted an app that could adapt to the rest of their fitness preferences, not pigeon-hole them into a single activity.

When Holder and Adams mentioned this challenge to their business school classmates, they were met with resounding agreement. So they took the seed of an idea — a beautiful, customizable hardware-plus-software solution for at-home strength training — wrote out a business plan and entered it into a venture competition. Out of 120 startups they made it to the finals, which caught the attention of investors. That infusion of capital allowed the two to quit their jobs and launch their company, FITTLE, full time in January 2022.

FITTLE’s first order of business was to design a beautiful and functional weight bench and accompanying software, so Holder and Adams partnered with Mettle, an award-winning product design studio in London.

“It’s rare to find a firm that nails hardware and software,” says Adams. Working with Mettle allowed FITTLE to expedite their development phase without building out a costly tech team. As such, they were able to develop prototypes in mere months. Now, they’re prepping for a pre-order launch in September 2022. The next phase will be to build a community of about 100 power users and start learning in real time how people interact with the product.

FITTLE is starting in the UK, with an eye towards urban residents, but that’s just the beginning. After expanding in Europe, the goal is to move across the Atlantic into the US market.

At a glance, FITTLE is an elegantly simple product. It looks like a beautiful bench that you’d be proud to display at the end of a bed or next to a sofa in even the sleekest urban apartment. Pull back the lid and you’ll find all the weights and accompanying equipment needed for a full strength and conditioning workout. No computer chips or gimmicky tools, it’s just a great weight set inside an attractive bench. That’s step one.

Step two is the software component. When a user opens up the FITTLE app, they’re taken through an extensive onboarding experience that’s designed to simulate having a personal trainer. The user is asked detailed questions about their goals, their experience level, their preferences. And not just goals and preferences that pertain directly to the FITTLE bench. The idea is to be as customizable and modular as possible, so if a user says they enjoy long runs on Sundays, that’s going to impact the workout program they receive.

The app takes that data and suggests an initial four-week program. As the user completes each workout for the week, they tick them off the list, and at the end of the four-weeks they’re put into a growth week. This is a bit of recovery time for muscle building, and a chance to try a different type of training to keep things interesting. After this recovery week, the app asks the user to re-assess their goals and they’re given a new four-week training plan.

“We do it in this five-week repeated pattern in order to build habits, rather than just day by day suggesting a workout,” says Holder.

“On YouTube there is an abundance of free content,” says Adams, “but it’s using buzzwords like six-week abs. So people go crazy for a few weeks and then they fall off the bandwagon.”

“This is just the beginning of how we can customize workouts,” says Holder. “There is so much data coming back that you can integrate into a fitness routine. For instance, in the future, your wearable device might detect that you did an extra hard run yesterday, so it will scale back today’s workout accordingly.”

One of FITTLE’s key components will be the community that it fosters. When people join the app, they’ll be invited into communities based on where they live, their preferences, and their goals. They can then connect, encouraging one another and sharing tips. The next step, says Holder, will be to create actual meet-ups for an even more genuine connection.

FITTLE’s first product is a weight set in a beautiful bench, but weights are just the entry point. They’re designing the bench with enough room to house additional modular “packs” in the future, from yoga to pilates to barre.

“The bench will be everything you could possibly need to workout and recover,” says Adams.

It was exciting to see innovative fitness companies respond to COVID and help people stay healthy at home, but that was just the spark. We’re proud to back a startup that is taking this market to the next level, not just creating another fitness solution but building on the shoulders of companies like Peloton and Tonal. FITTLE is addressing the challenges that emerged in the last two years in savvy ways, making them truly a company of the moment, poised to reach a new generation of consumers.

We’re also excited to back FITTLE because they’re pushing back against the often-toxic all-or-nothing culture that can exist around fitness. In the past, to engage in weight training, most people had to give up their mornings or evenings and trek to the gym. You were either a gym person or you weren’t. You owned a Peloton or you didn’t. With FITTLE’s weight bench and adaptable app experience, people can quickly begin integrating weights into whatever activities they already love, whether that’s walks, bike rides, or sports. Furthermore, if they want to learn a new type of exercise without feeling judged or intimidated at the gym, they can do so from the comfort of their own homes.

“Fitness looks different for different people,” says Adams. “FITTLE allows for a more holistic view of fitness, and makes it so that working out from home can yield similar results to the gym. It can become a part of your lifestyle rather than detract from it.”

Finally, we’re proud to back FITTLE because their approach to manufacturing puts a premium on sustainability — an element they’ve seen missing in the industry at large. Before they created their first batch they toured factories in Vietnam to find the right partner. They’re using sustainable woods, and they’re manufacturing in small batches, based on direct consumer demand, in order to avoid waste. They’re also fighting waste by building products that last.

“We deliberately decided to make our bench less tech-heavy. That means less reliance on computer chips,” says Adams. “We don’t want people to buy our product and then discover it’s obsolete two years later, upselling them to version 2.0.” In a world of planned obsolescence, that’s music to our ears.

Please join us in welcoming Izzy Holder, Tony Adams, and the FITTLE team to StartUp Health.

Learn more and connect with the FITTLE team.

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