KC-based OYO Fitness flexes with new exercise app, 10-week workout challenge

The freshly released OYO Personal Gym PRO model helps users avoid common exercise setbacks by offering true resistance and proper pacing of workouts with its new app component, said Graham Ripple.

“One of the things that is often common with working out is that they’re not doing a full range of motion or are going really, really fast,” said Ripple, the chief operating officer at Kansas City-based On Your Own Fitness. “With weights, you can jerk on it a little bit and overcome gravity with momentum, but then the other part of it is that often you go too fast with working out, so this ensures that it’s happening at the right speed.”

The OYO app — currently only available on iOS — provides follow-along workout clips, compiled by OYO’s trainer Nick Bolton in categories like “strength” and “cardio,” and a pulsing circle that counts reps and keeps time with the trainer, he said.

“We wanted to be able to create an infinite amount of workouts,” said Ripple. “Rather than record a whole workout video that’s 30 minutes, we created individual exercises that we can then string together in different combinations of it and allow Nick just a vast amount of flexibility in designing these.”

The app includes compilations on Bolton’s favorite workouts, and a 10-week challenge program tested with a local focus group, he said.

“I think participants just lost like on average, like 17 pounds or something like that. I mean it was just fantastic,” he said, noting a combination of exercise and clean eating.

The app works with previous OYO models, but the Personal Gym PRO provides analytics after multiple workouts to give tips and information on the user’s extension, or cautioning against bad habits, said Ripple.

“We set it up so that you have a filtering section, so you can select your body focus, like what area you want to work out. You can select the type of workout that you want to do. You can select your intensity. And you can select any equipment required,” he said. “We just wanted it to be a platform that can be really be robust and so down the line, we can do more in terms of workout programs.”

The PRO arrives in deep sleep mode, said Ripple, which requires a USB plug in to a power source to wake up, and a quick shaking to turn it on in following uses.

OYO has on a new model to follow the PRO in the pipeline, as well as expansion into larger scale projects, he added.

The Personal Gym PRO, like the Long Extension model and DoubleFlex Black, utilizes the SpiraFlex technology, said Ripple, which was originally developed by founder and chief executive officer Paul Francis in partnership with NASA to aid astronauts in zero-gravity workouts, while in the International Space Station.

“One of the astronauts that we work with is Leroy Chiao. I think he was there for three or six months, and he came back stronger after using this device in space than when he left, which is crazy. I think he was working out like an hour a day or something like that,” Ripple said. “It’s pretty remarkable technology.”