The gym has changed since the pandemic. Digital technology has become an integral part of everyday fitness routines for millions of people, with companies like Peloton pioneering at-home technology.
Now people are returning to gyms with new expectations. However, gyms are struggling to keep up, with group classes expensive to run, PT sessions unaffordable for members, and a shortage of qualified coaches, resulting in more than 50 per cent of members leaving their gyms within six months. “Gyms have responded by pivoting into low-staff models and with an explosion of connected cardio equipment adoption, but group classes and weights rooms have remained relatively unchanged,” says Denis Zhurba, CEO and founder of AI-powered movement intelligence platform, Kinetic.
Kinetic is providing gyms with digital technology to address that gap, specifically Kinetic AI-powered smart screen technology to provide members with guided group or individual workouts, thereby reducing coaching costs and increasing customer retention.
“By engaging gym members with guided workouts, enhanced by video tutorials, movement and effort tracking, technique correction, and rankings on leaderboards, we offer gyms new ways to attract and retain members. We display content that is relevant for gym members with the provision of workout updates across fitness, HIIT, combat, recovery, and others. We use cameras to gamify the workout and ensure that gym users are performing their exercises correctly, guiding them through the motions. Gamification helps members keep motivated, offering a shout-out to the user once they have reached a goal, or a round of training is completed,” adds Denis.
The other significant added value in terms of helping to grow the appeal of Kinetic and its business value, is the human input from the team that works with participating gyms to help them to further monetise their investment.
“We do work with gyms a lot on integrating what they do with our product – adding in their workouts, featuring their coaches, showing their internal promos once devices are not used, coming up with engagement strategies and so on. For example, one gym is giving away a free smoothie to the person who wins in a weekly challenge. Another promotes ‘coach-led, digitally enhanced group classes’ and we do specific content and challenges for most of them,” says Denis.
Denis, an LBS alumnus with an MBA, successfully navigated the challenges of the Covid lockdown by studying from a sailboat. He spent six months on a boat in Dubai and another six months in Thailand, simultaneously training in the combat sport Muay Thai.
Sergei, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology who lives in Toronto, is responsible for the technical aspects of the product, while competing in trail running, and mountain climbing in his spare time.
Together the two men have been selected for this year’s London Business School Incubator cohort. “It’s great to go through the experience of founding a tech company with others - it’s an experience very few people can relate to,” says Denis.
For more information on this year’s LBS Incubator cohort, read LBS incubators celebrate diversity, innovation, and talent.
Award acknowledgement
In the spring of 2023 Kinetic, then previously known as PunchPose, won the prestigious Best Tech Innovation Award at the London Business School (LBS) Launchpad event. This award signified recognition of Kinetic's commitment to revolutionising the fitness industry with advanced AI-driven technology.
The LBS Launchpad is a renowned pre-accelerator programme, organised by the LBS Entrepreneurship Club and supported by the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital. that helps London’s brightest minds transform ideas into viable businesses. Winning the Best Tech Innovation Award is no small feat; it testifies to the technical ingenuity, effective problem-solving, and potential market impact of our product.
