Staying fit isn’t exactly complicated. We find three to five hour-long windows throughout the week in which we don spandex and exert energy, be it via sweating out intervals on a treadmill or negotiating our way around a giant yoga ball.
Residents of the Tampa Bay area are particularly adept, judging by the foot and bike traffic along Bayshore Boulevard and the bicycle pelotons that parade through downtown St. Pete every Saturday morning.
Of course, we find ways to make getting exercise complicated. We procrastinate, putting off that gym visit or beach run until we’re too tired. Our back hurts a little. Or we get creeped out at that old guy who always takes the treadmill next to us despite the fact that there are dozens of vacant treadmills nearby, and we leave the gym early in disgust. Stuff like that.
Fitness experts recognize this, though, and are developing clever ways to keep us moving despite ourselves. To this end, two local experts with two very different ideas hope to shape the way you stay in shape.
One has created a platform that lets you customize your workout; the other has developed a method of analyzing your running style that can help you prevent injury and run more efficiently.
The first is a subscription-based service called Peerfit, which basically acts as a portal to dozens of smaller fitness studios throughout the Tampa Bay area. The brainchild of CEO Ed Buckley, a University of Florida graduate with a PhD in health behavior (with an emphasis in digital health and wellness) and a master’s in public health, Tampa-based Peerfit allows users, in essence, to belong to multiple boutique gyms. Subscribers can sign up for a spin class at a specialty gym one day and head to a yoga class at another.
“At its very core, it is a flexible membership to all of the best fitness studios,” Buckley said. “Now, where it really kind of differs from all the other flexible options out there is, we actually build credits into the system. So, not everyone has the same membership. Kind of like how you buy tokens at an arcade. That’s how Peerfit works. You get credits, and you get to use them at all the top studios.”
Subscribers can choose an amount of “credits” to use each month, available in increments between eight and 32.
Some employers, like Laser Spine Institute, offer subscriptions to employees as a perk, and some insurance companies include them as part of insurance policies.
Gyms subscribers can access run the gamut — the aforementioned yoga and cycling gyms, barre studios, CrossFit, Pilates and PRX intervals, pole dancing.
“There are so many things that people want to do that a one-size gym membership certainly doesn’t solve that,” Buckley said. “It’s 2016. We have the technology to unbundle and stream music, stream TV on demand. Why wouldn’t our access to fitness feel the same way as everything else we do?”
Depending on the gym, the amount of credits required for access varies.
Buckley said the concept has a built-in motivation factor for users, given that subscribers can network on the site and recommend classes to one another.
“One thing we’re big on is building communities,” Buckley said. “We really like to push Peerfitters together whether they know each other or not. They end up becoming friends. I’ve seen it blossom into workout buddies over and over again, so it’s really cool.”
Across the bay, a Clearwater physical therapist is offering a service that helps runners everywhere perfect their stride. Dr. Eric Schweitzer, DPT, developed IdealRun with the thought that runners can correct bad habits after a digital analysis of their movements.
“Some people are stiff, we tell them how to loosen up. Some people are weak, we tell them how to get strong. Some people aren’t moving in the right pattern. Those are, like, three patterns that we find commonly,” Dr. Schweitzer said. “Where you strike on the ground definitely judges how much force you take into your body.”
What happens is, take a few short videos of yourself running, squatting and stepping down (both of those movements are closely related to running, Dr. Schweitzer said), and upload them to the Ideal Run website for a thorough analysis of your movement patterns.
The concept brings to mind the treadmill analysis available at specialty running shoe stores like Fit2Run, but Dr. Schweitzer’s program is much more thorough — and not meant to sell you shoes. And they tend to focus on what’s going on below the knee, and whether a runner overpronates his or her ankles (aka, rolls them in too much while running).
“We consider that in a large picture,” Schweitzer said. “What’s the hip doing? What’s the knee doing? What’s the spine doing? What’s the stride length? What’s the stride width? All of that is just as important as how much pronation you have. In some cases, more important. So, it is appreciated that that’s a part of the puzzle. But that’s exactly what it is. Ankle pronation is one part of such a bigger picture.”
From there, he said, he can recommend practices that can help avoid injuries, and in the case of many elite athletes, become better runners.
“I knew there was a better way for runners,” Dr. Schweitzer said. “I thought, we need to make more specialized care, because it’s a unique population, and it’s needed to be treated as such… It’s as drilled down as it can be while still being individualized and scientific and measurable.”
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2016.