Andrew Menter - Physmodo - The New Movement in Movement

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[00:02:05] Alrighty, we are live. Andrew, mentor, welcome to the Future of Fitness. Thank you. Great to be here, Eric. Yeah. I feel like it's long overdue. You know, got to know you quite a bit over the last year, year and a half. Who do we owe for this introduction? I think Tony. Tony Ambler Wright. Tony Ambler Wright. Yep. Yeah, at the NASM. So, Tony, thanks, buddy. Thanks for getting us connected here.

[00:02:33] And there's a lot to talk about with what you're up to, Andrew, at Fizmodo. And, you know, you've been in this game for a little while. You've been an entrepreneur for a while. You're a very competitive athlete, too. And I think it would be, as I was telling you, probably recording me, really interesting to kind of get a little bit of insight into, as far as human movement assessment. We'll just say movement assessment for the sake of this conversation. Where it's evolved from, where it is now. And because you guys are right at the forefront.

[00:03:02] And then where do you think it's going to go in the next decade or so? And I'm keen to find out. So, let's kind of walk that journey. But before we do that, if you don't mind, give us a little bit of background. I mean, you've been an Ironman athlete. You've done tennis. You've done rugby. You've been an entrepreneur for quite so many years. You've experienced a lot of your lifetimes. Maybe just give us a quick background on who you are, Andrew, and we'll take it from there. Sure. And yeah, I'd like to thank Tony as well.

[00:03:29] He's usually about like 30% on good introductions. So, you're in the minority. And this has been a great one. It's been fun getting to know you. Yeah, just briefly on my side, I grew up playing tennis and ended up playing at Brown, which I never could have gotten into without tennis. I mean, I'm not stupid, but I'm not that smart. So, that was helpful to get there.

[00:03:57] And ironically, out of all the sports I've played, you know, and ended up playing rugby when it became semi-professional in the U.S. And now they have a full pro league playing rugby and then doing Ironman for a long time. Tennis is what injured me the most out of anything.

[00:04:15] And it's because I think, you know, it's so one-sided that, you know, I was so asymmetric and asymmetry being the second leading cause of injury behind previous injury. And so, I've always gotten injured on the same side. It's my left side.

[00:04:33] It's, you know, starting with a torn calf to a torn hamstring to worse, a torn Achilles to a slap tear to a ruptured bicep tendon. And it's all on the left side. So, you know, what we do in measuring movement is super important to me personally. But yeah, so, you know, tennis for a number of years, rugby for like six or seven years.

[00:05:02] And then got into Ironman for, I don't know, I don't know why I did that. I think just to cope with life. That's just like people who like to punish themselves. I know. It's like, man, I really, do I really hate myself that much that I'm doing this? But yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, 2011 was a super tough year.

[00:05:28] And I'd been, I just got just destroyed on my first entrepreneurial adventure. Because mainly because I didn't know what the hell I was doing coming out of investment banking. Because I got a law degree along with an MBA and I am licensed. I've never practiced. Which I tell people when I meet them. So, they keep talking to me. And yeah.

[00:05:55] So, you know, investment banking and then straight into my first entrepreneurial venture. And I just didn't know what the hell I was doing. Because I thought everything in banking, you do spreadsheets and everything works out fine. And the numbers didn't go the way I wanted in the business. But I learned a lot. But hell, got crushed at age 39 and had to start over. So, that was super humbling. But yeah. That was 2011. So, I just, you know, biked, ran, and swam as much as possible.

[00:06:25] And did Ironman in Frankfurt. And got a good enough time to get into Kona. Wow. Which is an unbelievable experience. And that went well. And I called it a day. So, yeah. Yeah. Now I'm just trying to stay in shape, dude. 51 and trying to hang in there. Yeah. Well, you look good. You look good, man. Oh, yeah. One more thing. I tried to play golf last week. Two weeks ago for the first time. I don't think we've chatted. You know, I'm trying to be social.

[00:06:55] And oh, yeah. I forgot. I tore my meniscus on the left side. And that's not very conducive to playing golf. Just for anyone out there. If you get nothing from this podcast, if you have a tore meniscus on your front side, don't play golf. It'll make it way worse. I want to go back to your tennis career, man. So, you mentioned on... So, does that mean if your left side is all messed up? Is it because you're right-handed?

[00:07:24] Is that the general? So, it's like... I mean, that would make sense to me, right? I'm right-handed. My issues tend to be on my left side, left knee, left ankle, left hip. Actually, right hip. But we did one of your assessments, I think, at URSA when I was standing there. And you guys... Like, the Fismodo nailed it. I was like, ah, this thing's going to... Whatever. And then I'm like, holy shit. It actually nailed exactly all of my problem spots. But yeah. Is that like the asymmetry? Let's get into the asymmetries a little bit. I find that to be interesting.

[00:07:52] Like, for most people who are right-handed, right? And from the data and you guys have accumulated, we'll get into how you do it. But like, what tend to be the biggest problems that most people have? What's the most common? Well, I think a lot of it just kind of emanates from the ankle. And so I think a lot of the problems that I've had is with the Achilles tear on the left side.

[00:08:22] I'm just not using that side correctly. And it's even with, you know, having... I had a slap tear and then ruptured my bicep tendon, which strangely enough cured the slap tear because the pain is coming from pulling on the tendon and the tendon's no longer there. But now I don't have all the parts around my shoulder that are supposed to work. So nothing...

[00:08:46] So the whole left side is compensating for, you know, really starting from when my Achilles was torn. So you'll find people that, you know, you're hurt on, you know, one side. So that side naturally, one would think, gets injured the most. But then what happens strangely is that, and this happened for me on my left shoulder, is that I rehabbed that and rehabbed that a ton and ignored my right side. And so I overcompensated.

[00:09:15] So then I had problems on the other side. So yeah, symmetry is important. Yeah. Yeah. I think about how many times I sprained my left ankle specifically. And then that, you know, could or may have gone to knee issues, herniated discs in the back, everything kind of... And it's never on both sides, right? It's always on... It's always on specifically on one side. And it always seems to be, you know, upstream or downstream is something else. We're going to cover a lot more about that.

[00:09:42] And I want to get into like the background of movement assessment. I mean, when I was... It's always seemed to be like a very tedious, inconsistent process, right? Like I remember the first time I got introduced to FMS, which we'll talk about. But, you know, it was like it depended on who the practitioner was, how fast, how much time they had that day, you know, whatever was going on in their life for consistency wise to get a good, you know, movement assessment score. And it's great. I mean, it was an amazing start.

[00:10:10] But maybe give us some background, like where did movement screening, movement assessment start? And like, how has it progressed since that point to where we are today and what you guys do at Fismodo? Yeah. On the FMS side, functional movements screen, I think it's about 30 years old and still they do a great job today. So for those that, you know, don't know, it's a series of about, not about, it's a series

[00:10:35] of seven movements and, you know, the overhead squat being one and lunge rotation, so forth. And then you are scored anywhere from a zero to a three. So max score of 21, just kind of showing off the math there. And, you know, it's great. It was all that was out there. There was no technology to be able to assess.

[00:11:00] But some of the issues were, it takes a fair amount of time. And so it's hard to do, you know, assessments on a consistent basis, which is, you know, we can go into, we could do a whole podcast on this. But, you know, you wake up with your wearables and you get all your information and, you know, sleep, for instance, or HRV. And imagine if you only did that once or twice a year.

[00:11:29] It just wouldn't be very valuable information. There's so many variables that go into everything that you're capturing on, you know, physiological or biometric side. So, you know, that's, I think, the biggest issue that we tried to address at Fismodo was how can we get people to screen on a relatively consistent basis?

[00:11:53] So we're getting a true baseline for somebody irrespective of what they've done the day before, you know, workout wise or stress wise or being on a plane. But FMS was a great start. I think the technology got to a place where we could use this for movement when Microsoft released an SDK for the Kinect version 2.

[00:12:19] So for those who may not know, the 3D camera that was used in the Xbox. So that was, I don't know, probably 14 years ago. But if you remember the Kinect, it's kind of a big clunky. And the issue there was, so it was built for, you know, gestures and video games.

[00:12:47] So you're playing a baseball game, for instance, on the Xbox, and the camera needs to recognize your wrist and your elbow and your shoulder. So it can see a throwing motion and just make something up. That doesn't work for measuring movement because we need, you know, a bit of precision. So there really had to be a lot of dev work around that so that we could use that, you know, and get the reliability on the movement side.

[00:13:16] So I'm just getting started now on the progression. So yeah, no, keep it going. Yeah, no, keep it going. And I just wonder for like younger trainers or coaches or people in the industry who's like, do they know who Gray Cook is? Do they know FMS and the founder and kind of the story of it? Because it even took me long in my coaching career. It took me like three, four years into my education to figure out what FMS was and to get introduced to FMS. So yeah, I mean, anyway, yeah, just curious.

[00:13:42] For people who don't know who Gray Cook is and the origins of FMS, go research that. That's a good one. But yes, progress. Well, people here in Dallas don't – the younger people don't – they think Troy Aikman is just a broadcaster on Fox or ESPN or wherever he is now. It's like, no, dude, this guy won three Super Bowls. Yeah, he's the man. So come on, young folks. Get up to date on history with movement and football.

[00:14:08] Okay, so I got a nice surprise call from our COO, I don't know, 2017, 2018. He started Pismodo in 2016. He's like, hey, Microsoft just announced the discontinuation of the Kinect. I'm like, well, that sucks because that's a really important part of our business. And so part of that is just the progression of the technology.

[00:14:35] So we ended up using the Astra Orbeck. And it was a tiny camera, like, I don't know, four or five inches by one inch depth and height. So it was great. And then Microsoft ultimately came out with a new Kinect that was similar to that. So when we began, we worked with TRX.

[00:15:05] We were super fortunate to get a partnership with them and their brand recognition and their ability to market, sell, implement the education side. And having Chris Frankel that I'm sure a lot of your listeners know on this, you know, sports science and everything he can do kind of served as our product manager. So I'm like, that worked out, you know, pretty well for us.

[00:15:31] So the problem, though, we had was so we had this camera. Then we had this Dell monitor, touchscreen Dell monitor, all within a kiosk. So everything worked great, but it is a little cumbersome. The cogs were, you know, were not inexpensive. And it certainly wasn't a consumer play. And TRX did a great job. We got some pretty awesome contracts in fitness, in the military, college sports and so forth.

[00:16:02] But then the technology evolved even further, which is ultimately where we knew it would go, which is let's be able to use the camera on the iPad, iPhone, Android devices. So the challenge there was that there are two cameras. There's a front camera and a back camera in the front, you know, used for mainly our facial recognition. So we can, you know, feel like things are actually secure on our device.

[00:16:34] That's another story. Yeah. And then there's the camera on the back. So I have a LIDAR camera on the back, which is 3D. The front camera is 2D. It's a color camera. And so what we were trying to accomplish was the ability for someone to self-assess. And you can't self-assess if you're using the back camera because you can't see the screen.

[00:17:02] So we had to figure out a way to use the front screen so you can prop up your iPhone or iPad and be able to see instructions on the screen and do your screen. But it's only capturing frontal plane. So we were able to use inverse kinematics to be able to effectively render 3D to be able to get the same reliability as we were with the depth camera, the 3D camera.

[00:17:33] And I was concerned. I didn't think we'd be able to do that. And I thought, man, maybe we should move from a 1 to 100 scoring to a 1 to 10 because, you know, if someone goes to a 45 to a 55, that shows that we're really off. But if they go to a 4 to 5, we can get away with being completely inaccurate. And that was really disingenuous, but it was a thought that went through my mind.

[00:18:02] Fortunately, our dev team was able to figure out a way to have the reliability on the 2D as we do with 3D. And we got a patent on that, which is nice. Yeah. Amazing. And I want to point out something, maybe expand on a little bit more that I thought you said.

[00:18:24] It's really interesting to me is when someone looks at their readiness now, someone who's a fitness enthusiast, fitness consumer, they have a wearable, they have whatever. I mean, you could be a total dork like me, right? You got like all the things, eight sleep mattress and the ring and all the stuff, right? But there's a huge gap in readiness, which is your actual movement assessment. Like, how are you moving that day?

[00:18:52] Like, you know, I can tell just to like you, you know, I've done a lot of athletics in my life and I just have a pretty good innate idea of like, okay, yeah, my body's stiff. My right knee is sore. Maybe I want to shift things a little bit today. Maybe I take a rest day, let my body heal, or maybe I do upper body work today, or maybe I just take a nice slow walk, right? To kind of let things recuperate. But the metrics I get on that are just basically HRV, resting heart rate, my level of sleep, you know, stuff that Aura or Garmin or, you know, Whoop or whatever it'll give you.

[00:19:22] There's a huge gap there, dude. There's like, how am I actually moving that day? So when you see that opening there, are people aware of it? And how do you start to integrate that into the conversation of readiness? Yeah. I was going to say that was a great question, but people say that all the time. And then you're like, are you insinuating that my other questions suck? Because you don't say that after every other question. But that was actually, that was one of your better questions. Thank you.

[00:19:52] I'll take it. Yeah. So I think it brings me back to the summer when I was in Tucson, which I don't really recommend for the summer. After a couple of rattlesnake incidents, I left. Yeah. I don't know why I decided to go hiking, but I did. And it's super hot. And I had a great hike.

[00:20:16] And I slept incredibly well that night and had a 97 on my whoop. And it totally accurate because, man, it was a great workout. I just slept like a baby. But there's my torn meniscus problem, which I knew was going to be an issue the next day. But, you know, manage it as best I can. But I did our assessment and I don't move that well.

[00:20:46] I'm about a very average on our assessment. I get about upper 40s to lower 50s. But I had a 34 that day. So I had my device saying, all right, peak recovery today. Go out and do something hard. And I'm like, dude, I'm just going to sit back, ice my knee, use the compression, and just try and get through the day.

[00:21:11] So I wasn't ready because I guess where you're going is you need to look at biometrics and biomechanics. And there's an opportunity there. There's a real opportunity. You know, I think a lot of people probably know the guys at Rook who have an amazing company just being able to have an SDK to bring in any wearables.

[00:21:40] So I think ultimately what you want is to have the information, your recovery based on your biometrics. And let's have your recovery based on your biomechanics. And let's see really where your true recovery is. That's the opportunity. And we're excited to work with the guys at Rook to put that out there and we'll get some cool data. Yeah. I mean, it just makes a lot of sense.

[00:22:07] It's like there's going to be certain days where maybe your, you know, wearable recovery score is going to be, like you said, really good, really high, very favorable. And you're like, you know what? I'm going to go. I don't know why you do this. I'm going to go run some sprints. I'm going to go out of the track and do some sprint work and do, you know, some anaerobic training. But if you did a movement assessment, your body would be like, no, dude, you're not. You should not be doing sprints today, right?

[00:22:34] So we're kind of looking at the wrong metrics for the wrong applications at times just because the data is not available. I mean, am I accurate in saying that could be a problem for a lot of people who are active? Yeah. I don't think I have a whole lot to add to that, but I don't recommend anyone doing sprints over the age of 45 or unless you want to tear a hamstring. But – Or Achilles.

[00:22:59] Yeah, but yeah, I mean, if you're trying to – I mean, so what's helpful for what we do is – so if Eric has a baseline score, let's put you above average. Let's give you a 60.

[00:23:12] And if you're working with someone and you are – you get a 46 one day and maybe a trainer says, okay, we have you today ready for, you know, one rep max of something, you know, whatever, deadlift. And yet your hips are all jacked up based on your movement score and so you've gone from a 60 to a 40. We probably need to adjust your training for the day.

[00:23:41] So, again, you could have slept well the night before, gotten great HRV, resting heart rate was low, you got your eight hours of sleep. And you're – and on that basis, you are ready to go and have a one rep max effort on deadlift, but not if your hips are jacked up.

[00:24:03] So, just that opportunity, you know, that opportunity to dive into that data that, you know, we'll have and, you know, and others will have as well and look at the true correlations between both and end up having a real recommendation engine of what to do with it. So, this is brand new and I'm excited.

[00:24:29] You know, you can – the wearable stuff is easy because you can wake up and you get your numbers. They tell you not to use your cell phone first thing when you wake up, but it's the first thing I want to know is how to do today. Yeah. Yeah. It's a problem. And I – yeah, it's totally a problem. Yeah. But you can't wake up and, you know, objectively know how your body is working on the movement side.

[00:24:58] And so, yeah, we can't – we can't – you can't, you know, put our app underneath your pillow and wake up and it can decipher your movement. But you can't spend 30 seconds when you wake up or whenever it may be and assess and see where you are for the day. That's the perfect segue. So, what is that experience like, you know, from – you mentioned it's 30 seconds. But if I'm going to do a movement assessment or I'm going to run someone, a client through a movement assessment, what does that actually look like? And what's the hardware needed?

[00:25:27] What's, you know, obviously saw – how do they access Fizmodo? Yeah. Give us the whole rundown. Yeah. So, we're able – with the enterprise version, so at a physical location, you're working with the client. And there is an ability to do it remotely because – which is, you know, a lot of fitness these days. And your client can use the iPhone or Android device. But the screen is the same on both.

[00:25:55] And so, the – yeah, we use an iPad in studio. You have an avatar and instructions that put you in position, hands overhead, and do three overhead squats. And we'll give you a composite score based on your mobility, your stability, posture, and symmetry. Give you some indicators where you're having some movement issues.

[00:26:25] And then there are some corrective exercises to try and improve. So, it's a lot of good information for trainer and client, practitioner, patient, whatever the relationship. And so, yeah, that's what we're trying to achieve is get a lot of information quickly. And some ask, well, how the hell can you get that much information in 30 seconds? I don't believe it. And then as you did, you do it.

[00:26:53] And it's like, wow, it actually did identify the correct issue. So, we've even had some people say, that's great. We'd actually want less information. That's already too much. So, they're like, hey, just give it to us with just the mobility and take the other stuff off. I'm like, you don't understand software, dude. That's not that easy. Plus, you're the only one that asked for it. So, no. Anyway.

[00:27:20] So, yeah, that's it in a nutshell. It's, you know, there's a lot of people working on movement assessment, motion recognition, all those motion capture, you know, Sensei. Steven Webster has been on the show a few times. But, you know, I think about what Fizmodo is doing and what you're doing is that some ways you're taking a very complicated thing, you're making it very simple. Right?

[00:27:47] Like, technological advancement that now we can leverage in a very easy way that's repeatable, standardized, right? And just easy to access for everybody. So, it's like you're really pinpointing a specific application, right? That's actually universally needed. But people can just, it's just easy to access. I mean, that, is that, was that the plan all the whole time?

[00:28:13] Or were you going to be doing like, you know, more integration work and more custom work? Or were you like, no, we're just going to build this tool and make it scalable and universal? Yeah, I don't know if it's, if it's stubbornness or a good business decision or, or, you know, you can have, have certainly have both. But yeah, I mean, we wanted to just stick with, with one movement, do it better than others.

[00:28:39] There's, there's other movement companies that are, that are awesome out there and they, they, they do, you know, a little bit more. But again, we're just looking for throughput. So, when we were at URSA the first year, we did a thousand assessments in two days, which, which is pretty, pretty amazing. We're also working at the University of, of Tennessee where they have 550 athletes and, you know, they weren't only assessing people, you know, pretty, pretty infrequently.

[00:29:08] And, and again, as we talked about earlier, that that's not helpful. There's too many variables you need to screen frequently. So now they have their assessments set up in there with all their other cool technology and the athletes can go in and just screen by themselves once a week. And so coaches can then get notifications and again, adjust training accordingly.

[00:29:32] And then now when the athletes are not at school, they can screen remotely when it's, you know, summer break or, you know, they're on a, on a trip to play some games. So, yeah. And, and then we're not, you know, telling anybody that we're capturing all the movement data that, that you need. We're not, but we think we can capture, let's call it 75, 80% of what you need.

[00:30:00] And that's enough to at least start making a decision. So a couple things. There is research that says the, the overhead squat is a predictor of your overall FMS score. So, you know, that's, that's something you have the overhead squat, why we pick the overhead squat. It's in every single assessment.

[00:30:21] And with that research, it made, it made a lot of sense, but then you have these companies that I guess, technically you'd call competitors because they do movement assessments that they do a lot of movement assessments. You need people there. It's hard to self-assess. So that's a differentiator for us, but do you really need to spend, whether it's FMS or some of this other stuff, anything that takes even three, four, five minutes.

[00:30:49] If someone's moving awesome, do you really need to do a comprehensive assessment? Probably not. But if somebody is moving really poorly, let's come back to, you know, you're at a 60 on our screen or, and you, you go down to your 46, or even if you come in the first time and you're scoring a 35, well, okay. You can't move well. Let's maybe dive in and look at, you know, some more stuff.

[00:31:19] So I see us as being a feeder into whether it's FMS or some of these other companies that, you know, do a little bit more than we do. You mentioned the athlete application. Where was that again? What client of yours? Where the athletes in the summer can use it, but they can also use it in the gym. Oh, University of Tennessee. And by the way, they just won the College World Series. That didn't happen before they were using our app.

[00:31:48] I, you know, some people say that's correlation and maybe it's causation. I don't know. It's worth looking into is all you're saying, right? Oh, it's enough to say it on your podcast. Cause it's, it's, it's technically true. They did not win the College World Series before they used our technology. But, um, yeah. What, what other commercial applications are you seeing that are being really like ridiculous, really good case studies for, for, for how this could deploy out?

[00:32:17] Uh, you're, you're, um, just within our, our various markets. Yeah. Uh, uh, so yeah, I, you know, we're in a number of markets where, um, you know, we're with stretch lab, which, which is great in all 500 plus locations. And, and those guys are, are killing it. Great people to work with too, which, which, which helps. And so they're using it there. So someone can go in and, uh, you know, have, have a, before they stretch can do an assessment.

[00:32:46] So it's like, okay, we are maybe going to do full body, but let's concentrate a little bit on, on your shoulder here. So that's a way to guide treatment. Um, but then we have something, uh, so we're at a large orthopedic hospital that does outsourcing with youth athletes and, in, you know, the, in Georgia, whether it's high schools or club teams. And they're at about 25,000, uh, youth athletes.

[00:33:14] So that's, that's not something that is scalable unless somebody can self-assess. You can't expect to get multiple assessments and have them, um, you know, have to be with the trainer. It just doesn't make any sense. So that's a great opportunity. We're, we're in, uh, the military with special ops and, you know, these are the strongest, most powerful people. And yeah, you want them to lift a bunch of weight, carry a bunch of weight, run fast, all that stuff.

[00:33:42] They're the best, but man, if they can't move well, then, um, you know, they're, they're susceptible to, to injury probably more, more than most. The numbers I saw with, uh, the army, and this was a while ago is 12% of soldiers were not deployable to, to non combat related injuries. And, and 77% were musculoskeletal.

[00:34:10] And that's just, that's nuts. And I'm not suggesting, uh, at all that doing our screen could prevent all that, but we can prevent some of it. So an example I like to give is. Hey friends, this is Eric Malzone. And this episode of the future of fitness is brought to you by the podcast collective. Since our inception in 2023, we have emerged as the fitness health and wellness industries, premier podcast placement agency.

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[00:35:36] Podcasts are rising quickly to fill the void. Do not miss the boat. That's podcastcollective.io. There are a lot of people that have back injuries. And so we're getting into really the corporate wellness side where the largest number, you know, the biggest healthcare claim is musculoskeletal. And they do all this stuff, these tests, so we can manage circulatory, diabetic, cancer related, all, you know, metabolic stuff.

[00:36:03] But your number one claim is musculoskeletal. You know, you really should be doing something on that side. So, you know, we're getting in there and, you know, a lot of back injuries. And, you know, one of the reasons that you suffer back injuries is because your hip mobility sucks. So you may not have a back injury, but if you have poor hip mobility, then let's work on that hip mobility.

[00:36:31] And instead of being reactive with injuries, let's try and get ahead of it. So, yeah, we're just trying to provide a bunch of information. We're not telling you how to do your job and treat a patient or treat an employee or work with your client. But hopefully it's enough in all these markets to be helpful in your business. Yeah.

[00:36:50] As Stephen Powell, I think he described this as – I don't know whether you like this or not – as a stud finder for trainers and coaches and practitioners where you can kind of get in and find out what the problems are. I was like, that's an interesting analogy, metaphor, whatever it is. And does all this – so does all this data get fed to like the coach and trainer? Like is there a dashboard for it? Like how do they access all that?

[00:37:18] Yeah, there's really three primary components. There's the enterprise version, you know, sits at your location. Oh, yeah, just – let me go back because I forget stuff. We just signed a contract with a chiropractic practice or chain of over 100.

[00:37:40] And so, you know, in the sports medicine space, it's really critical because especially in physical therapy when – you know, and then with insurance billing, you just need to have volume. And yeah, I don't – I think if you're seeing a chiropractor regularly or physical therapist and you want to see your progression, no one's going to do out of your 20 minutes that you have time to see someone do an assessment for a whole lot of time. So, yeah.

[00:38:09] So I just wanted to mention that other market because that is pretty exciting. So, yeah. Yeah. As far as the – what there is. So there's your enterprise version that sits in the doctor's office, training room, whatever it may be, gym, stretch lab. So there's the consumer application, which you can just go download on the App Store or the Google Play. I don't know who uses – Yeah, yeah. I'm an Android guy. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I can't text you from my computer. It's kind of a pain in the ass.

[00:38:40] I can't text you from my computer. I can't text you from my computer. I can't text you from my computer. I can't text you from my computer. So – It does. It is highly irritating. But – so we're about to get this big distributor agreement in Australia and they're 40% Android. And we have Android, but I'm like, okay, we really do need to take this seriously and I need to stop knocking them. So I'm going to stop now. Because we're people too. We're people too.

[00:39:06] Well, it's probably better because our software developers all have Android and they're smarter. And they say it's better. Anyway, that's not the topic that we're doing today. Anyway, so there's the consumer app. And then to your question that I'm finally getting to 10 minutes later is, yeah, what kind of marries those two? And then what marries the practitioner and the patient and the trainer or client?

[00:39:30] Is that dashboard where you, as the trainer, whomever it may be, can track the history of everybody, whether it's on the bio mechanical side with what we do. And now we have incorporated, I guess what we're calling a wellness survey and then bringing in the rooks and stuff. So we're getting both. So you can track all that.

[00:39:52] You can also assign the, when anyone does a screen on the consumer app, they can get a recommended protocol based on that assessment. But you can also have from the dashboard, a coach can sign you something that's like, hey, Eric, I think we need to work on this. Here's a showroom routine or, you know, we can pull from the video library and custom make someone.

[00:40:18] What's cool is that if you're in a large organization, you know, there's all these, you know, privileges where, look, I'm the athletic director. I don't need everybody seeing everything. So I'll let the soccer person deal with the soccer players and so forth. But yeah, all the information is housed there. It's a way to communicate, you know, between the two people working together. So yeah, you really need, you really need all pieces of that.

[00:40:44] I remember when, so when we went to URSA, the, well, we went to URSA the first year and had those thousand screens and people were really interested. And, and we're like, yeah, this isn't really ready. It's in beta. We were developing code 48 hours before, before URSA, which is really, really stupid. But I'd met TRX in December of 2016.

[00:41:09] And I knew a lot of the guys, but I went in there with our, it wasn't really even in beta. And they're like, this is perfect. And they're a movement company that was looking for a partner. And they said, well, can you be ready for URSA, which was three months later? And there was like no chance, but I'm like, we'll make it happen. And so we did, but we weren't ready to commercialize it. So fast forward to July and idea, and we were ready to go to market.

[00:41:39] And I remember working with, with Nick Vey, who was running sales and is now doing the same over at Beaver Fit. And I'm like, man, this is exciting. And then someone came to us from a gym and said, all right, this is great for our clients. How do we track all this information? And I'm like, yeah, that's a good question. Maybe, maybe, maybe we need that.

[00:42:05] We actually have a product manager now who knows actually how to run development cycle and, you know, do research and figure out what the market actually needs. Which I clearly did not in 2017. But now we have all that. We were fortunate. We have the enterprise, the consumer, the dashboard. It's web-based and yeah, we're in a good spot. It's so cool, man. I mean, it's wicked smart, especially as you're bringing in like data from Rook, who's going to bring in essentially people who don't know what they do.

[00:42:33] They're going to bring in wearable data, kind of make it uniform and usable, provide you, I presume, with some kind of custom metric for, you know, readiness. So, you know, they'll pull in data from Aura and Gorman and Whoop and Fitbit and all that stuff and bring it into the app. So, you'll not only have like the movement assessment scores, but you'll also have wearable data and you'll be able to do some really, really cool stuff.

[00:42:58] I mean, I think that's a super exciting and universally applicable tool for sure. And you guys, so we're in Q4 of 2024. You are just releasing an app update now. It's a big deal. You've been working on it for a while. Andrew, like what are the significant upgrades or significant, you know, advancements in what you guys are doing now? Yeah.

[00:43:24] So, I think the big piece with this is being able to connect the trainer with the client or whatever that working relationship is. And, you know, I don't know when this is going to be posted or published or whatever you podcaster folks call it. We say published. We say published. Published? Okay. Well, I got that.

[00:43:54] Maybe you told me before. But I think by the time this is out, because we're having another release coming up shortly, and we'll have all that exercise programming by sport, which I don't think I mentioned earlier. I think I mentioned by body parts, so ankle, hip, whatever, but also by sport. And I think that's a great feature.

[00:44:21] And then the ability to not only look at, you know, your scoring now is based on, you know, global scoring. And, you know, again, depending on when this is out, but we want you to be able to, you know, score based on whatever it may be, your gender, your age group, your sport, whatever it may be. So, you know, kind of making it a little bit more fun.

[00:44:45] It's not fair to somebody that's, you know, much older and, you know, sits at a desk all day long. And, you know, compared to, you know, a 19-year-old, you know, D1 athlete, you know, playing winning baseball at University of Tennessee. Yeah. Nice. Nice way to bring it back. When you talk about sports-specific stuff, I mean, obviously there's thousands of sports out there.

[00:45:15] Is there any ones that you see as identifying as the big ones that you want to go after and work with first? Or are you like, yeah, what's the roadmap for that? I think, you know, I think that probably on the youth sports side, you know, I think baseball makes a lot. Baseball and soccer make a lot of sense. And, you know, got to go after pickleball.

[00:45:42] Because apparently a lot of people play that. And I think there's some cool companies that we've talked about that I think could be great partners. And, you know, that population is typically more susceptible to the injuries. I think partly because it's generally an older population.

[00:46:04] And therefore, people that have had previous injuries, which again is the number one cause of injuries, is previous injuries. So, love that market. And the other two I mentioned. But, heck, anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So, this is the Future of Fitness podcast. Maybe paint us a little picture here, Andrew. Like, if you look at, we'll give it a five-year time horizon.

[00:46:31] And 2030, where do you think this movement assessment, you know, movement readiness, overall readiness, like, where do you think it's going? Like, what gets you excited about this technology moving forward? You're asking me about... The future. ...what the future looks like.

[00:46:52] And let me bring you back to 2017 Idea World, where I didn't realize that people would actually want to see the information that their clients were doing with our assessment. So, with that lack of credibility, I'll nonetheless try and answer the question.

[00:47:10] And I think on, you know, the wearables side, we're now having so much, we have so much information that, you know, insights are, can be provided, which is great. We have a lot of data on our side that I think can, you know, can serve as, you know, a nice recommendation engine.

[00:47:36] But it's going to be, you said 2030, but I really think in the next few years we'll get so much data on both sides to look at, you know, I think we're going to get really, really deep on some of the correlations. So, even just on our side, so we have a lot of people that do the assessment and squat depth is one thing that we measure. So, they're like, all right, well, I'll just squat deeper.

[00:48:05] And then we're seeing people compensate with forward torso lean, which is also measured. Now, we don't diagnose anything. That's good information. But what a lot of that is coming from is you can see a lot of those people, the reason they're having to move forward is because they have poor dorsiflexion.

[00:48:22] So, we're getting so many insights from what I – I don't think necessarily – I don't know enough about the technology to know what the next, you know, version of, you know, cameras and phones are going to do. And I don't think it necessarily matters for our purposes. I think the data is there. We're going to get more data.

[00:48:47] And I think it's the insights from that data and, you know, we'll take data mining. Smart people will figure out what to do with that. And then we'll have true recommendation engines that will, I think, just be super helpful in, you know, how to dictate your training. Yeah. Or whatever it may be. Oh, fantastic.

[00:49:14] One of the last questions I have for you is like, what do you need right now as far as like if people are listening and you want them to reach out? Like, what do you want to hear from people about? Is it like partnerships? Is it, you know, obviously clients and enterprise clients? But what – yeah, what's interesting and valuable to you right now? Yeah.

[00:49:35] I – you know, what we do – again, we've – the number of times I've been asked, are you going to do a second movement? And I've always said, show me a business case where I should. And we're not. We're not going to do that. We continue to work on what we do better and are looking for partnerships.

[00:50:02] You know, so there's a lot of – there's a lot of great digital fitness and health apps out there where I think we could really be very complementary with them and really enhance the user experience and, you know, help them with retention, acquisition and retention. So it's really on the partnership side.

[00:50:27] And, you know, I think there's – like even potentially those that could be considered competitors, we could partner with kind of going back to, look, if you have some sort of comprehensive screening of any sort, we – let's start with what we have. So we have markets and we're in multiple markets. I think a lot that you speak to are mainly in the sports market. And we are.

[00:50:55] But I think a lot of solutions that are out there in the sports world can be elsewhere. And I think we can help there. So, yeah, let people concentrate on their market and their product. We have our market and our product and let's work together. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone goes to – sports science is always the first thing. It's just so obvious, right? It's like people want to perform better. So how they move is critical to sports.

[00:51:22] And then, of course, the military and the workplace and a lot of other ones. But I'm sure there's many that I haven't even thought of yet that once someone mentions to me, I'll be like, oh, of course. Of course. Right? So that's awesome, man. And as self-deprecating as your sense of humor is, which I really appreciate it, you built a great product, man. You keep progressing in it in the right direction. And I think it's super valuable to the industry.

[00:51:50] And I really urge people to go and check it out. How do you want people to get a hold of you? Or is there a place you want them to go follow? What's the next step for them? Well, we've always done kind of really on the B2B side and not B2C. So our presence on social media is really poor. So you can find us, I think, on Instagram. I should probably know that. No, you can.

[00:52:19] But no, please just reach out on LinkedIn. Okay. And we'd love to hear from a lot of folks and get their feedback on, besides potential partnerships, just give me some feedback. Don't tell me we're going to do another screen because that's a no. But what else would you like to see? We're so close to it that I'm sure we're missing a lot. So I just love to get feedback.

[00:52:50] And for people listening, too, Physmodo is spelled P-H-Y-S-M-O-D-O.com. So they can learn more there, too. Andrew, thanks, man. It's been a lot of fun. It's been great getting to know you over the past few years. And thanks again to Tony for introducing us. And I'm just really excited where this is going. I think it's a great piece of technology. It's very surgically useful. And I think it's going to be a great tool for a lot of people who know how to use it. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's been great getting to know you.

[00:53:19] And it's been fun. I had fun today. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Mentor. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness. If you did, I'm going to ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, CastBox, whatever it may be.

[00:53:49] Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media. Talk about it to your friends. Send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. And we want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to thefutureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners.

[00:54:18] So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.