Jamie Monroe - ReadyFit, ASENSEI, & Serving The Tactical Athlete

[00:00:00] If you have a body, you're an athlete. That was the inspirational observation of Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. In this three-part series, join me, Eric Malzone, and ASENSEI CEO Stephen Webster as we lead conversations with three visionary CEOs, each of whom is using ASENSEI AI to better serve different types of athletes. From the tactical athlete trained to become a Navy SEAL, to the industrial athlete performing in physically demanding jobs, we discover who each athlete truly is,

[00:00:29] what they strive for, and how movement recognition from ASENSEI is key to unlocking their athletic potential. Let's get to it. All right, we are live. Jamie, Stephen, thank you for joining me. This is a very special interview and collaboration with ASENSEI. And this is going to be very interesting and very enlightening, I think, for a lot of people within our industry.

[00:00:57] And we're going to start off, Jamie, by allowing you to give a little bit of introduction to who you are and what ReadyFit is. And Stephen, you can do the same for yourself as well. But we're going to dive into training the tactical athlete and, more importantly, kind of the problem that our country, and it sounds like, Jamie, as you're providing some insights globally as well, is the total available people we have for our military service. And how that's dwindling and the reasons why, and why that's such a big problem moving forward.

[00:01:25] So, yeah, there's a lot to talk about today. And we'll start with Jamie. If you don't mind just giving us a little bit of introduction to you and your background, how you got to be the head of ReadyFit, and then we'll take it from there. Yeah, thanks. So I'm a Navy veteran, former Navy SEAL. But since my time in the SEALs, I've done a lot. I started with and still am in event production and endurance sports. And so running events, cycling events, triathlon.

[00:01:51] And ReadyFit is kind of an extension of that. As you put on live events, you can reach a lot more people if you can do it digitally. And so, you know, we can dive into the story. But, you know, from a very young age, I was always interested in physical fitness tests and measuring up and how do I measure up. I've come to find out not everyone's always interested in how they measure up, but I have the personality. I always thought that everyone was like, you know, how many pull ups can I do compared to you and Steven?

[00:02:21] You know, it's like important to me or has been my whole life. Like, or how do I or how do I stand up on the scoring chart, if you will? Like even like, like they don't do it anymore, but it used to be the presidential fitness test that kids took in elementary school and middle school.

[00:02:37] And, you know, so I was that that was sort of my background into always being thinking about fitness, being a part of it and then joining the Navy like the main qualifier for becoming a SEAL is taking a fitness test and scoring high enough that you get accepted like a college application. So the first step is, is a 500 yard swim, max push ups, max sit ups, max pull ups, and a mile and a half run.

[00:03:02] And it doesn't sound like a lot, but you know, you're competing against a bunch of people and you want to have good scores. And, and then that sort of leads to the broader training. Now you're qualified and then you, and then it gets even harder from back. Yeah. Awesome. Steven, remind people who you are. You've been on the show a couple of times, but I could always use a refresher. No, thanks for hosting us. And thanks for joining as well, Jamie. So Steven Webster, CEO of a sensei.

[00:03:28] And for those that don't know a sensei, what, but for those that don't know a sensei, we make human movement something a machine can understand. So, you know, we're working in sport, fitness, industrial athletes, tactical athletes, to add three things to our customers products, motion capture of the athlete in front of the camera, movement recognition of what they're doing.

[00:03:49] And then a layer of intelligent coaching insights on top, whether we're delivering those insights directly to the athlete in the moment or to a coach post workout. We have this coaching intelligence layer that makes sense of all the data that we're capturing. So, yeah, I'm super excited to have Jamie here, Eric, because I think one of my favorite quotes and I'm known for, you know, quoting quotes.

[00:04:14] But one of my favorite quotes hangs on the wall of a lot of Nike stores, right, is Bill Bowerman's quote, if you have a body, you're an athlete. So when we founded the company, I remember when I used to work for Adobe, somebody saying to me, never call the end user a user. There's only one industry in the world that calls its customers users. So don't talk about users. And so I always try really hard to like have a more descriptive evocative term of who our target customer is.

[00:04:44] And so we decided, you know, given Bill Bowerman, let's call them an athlete. But now as we work with our customers like ready for it's like, you know, let's let's unpack that. Who is the athlete of the an everyday athlete of the an industrial athlete? And I'm just very excited. You mentioned at the top of the call that we get to talk about how does movement recognition, motion capture and coaching intelligence serve the tactical athlete who wishes to serve the country. So, yeah, thanks for thanks for hosting us. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

[00:05:14] And I mean, this is what you guys are working on here together is something that has always been of interest to me is how do we scale high quality coaching? Right. How do we make that available? I've had great coaches, amazing coaches in my life. Super fortunate. You know, some of them I sought out some of them and just came to my life through sport or through whatever. Right. But a lot of people have never really experienced good coach. They don't have access to it, whether it be, you know, due to financially or due to geographically, whatever it may be.

[00:05:40] So to be able to scale that out, provide better coaching to more people is a really exciting venture. So I'm grateful to have you guys here today. And let's let's start with the problem. Right. That you're going after here, Jamie, specifically. And, you know, I have a stat here from an athletic article that was done on you guys about a year ago. Currently, 23 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are qualified for military service, largely due to issues related to to fitness and obesity.

[00:06:09] Now, I know you have an extension of that statistic and even more information and relevancy. So how did we get here? Like, how did this happen, Jamie? And what how big is this problem exactly? Why is it so important? Well, it's a national security problem, really. I mean, we if you look at military recruiting in general, like most people recruiting or that are serving are have a family member that also served. I think it's less than one in ten Americans know someone who is in the military.

[00:06:38] And so the more that that extends itself, the problem kind of just continues to spiral and get worse. And so, like, how did we get there? I think technology is a big part. I think as much as people don't want to admit it, I think COVID was a big part with our youth. You know, we we put them in front of their screens for two years and and and said, you can't go outside and you can't play and can't do these things without worry of getting sick. And and then, like I know in California, some of it's like access to sport.

[00:07:05] You know, like when you think about it's not a problem just between 18 and 23 year olds like you have to have people able to participate in sports at an early age. And, you know, the more that people are addicted to their screens and on YouTube and doing the things that kids do, you know, being gamers. I've got some boys and my my boys are both big gamers and kind of drives me crazy.

[00:07:26] But it's, you know, so it is trying to to shift that focus or try to re re center it, you know, where where technology is good. But here's all these other things that are going to be lifelong benefits to you. And where we're at with ReadyFit is it's a great way to meet the youth where they're at. They're already on their phones and they're into technology. And so I think that's where we have a big advantage.

[00:07:52] What ReadyFit is, is it administers all of the military's physical readiness tests virtually so that you don't have to go and take a test in person. So if I wanted to see if I was qualified for the Navy or say I wanted to see if I was qualified for the military academy at West Point for my college application, I could actually take it on a phone, take the test, submit it.

[00:08:15] And one of the things that we wanted to that was really important to us that it wasn't just a novelty app where here's the standards, go do this test and like manually enter your scores. We want it to be verifiable for two things, right? It's like trust, but verify. Like in the military, there's this if you look at the army regulations, like it takes like I think three graders to administer a fitness test to one person. So there's a lot of distrust, like they think that it's got to be perfect.

[00:08:42] And and the challenge that I had when I started down the ReadyFit project was like with technology, you can do anything these days. So why can't you administer a test with a phone and have it verifiable? So one of the things that's different about ours and why we're so excited about the Ascensight partnership is not only the movement recognition, but that, you know, these videos are captured. There's there's no subjectivity into what is a good push up, what's a bad push up.

[00:09:08] And and then that video is uploaded and a grader can view it and verify it. And on top of that, like we found that when people are using our app, they're going to be more honest because now that now someone someone's watching them and they're filming themselves. So they're not going to like sort of rush through their push ups. And then you layer on the Ascensight feature and it's in real time telling them how many push ups that they actually did. It's it's going to be great. It's I mean, there's a lot of extensions what we can do, but that's a quick overview of kind of what we're working towards.

[00:09:38] Yeah. Amazing. The first thing I think about when I hear you say all this, too, is like I owned a CrossFit gym for a very long time and I judge a lot of CrossFit events. And how nice it would have been to have an objective for judging these reps, because I can't tell you how many disputes I saw over whether or not someone was on a full depth push up or a sit up was complete or a chin got over a bar. Right. So it's it's a really I don't know. That was the first thing I thought like you guys got to get into CrossFit competition somehow.

[00:10:08] But maybe you could stand a little bit on that, Steven. Like like how how exactly is is a sense integrating into the Apple? Let's actually let me say take a step back and reframe this another way. What is the user experience for ready fit? What does that look like from the point they find the application to them engaging with it and then using it for long term? Sure. So so we're a startup and we're we're working through that.

[00:10:34] But what one of the first things I will say is we wanted to be different than every other fitness app. No other fitness app was working on testing and assessment and, you know, basically evaluating readiness. And so we wanted to be that would be our point of entry, why people would be interested. And then that naturally leads us into the training and coaching side of it. So the the things that we're working on now is is going to be.

[00:10:58] The sense a movement recognitions on what is a good push up look like so that the user can do it. And then, you know, it's like your standard sort of coaching app users getting training plans and able to do that. And then having the coach be able to give that user real time feedback if their reps aren't correct with the demographic we're working with. Like once they figure out how to do a push up and a pull up, there's probably not a lot of like continued to do the computer vision and evaluating for the workouts.

[00:11:27] But it's that that initial step is pretty important. And then when it comes to testing so many, you know, young men, young women take these tests and have never like seen themselves do a push up or pull up or, you know, whatever the right form is. So they don't even know how they look. So they they can't get coached on like you're not going all the way up, you're not going all the way down or, you know, what was that? So I think it sets the stage for people to have a good base.

[00:11:54] And then once they have that good base, we can really coach them into their goals of whether it's joining the military or whether it's, you know, qualifying for a special forces program. You know, two very different things, but they all start with a foundation. So I think ready fit is that hopefully going to be that foundation, that entry point on where someone gets exposed to this is what military physical fitness looks like. And if I am able to meet these standards, then I can achieve all these goals. Yeah, anything there, Steven?

[00:12:23] Yeah, I know. I mean, I love I just love this product. I'm kind of keeping quiet because, you know, I'm excited about it. Eric, you probably know Ferg Connolly. You know, Fergis is someone I pay a lot of attention to in the kind of world of human performance. I first met Fergis like on the freeway. We basically figured out a Starbucks we could meet at between San Francisco and Michigan. He was following Harbo from the 49ers to University of Michigan. And Fergis has a great phrase.

[00:12:51] He's quite I mean, he's very tech forward, but he's very against frivolous tech, right? Tech to the sake of tech. And he has a great phrase which I think really applies to ready fit, which is work back from the score. Like if it doesn't move the needle on the scoreboard on game day. But if you can kind of like your work it back to the score. Why are you using that tech? Right. And so I love that ready for our working back from the score.

[00:13:15] And I think, you know, one of the things that really excites me about this product and Jamie, we can we can edit if I say something I shouldn't. But no, one of the things that excites me about the product is not just that you can administer the test and submit the test and that we're using a sense to annotate that video. Right. And this is something that we do more generally in sport is if you've got hours of game tape or hours of practice footage that coach might otherwise have to sit and troll through.

[00:13:44] How do you use a sensei to annotate moments that happen? That was a serve. That was a forehand return. That was a backhand return. That was a pitch. That was a strike. That was a ball. And so our ability to annotate tape and say to a coach or, you know, say to someone reviewing a fitness test. I think you should take a look here. I gave the rep, but, you know, it was it was it was in this threshold. You decide so that that that A.I. augmentation of human intelligence.

[00:14:12] So I love that on the testing. But I really love the mock testing. Jamie, that was the thing I wanted to share this this ability for me to go in and do the test and see how I would have done and decide, like, am I ready yet? Or shall I shall I train harder? Shall I practice harder if I'd had that as a kid? Because I was the same as I was the same as Jamie as a kid. Like I was always about the competitions and always about the could I beat my score and then could I beat my friend's score? And so I just think it's a really exciting application.

[00:14:41] And you know this, Eric, but like there's an embarrassment of opportunities of things that a sensei can do that are just mind blowing 10x capabilities. But this is a really good example of just taking really robust motion capture that isn't just pass fail. Well, you know, you did a push up the pass fail with a nuanced understanding of and Jamie, you can maybe talk about the different types of push up the different military tests have and the different criteria for what's acceptable and what's scored.

[00:15:09] You know, it takes us like an hour to go in and say, like, OK, let's use this push up for this test or this push up for this test. So this is a really exciting application of the fundamentals that we do well rather than the art of the possible that I'll often come and speak with you about. Yeah. Yeah. That was I mean, a question of curiosity, Jamie. It's like how many between the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard as well?

[00:15:33] I don't know if you're involved in that, but like how many different tests, fitness plans, like how many different offerings do you have across the board? Like how how wide is that? Oh, I mean, well, our product has so much room to grow and we're probably starting with the hardest customer first in the military. But we have all of the official tests for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. And I think what you were getting at is the difference in standards. You would think that the military would have the same standards.

[00:16:03] The great part about the military, which has been great with working with the sensei, is there's like, you know, a paragraph or two on all the rules for a push up for every service. Like this is the nuance. This is what's accepted. This is what's not accepted. What's unique about it is you would think that they would all agree to what what is a correct push up and they don't.

[00:16:24] You know, like a good example, the Service Academy test, you're allowed to when you rest, you're allowed to lift an arm and you're allowed to bow your back. But like so like like say you do two minutes of push ups and after a minute you're tired, you can kind of go in that downward dog position and lift a hand off the ground and shake it out. Where some push ups, they say, say, well, you can't lift a hand off the ground, but you can bow your back. And then other services are like if you rest, you have to be in a perfect plank position in the opposition in the rest. Right.

[00:16:54] So what is it? So a sensei allows us to recognize those things. And then on like this special forces side, they're always going to be more strict. You know, the arm, the elbows need to be below 90 versus like 90. And and the army like to give you an idea of the scale of the problem, their newest fitness test where they spent millions upon millions of dollars on like what is most relevant that people need to do. They switch from a normal push up to what's called a hand release push up.

[00:17:20] So basically you go down and you take your hands off the ground and you make a tee with your arms spaced out and you come back. But when you think about the whole reason why they did that is because they couldn't judge a push up correctly because people were gun decking it, if you will. Like some people could get away with not coming all the way up or going all the way down and and would then say, oh, I did 100 push ups. And it's like your 100 push ups might be like a seals 50 push ups, you know, like so. So it's interesting.

[00:17:49] And and you said it before, but now, like with the movement recognition, there's there's no dispute, you know, like as this product grows, the only dispute will maybe like you didn't set up your phone or your camera correctly. Or there was something going on on the background of the technology. But if it's set up correctly and you're filming at the right angle, like there's no dispute on what a good push up is, which is pretty, pretty exciting. And we have obsessed about this essentially. Okay.

[00:18:18] And you and I have done podcasts before as other companies have launched products. And, you know, I've kind of said to you, I'm pretty confident they're trying to use computer vision classification to feed in lots of video of people and train a machine to recognize it.

[00:18:31] And like, Jamie, I'm going to cut this last 30 seconds of what you just said and turn it into a Facebook ad because it's a it's a it really articulates the problem so well is, you know, Jamie's just described all these different nuanced variations of a push up that the more and more of them you add, the harder and harder it gets for computer vision classification.

[00:18:54] The example, you know, I've used before is we were all blown away the first thing Google was able to kind of pick a cat out of an image. But then as you start adding more and more cats, eventually there's some Facebook meme that can you tell the difference between a cat and a chocolate chip cookie, you know, they start to kind of look the same, because suddenly these things start to all blur together.

[00:19:17] We have a very distinctive approach to movement recognition is based on expressing the biomechanics of the movement and the choreography and the kind of the movement between postures and the timing between postures. So for us to say, you know, for Jamie to say to us, you know, this is a Navy SEAL push up and I need to see the elbows go past 90. That's like, OK, we'll be back in an hour. Like we've deployed it. Do you want to test that?

[00:19:41] It's not a shoot. Now we need to go and catch a whole bunch of videos of Navy SEALs doing push ups and train that really nuanced difference. So it plays to our strengths of being a very distinctive approach to movement recognition that allows us to have that nuanced understanding of exercises. And I've always said this about technology, the technologies that excite me the most are the ones that appear to be very simple, but you just haven't thought about it.

[00:20:06] Hard enough about how hard it actually is. But you hide that difficulty and complexity just from a, you know, one, two, three, four, five. And that's the experience we can. The questions I have for you guys is that, you know, it's one thing to properly administer a test, right? With I think we call the term a digital referee, but also, you know, you're coaching the tactical athlete as it is now commonly called.

[00:20:33] Uh, there's a lot of like form correction because this many repetitions for people who may be relatively untrained can cause a lot of injury if they're done incorrectly. Like if you're flaring your elbows on, we're just talking about push ups obsessively. But if you're flaring your elbows on push ups, that's going to lead to some shoulder issues eventually. Right. If you're running incorrectly and you're heel striking, especially in boots, I imagine, Jamie, you probably know better than anyone. It's going to lead to some pain, right? In the hips and the knees and probably get people out.

[00:21:01] So, you know, what's the, what's the coaching as far as like maintaining proper form, teaching proper form, and also, you know, trying to keep these people as healthy as they can as they go through the training. Because I would imagine there's a certain percentage of people who drop out of, you know, military just due to physical, you know, injuries and things like that. So the health of them is really important. Yeah. Well, so I'll, I'll tackle the first part of that and I'll let Steven tackle the, the injury prevention.

[00:21:26] Cause I know it's a real thing, but where I've seen the strongest thing is like, if I talk to a potential candidate that wants to go into special warfare and I asked them how many miles are they running a week? They always like, without exception say, Oh, I'm doing like 20 to 25 miles a week. And I'm like, probably not, you know, and, and the same with like the fitness workouts, like how many times you working out.

[00:21:51] And so the benefit of having the coaching and the movement recognition is you get a actual true evaluation of where someone is at their current fitness level. And then a coach can then make a meaningful difference in their training plan and allow them to build up. Generally speaking, like the guy that says that is probably doing five or six miles a week, if that. And if a coach were to put them on 20 to 25 miles a week, they'd get injured right away.

[00:22:20] And so the same goes with, you know, giving someone a calisthenics or a weight weightlifting routine by, by us tracking it in the coaching app and, and being able to verify that they're doing these things. Then you really have a good picture of that person's fitness and then can adjust accordingly. Clearly the movement recognition stuff will auto correct and sort of prevent that overuse stuff as well.

[00:22:43] And I'll let Steven talk to that, but where I'm most excited about it is here's validation that this person needs to work out three or four times a week, which is really what a tactical athlete needs to do. I mean, people think it's pro sports. It's not pro sports. They need to, they need to exercise and be fit and they need to be able to carry a 40 pound ruck and they need to, and do their job. And part of that is maintaining a certain level of fitness so that they can maintain their weight and, and be able to hike outdoors. Yeah.

[00:23:12] Like I'll talk a little bit more broadly. Cause like one of the things that we're very intentional about that essence is what are the high value recurring use cases, uh, that might move across populations and move across industries. So in the world of connected fitness, uh, we have a solution that we call a smart warmup, which is like, if you were warming me up as a coach, you know, you're just taking me through some basic movement prep. You're probably asking me how was my weekend and you know, what are you doing tonight?

[00:23:38] And did you see the game by the whole time you're watching and being like, Oh, I can see some, some stickiness and Steven's movement there. I'm maybe going to throw another exercise into the movement prep, or I'm maybe going to rethink something I was going to do later. So in connected fitness, we call that a smart warmup, um, and physical therapy is a movement assessment, you know, and it's just, you know, it's a different, slightly different use case. We're probably being more, uh, we're more like a digital goniometer.

[00:24:03] It's like, let's measure range of motion and let's see his range of motion improved or, uh, impeded since the last time, uh, we saw this person moving. So what I really like about, uh, ready to again, kind of working back from the score, we anticipate that all of our customers and all of the industries will eventually have all of the blueprints in place. But the challenge is where's the highest value place to start. And, you know, Jamie's identified that the highest place to start is let's use a sensei for adjudication on assessment.

[00:24:33] Let's let's, let's be that. I often describe it to my team, Jamie. You've never heard me say this, but you're like the concept to performance monitor on a rowing machine. You can be anywhere in the world and roll a 2k on a concept too. And there's a button you can press and it gives you a check. Some that says that's an, you can break a world record and have it validated anywhere. You sit down on a concept to it's a validated check. Some, I knew I, that's how I kind of, you know, when I tell people about what we're doing with ready. So I'm like, they're going to be like the concept to of military fitness test.

[00:25:02] That'll be the authenticated text. But to come to your point, Eric, even when someone's doing a mock test, the sensei is watching them. Right? So if I say, let's get off pushups, let's talk about something else. Let's do it. But then I always go to squabs next, but whatever exercise someone is doing, let's take squats. Cause that's a good one for injurious injury patterns. Right? If we're seeing somebody doing a squat and we're seeing as a little asymmetric, they kind of drop down on their left hip.

[00:25:30] And then the right hip is like not straight up and down. And it's a little, a little shimmy in there. That's a great example of a movement pattern that essentially might spot. And let's say their torso is also leaning or coming onto their toes when they're doing those squats. Those insights, just like you warming me up, Eric, those insights are opportunities for future coaching. So we don't necessarily need to interrupt the moment. Like let's just get your mock test in and see your reps.

[00:25:54] But Jamie's team now have the technology in place so that they can move into what we call a guided learning blueprint, which is like, hey, before you do another mock test, let's look at that squat together. You're coming onto your toes and it's because, you know, you're bending your knees, not hinging at your hips. And, you know, here's some mobility you were going to do to improve your hip hinge and then let's get you into a good movement pattern. And so now I've added five reps to my squat. It's not because I got fitter or because I got stronger, but because I got better.

[00:26:22] So I think about it less in that instance as removing the, worrying about injury prevention and more. If I can get you into good movement, I'm working back on the score. I'm going to get you moving more efficiently and kind of move the needle on that number. So, you know, I, you know, Jamie, I get excited about when you'll implement guided learning as part of your kind of training locker, if you like, because that's how we can get people moving better. So, yeah, lots of opportunities, Eric.

[00:26:48] But it's really interesting for me that, you know, for ready for that's like, let's help, you know, the future military member move better. But it's exactly the same solution that we're using to teach an elderly population their physical therapy exercises that were the reason they weren't doing their physical therapy or, or to drive an experience that in connected fitness is about unlocking a new exercise. You've leveled up and let's kind of get that engagement loop going.

[00:27:15] And the same underlying solution serves different athletes with different ROI and different ways. Jamie, as you look at like the big vision of what ready fit can be, if you and I are sitting down and like to use 2030 now, because it's not a little longer than five years away, but it's right around the corner, right? If we're talking in 2030, you're like, man, it's we're super happy with how everything's gone. What does that look like? What does success look like here for you?

[00:27:41] Well, I can tell you where we're trying to start and expand out on it. You know, like, initially testing, you know, people want to qualify for something. And then just with my CO background, you know, I talked to young men all the time that are like, how do I, how do I do it? What do I need to do? And, and, and how can I get accepted into the program? Right. And now, like the, I guess the, the reach that a guy like me has can be across the country.

[00:28:07] Someone can take a test without me having to drive and go to a poolside, watch them swim, you know, watch them do the calisthenics. They can do that and I can give them real, real time feedback, you know, with our app and say, okay, here's where you're at now. Here's where you need to get to be. And, and so that's obviously like kind of a very niche application.

[00:28:25] But when you talk about the military as a whole, they're trying to evaluate readiness and really have the data to know that these million plus soldiers and sailors across the U.S. are ready to deploy, you know, for injury or for obesity or whatever. And by administering these tests more consistently and meeting people where they're at. So it doesn't have that sort of operational burden of having everyone meet in person and do these tests twice a year. Now they can do it on their own and it just becomes part of the job.

[00:28:55] It's almost becomes like, Hey, it's that annual eval time. And part of your annual eval is like turn in your fitness test and they go turn it in. And then if you expand that, like active duty, the military has people that administer these tests now and, and some of that's camaraderie. So there's a little bit of resistance maybe in implementation now, but when you talk about the reservists, the reserve force, which is just as big, their whole job is to occupationally train people one weekend a month. And so they're expecting people to just show up qualified.

[00:29:24] So now if you can take those, you know, million plus reservists and say, Hey, every six months you go take your test and, and you just, you're just supposed to meet the standard. And now as a commanding officer, you know, like, okay, well, 65% of my reserve force is qualified based on this. And I didn't have to like waste a whole weekend evaluating my people in person. I just know based on who's turned in their fitness scores.

[00:29:48] So that's sort of the entry where we're going, but even more broadly, like I think about ready fit as a way that someone fulfills their goals and dreams and whatever, like sort of more physical career passion they have. So if you're a firefighter or you want to go work for border patrol or the FBI, all of them have physical fitness assessment tests. And what's different about the military with these, you know, public sector organizations is they don't have an endless amount of people that can just pre-qualify people, even though they try.

[00:30:18] So if you look at like, you know, say, I don't know how many firefighters apply to be firefighters in the state of California, but you know, it's probably on a scale of a million a year or plus. And they're, and they're only accepting say 10,000 applications. So now you're enabling these departments to evaluate people and hire the best people for the job without having to have all that manpower, manpower and time. It just, it just becomes more of an HR function of the job requires this.

[00:30:46] We're able to, the individual, if they're motivated enough can prove that they are physically capable to do the job and, and now they can apply. And it doesn't have to, the resistance is, is these, these virtual fitness tests, if you are, aren't going to replace in-person training and testing like that will always be there. But it's a good entry point to know where someone stands and then again, coach and train them. And, and then I, like I said, I go back to like the, the world's only getting younger and people are only more digitally connected.

[00:31:16] So ready fit and this movement recognition allows us to meet people where they're at and where they're on their phones. And so I'm more likely to go, Hey, I want to be a firefighter. And you're going to be like, look up all the qualifications. And if on there it says, Hey, you have to take this fitness test and you can do it right now. They're going to read that and they're going to do it. And, and right there, now you're getting someone in shape. 500,000 applicants like that are all going to be actually trying to pass this test.

[00:31:44] They may not all get accepted, but now I'm making a difference in the world for the people that are applying for those jobs with physical fitness requirements. Oh, I love it. I love it. I think one of the biggest promises and you're right, because you know, the younger generations are very, they're on screens. A lot. Right. But if we can get the digital experience, like you're saying, meaning where they're at, that can lead into more of a, you know, in-person community, like, you know, that type of environment where they can actually connect.

[00:32:11] Is that, is that something that you guys are starting to see through the app or maybe you have plans to build in? Like, how does that work with the actual community? And again, like the coaching, like, like in our training, we call it boat cruise. Right. Right. But there's a, there's a clear indication that people are going to do something more likely if there's community, you know, like it's hard to do a online spin class by yourself. But if you know, like 10 people, you know, you're going to show up and do it. You know, the success of Peloton though, was they created that community.

[00:32:40] So absolutely on the coaching side, you know, but it's more of an, in our use case, it's more of like an accountability feature. You know, like, Hey, here's, here's the boat crew that's doing this 12 week plan to prep for this special program. And then within that community, they're like, Hey, how was your workout today? Did you do the run? Did you do the swim? And then they can actually start coaching themselves. The other thing too, is like, everyone thinks they're really good until they are able to evaluate themselves against their peers.

[00:33:09] And, you know, of course we're going to have the leaderboard and the bragging rights part of it, but leaderboards extends to just the groups within themselves. I think you guys probably all remember when Fitbit first came out and you could like invite like five of your friends and then you'd each compete for 10,000 steps. So like when you take it, like, yeah, that's a novelty and it worked. But when you're talking about people that are trying to qualify for a job and you can put that community together of like-minded individuals with the same goal, and now they're all communicating together digitally.

[00:33:40] You know, you can have a guy in California or Texas that are both going to eventually meet each other, but are trying to qualify for the same program. So yes, this is the short answer or the short answer. And the long answer was what I just said. And if I can have some of the underlying technologies as well. So this is something that we think a lot. I'm kind of, you know, talking about roadmap a little bit or some of the things that we're doing with customers that aren't public yet. But I've always been a huge believer as a coach in challenges. It's a way I would motivate a two-hour karate class, right?

[00:34:08] Every so often in the class is like, listen, in martial arts, in a karate dojo, the highest graded person stands at the front right of the class. And then you just rank down to the most junior person at the back left of the class. And pretty much everyone there imagines themselves being in that top right spot. But every other spot on the floor, there's a person to your left that you don't want to beat you. And there's a person to your right that you want to beat. You know, there's just this inherent competitiveness.

[00:34:33] And so that inherent competitiveness that our team has known for kind of 20, 30 years on the floor of the dojo, that comes into our SDK. We think about what's the best imaginable fitness experience or workout experience. So we're big on challenges. You know, we're very big on how do you create these opportunities for challenges? And a challenge might be an AMRAP. It might be based on reps or it might be based on hold times.

[00:34:59] You know, the number of times I'd have a karate class just, you know, sit with their back against the wall or hold a roundhouse kick out in the air and last person to put their leg down. And it's just, you know, fun things. And these are all things that we can deliver through our SDK. Jamie, I'm giving you features now. Blake's going to be alive. But we also love partner workouts. To Jamie's point about community. With Asensi, there's now no reason that you can't have remote but synchronous workouts.

[00:35:24] So Jamie and I could both be doing a push-up test where he goes for a minute and Asensi's watching him count his reps. And then as soon as he hits his minute, he goes into rest and I go into like my phone's like, okay, now you go. And I've got his target on screen. And so we can do these kind of synchronous partner workouts where you're actually bringing two people into a shared experience or bringing a team of people into a shared experience.

[00:35:50] So as we think more broadly about the applications for Asensi in fitness competitions, I mean, you mentioned CrossFit. It's such an obvious one. It's like, you know, when you start with the biggest population, let's adjudicate digitally and then let's start bringing people to regionals and nationals. So yeah, anybody that's in the world of fitness competitions or digital adjudication, we've got a lot of tricks up our sleeve that we're excited to let people see. And yeah, Jamie will follow up after this. Yeah.

[00:36:20] Awesome. I think the difference with like, and I know that the CrossFit games like qualify people with video. One of the difference was like, you think about the people that were viewing those videos, you know, if you didn't score high enough, they only had to watch 1% of those videos to see who was going on to the next level. But with Asensi, you don't necessarily have to have someone to watch it, but you could also accurately score everyone. You know, like I'm sure like in the CrossFit community, there's probably this, you know, people that have, they didn't score high enough to move to the next level.

[00:36:50] They're in that maybe top 80% range, but really they weren't. And they're ranked however they're ranked. And, you know, whether you think that's fair or not, it's not doing that person any favors and it's not doing the organization any favors. You know, they really want to have a sense of equity across like who's able to do what, who's trained for it. But so what we're doing with ReadyFit, obviously it's, it's not CrossFit, it's more calisthenic exercises.

[00:37:15] The pull-up feature that, that Steven's team put together for us, like you can recognize a pull-up, whether they're forward or backwards. And what's awesome about that is think about that, like their back is towards you. So someone's got a pull-up bar against the wall and there's not enough room where they're facing you. But with the, the right, you know, looking at the skeletal features, you know, if that person's chin is above the bar, even if you're faced back to them. And when I tried it and tested it, I was like, this is amazing.

[00:37:42] Like I, I can't not have my chin above the bar and you can't even see my chin. So it's, it's pretty exciting, the stuff that we can do. And it's not just for that, like top 1% of the population, it's for qualifying everyone. And that's important from where I stand because at the military level, it's not just about training SEALs. It's about like, we need to, for national security, we need to bolster our troops and we need more people that are physically fit and can join.

[00:38:10] And those tests aren't super hard for someone who's fit, but it's a big hurdle for someone who maybe has no exposure to fitness and, and wants to join the Navy or, you know, join the Marine Corps. Cause they think it's a, it's going to be a great adventure for them. And, and, but they've been sitting at school and didn't play sports and didn't do all those things, their whole high school experience. And, and now they're like, I got to get a job. This is what the job's going to be. I need someone to coach me so I can do this.

[00:38:38] So yeah, right on. I love what you guys are doing. I, you know, as, as in my coaching career, I got to work with the Santa Barbara police department and trying to help them prepare people for their testing. And then a couple young men who were going for buds. And I just got to see, you know, the ambiguity, you know, from externally, like, well, what are we actually going for here? Right. So you guys are really solving a problem and having a clear path and solution to it through technology and community too. So it's really cool.

[00:39:03] And I think people listen to this, they'll inevitably want to get involved or talk to you guys in some way. So if they do, where's a good place for them to go to, to reach out to you, Jamie, and then Steven as well. Well, they can, they can find our contact information on readyfit.com. And then of course our apps available in the app store, we were constantly putting out new features.

[00:39:25] Our target customer is going to be more, you know, business to government at first or business to business, but we are rolling out the coaching and the training features business to consumer. So we can sort of hone our sort of testing process for people that are interested. So, you know, like we know what, let's say I create an eight week training plan. One of the cool things that I can do with our testing and with a sensei is I can start that eight week training plan with a test. It doesn't have to be an official military test.

[00:39:54] It could be any test that, that us at our, on our end creates. And then at the end of it, they can have another test and then they can say, okay, I did this for eight weeks and I actually have something to show for it. I didn't just work out for eight weeks and didn't, didn't know that I wasn't getting better. So yeah, I'd love for people to reach out as, as they hear what we're doing, get as excited about it as I am and, and, you know, give us feedback on how we can improve. But, you know, I'm on a mission, you know, like no, no pun intended.

[00:40:22] You know, I want, you know, I want as many people to, to experience what I experienced through fitness and the opportunities that I've had just because I was able to qualify for things that, you know, like the average person doesn't think is possible, but given time and training, it is possible. Awesome. Steven. Can't really top that. So just find me on LinkedIn.

[00:40:44] LinkedIn is where we love to share what we're doing and increasingly where we like to spotlight what our customers are doing. Our technology looks best when it's inside awesome products like ReadyFoot. So, uh, uh, yeah, I'm going to keep my test scores to myself. So, well, hey, you guys, great work, really cool, uh, stuff that you're doing. I'm very excited to follow it and see how it evolves. And, uh, thanks for joining me today. Ladies and gentlemen, Jamie and Moreau and Steven Webster. Thanks Eric. Yeah.

[00:41:14] Thank you.