Martijn De Jong - Fittar & The Gaming 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. Martijn, Martijn, De Jong, and Stephen Webster, welcome to the Future of Fitness, my friends. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you, and thanks for joining, Martijn.

[00:00:52] Yeah, it's always a pleasure. And just for the record, Martijn, like I will practice someone's name 20 times right before recording, but as soon as I hit record, I'll fumble it every time. So thanks for being patient with me. Yeah, I spelled it out phonetically and everything and still couldn't quite nail it. But anyway, we're all here. I'm very excited. This is, you know, I think the third part of a three-part series I've been doing with you, Stephen Webster, on kind of training particular athletes, you know, as we call them.

[00:01:22] And as you mentioned before, like in the Nike definition, everyone's an athlete, right? But we talked about the industrial athlete prior. We talked about the tactical athlete now. So now we're bringing in Martijn and Fittar and what you guys are doing in extra gaming and super exciting technology. I mean, it's, I found it interesting that like this type of training was got really hot, right? The pandemic, everybody was talking about Web3 and stuff like that. And then it kind of, it's subsided a little bit, but it doesn't mean it's not moving forward. It very much is, right?

[00:01:51] And the technology is moving forward. I think it's going to be another prominent part of what our industry looks like over the next decade. So I'm going to shut up for a second. I'm going to let you guys talk. And maybe Martijn, if you can just give us your background, how you got to be the founder of Fittar and how you guys met. I know there's a martial arts background, mutual background there. So... Thankfully, that's not how we met. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Martijn. Okay. Yeah. So I'll tell a little story about myself. I was always very much into sports since I was a kid.

[00:02:20] I started with swimming because I wanted to do windsurfing just like my dad. And he told me, okay, you can only do that when you get all your diplomas for swimming. So I started with that. Then I moved to BMX. It was really... After the movie E.T. came out, it was very much a hit, right? All over the world. Yeah. And also in Holland. So I did that for a while, till I was 13 years old. Then I discovered martial arts. And of course, I always liked all the movies from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and later Jean-Claude Van Damme and all those guys, you know.

[00:02:50] And I was really excited, exciting about it all the time. So then I met a... Actually, it's a funny story. I went to the swimming pool with a couple of friends of mine and we're playing a little bit, you know. So one guy said, okay, you know what? The three of you attack me and see what happens. So we're like, the three of us against just one person. He said, yeah, yeah, come on. So we took him on and one was flying that way. The other was flying that way. The other was an arm lock over there, you know. So it was kind of like, wow. You know, we tried it again. Everybody laughing, of course, and we... The same thing happened.

[00:03:20] So I said, okay, man, what is it you're doing? He said, I'm doing jujitsu. It's like, I want to do that too, you know. He said, come on, join me. So that's how it started. I went to jujitsu class. Eventually, I became a black belt second degree. I went to start doing karate. From karate, I went to Brazilian jujitsu. And from Brazilian jujitsu, I became a black belt eventually as well. One of the first in the Netherlands. I started doing MMA. I was one of the first MMA fighters in Holland. I had my first fight in 1995.

[00:03:50] I had my first fight in Japan in 1997. And then I moved on and on. I became a two times just champion in MMA. And started training people as well. So that was really my passion, you know. So I was working in a bank before, an insurance company. But then I was like, you know what? This whole martial arts thing is my passion. And I want to continue doing that. So I started fighting myself. I started training people. One of them was Alistair Overeem.

[00:04:19] He became a three times world champion and UFC star as well. The other one was Marlouz Kunen. Three times world champion. Once in Japan, twice in Strike Force America. And another guy was Sia Baher Desada. Became a three times world champion in Shudo in Japan as well. So I was very much into that. Then I had other students as well. There were not so many promotions. So I started the promotion called Glory. Glory Kickboxing is now the biggest kickboxing organization in the world. I founded it together with my partner in 2006. Sold it in 2012.

[00:04:48] And then I stayed two years as a consultant and I moved out. So I went to Indonesia where I'm right now. I started doing my build a gym here. I started training personal trainers. I made a system called the Tatsujin training system, where I'm training personal trainers to give like a kickboxing workout, a fun workout. So up to this day, we trained approximately 1,900.

[00:05:15] I did this for a big gym called Evolution Wellness. They're based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Of course, I had some... I did some courses in the Netherlands as well where I'm from. But after a while, I came back from Indonesia. I met a guy called Aljo Hoving. He's now my partner in FITAR. And he told me like, you know what? He knew what's going on in the world of technology, right?

[00:05:42] He was one of the first with 360 degrees videos in Holland. He was very early with VR, holograms and all this kind of stuff. And he said, I have an idea about technology and fitness or sports in general. But I don't know anybody who's doing sports. So we met through my cousin. So he said, can I talk with you? So he came, we met up, started talking a little bit. And then after our talk, a few days later, he said, you know, can we meet another time? So we went to meet up the next week.

[00:06:12] And we decided to found a company together called FITAR, where we are... Where our goal is to have as many people to motivate, stimulate as many people as possible with fun workouts. So we want it to be fun because we know that when something is fun to do, you do it longer and come back more often to do it. So that's how we started. We started with the big mirrors. We had, of course, in the US, you have a company called Mirror. We had those mirrors in the beginning as well, but huge.

[00:06:42] I don't know about inches, but it was 2 meters 10 by 90 centimeters. There were B2B, very much B2B. We went to hotels, corporates and gyms. But then, of course, COVID hit. Boom, everything closed. So we had to find another way to serve customers. So we went B2C with a small mirror. As you probably know, the mirror is not a big success, also not in the US. So we moved away from that.

[00:07:10] And luckily, through a mutual connection, we met the guys from Essencei and we're super very happy with that, to be joining forces. And now we, there was always a goal, you know, we want to be device independent, building a device independent platform. But the technology wasn't there yet. So phones was very much on our radar, but we couldn't find anybody who had the technology to make it happen. And then now we're at Essencei and doing good stuff now together.

[00:07:39] And now we build an app where the goal is still the same. Motivate to stimulate as many people as possible with fun workouts. And that's what we're doing. Sorry for the long introduction. That's awesome. No, man, you have a lot to say. That's really, yeah. I mean, I could ask you a million questions about so many things within that story, but we'll stick to the, to what we're focusing on here today. When you guys, Steven and Martijn, when you look at like who, to keep continuity in this series, right?

[00:08:07] The type of quote unquote athlete that you're training here. Like how would you define that? I'll let you do that, Martin. Sorry? How would you define the target consumer? You know, who are they and what are their needs and their goals and their motivations? So, so we are not so much focusing on the athletes. I did this in my, in my previous life. Actually, I'm still doing, I still have a fighter competing in the UFC, but that's another thing I'm doing. That's besides fit art. But with fit art, we're really focusing on the average Joe.

[00:08:37] You know, there's so many, we always say there's like 10% who's already working hard. He's doing CrossFit, MMA, running on Sunday morning, all those kinds of stuff. And then there's 10%, the lower end, who's probably not going to do anything. He or she is laying on the couch, eating chips and drinking beer and will never get off that couch. And then there's that 80% who know that they have to work out, but they just need a little motivation to do it actually.

[00:09:05] You know, so we're focusing on that group and it could be people in office jobs, for example. It could be students, schools, could be, could be anybody, you know, but that's what we focus on mainly. So not on a, on a hardcore athletes, but mostly on that, that, that group, the biggest group, you know, who really needs it the most as well. And Eric, this was a customer that was exciting to me because, you know, I was actually introduced to Martin by, by Mo at Sweatworks. And so Mo had done, well, Mo's met everybody.

[00:09:35] And so, you know, Mo had met with the team at Fittar. And then, you know, at the time Fittar were working with depth cameras like the Microsoft Connect camera. And like me, when I started the company, didn't really believe that it would be possible to just use a regular smartphone camera and get that same fidelity of information that you get from a depth camera. But Mo knew that we were able to do that. Mo knew that we had kind of the best movement recognition platform to deliver this stuff.

[00:10:05] And so, you know, grateful to Mo for introducing us. And it was right at the time that we were introducing a whole bunch of technologies, which I'm sure we'll unpack, that were absolutely aligned to the Fittar roadmap. But what was exciting to me when I got the introduction is, as you know, my last real job before Ascensi was with Microsoft and, you know, I'm, you know, considered good friends with some of the inventors of Microsoft Connect. And I, you know, I work with the Microsoft Connect team as a partner.

[00:10:33] I worked briefly with the Xbox Fitness team and with Gatorade actually, who are, you know, deploying content on Xbox Fitness. So I knew that customer, Martin, of how can we get the, we used to talk about how can we get the Xbox out of the bedroom and into the living room? And how can we make the living room that the kind of the heart of the digital home? And how can we get that customer off the sofa or off the couch?

[00:10:57] But not for an hour, not, you know, not to go and do your crossfit workout, but like, can we just get you standing up for 15 or 20 minutes? I, you know, I call it, Eric, like fitness by osmosis. It's like almost accidental fitness, right? It's like, I just, you know, I just kind of get into the thing for 15 or 20 minutes. I'm like, that was kind of fun. I'm like, whoa, got a little bit of a sweat on now. So yeah, I was really excited to be introduced to these guys because, you know, I think this, this serves a very underserved part. Yeah.

[00:11:24] I would like to know from you guys, if you could explain, like, what is the fit are like consumer experience? Like what, walk me through it, like from first finding what fit are is to, you know, what technology they need to access it all the way through to, you know, being a consistent user. What is, what is that experience like? Yeah. So, so especially with the mirrors in the beginning, we were always very much into, into the interactivity.

[00:11:50] So that's why we always had those cameras, these 3D cameras, because you want to interact with the people because we don't believe that just regular videos on a screen motivates you enough to come back more often and do it longer. So yeah. So we were very much into this interactive thing now also with our app. And, uh, what we found is that because we have, we built in a features like challenges, so you can challenge yourself, which you can also challenge your friends or the people in the same organization as you.

[00:12:17] We built it very flexible and dynamic as a platform because we can make separate organizations in the same app. So for example, if you're working at the Microsoft and you want to use fit are then you can have your own Microsoft environment, which only can feel your own college, your own logo, et cetera. And which own community. Now in that community, you can push different content as well, which the content will be made interactive by Steven and his, and his guys, of course.

[00:12:44] So we may, we make it very, our goal is to make it as easily accessible as possible. And with the, with the, with, how can I say this? With, with no, so it's like, like I said, you know, the, we're not wanting to do, we don't want you to do like an hour workout, like a hardcore fitness or CrossFit exercise. We want you to get off the couch and that we do this by offering funny games, very easy games, you know, for example, running and jumping or moving from left to right, doing jumping jacks.

[00:13:13] And like, like Steven said, it's like, it's, you're working out without knowing you're working out. So that, that's more or less our goal. And on the other hand, we have a whole, a whole gamified experience where we challenging each other, where we have leaderboards, where we give points, challenge. You can challenge as a group or as a person or as a one-to-one or yourself. So yeah, it's more, more or less a very gamified environment.

[00:13:36] I know there's a, it's very difficult to understand if you, if you've not used the app before, but you try and make it as easy as possible for, for a lot of people. So, uh, we should drop some, uh, Eric, we should drop some videos in your show notes. There's some great videos that will show you the games. You know, one of the things I really liked about it as well is, and when I was at Microsoft, you know, we had like Microsoft. Yeah. I forget what the game was called now, but there was these games where you're in a raft and just by moving your body, you're moving the raft through the rapids.

[00:14:04] And it's just getting you moving and you're probably more into the game than you are into the movement part of it. But then slowly you can move you towards the movement part. Cause now it's like, well, if you, the higher you jumped, the higher you'll clear. Um, and then, you know, with Fittar, you can start to build up to, you know, now there's a, now there's a boxing coach like Martijn in front of me and he's holding focus mitts. And when he puts the mitt here, I need to do a hook. And when he holds the mitt here, I need to do a knee strike.

[00:14:29] And so now I really like it as an on-ramp towards the more traditional fitness experience. But even when I'm doing my boxing training and I'm throwing combinations, you know, it's with an avatar of a trainer in front of me. And it's that same experience. It's funny, you know, it seems like Martijn and I's childhoods were identical. I also windsurfed. That was one of, that was my other, apart from windsurfing. I would literally, my Sundays were Jiu Jitsu from 10 AM to 11 in the kids class.

[00:14:58] Then from 11 to one in the adults class. And then I would, my dad would pick me up with all the boards on the roof and we would windsurf for the rest of the day. That was like my every Sunday. So it was kind of funny to hear you say that. Um, I was not the MMA fighter, you know, Eric, I kind of grew up saying like, you know, no retreat, no surrender. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan. And I wanted to imagine that they were my focus mitt trainers. When I was hitting the bag, I was imagining I was training with them. And I love how Fittar kind of bring that sort of sense into, uh, into the workout experience.

[00:15:27] But it was, it was bloody hard technically. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that. I'm sure. What do I need? Can I, can I just do with my phone? Do I, do I use a TV? Like what, how do I engage in the actual games? I mean, it sounds like fun. I'd like to try it. You can just do it on your phone and you can mirror your phone to your, to the TV screen. If you want to. Okay. Wow.

[00:15:50] And it'll know like where you're in this instance that you're talking about Steven, like in the boxing game or the boxing game, it'll sense my movements, right? Like it automatically does that through the phone. Yeah. And so, yeah. And let me talk about that a little bit. And it's funny, we've been doing a bunch of consumer testing lately for some of our customers. Um, and it was surprising even to me. I thought I was the only person that constantly pairs my phone with my TV to work out. I like having it on the TV.

[00:16:18] We have a TV in my garage gym and you know, I've got a sound bar on it and I, you know, I like to cover that immersive environment. And we were recently doing some consumer testing with a customer who are intentionally we're testing on just the phone and let's not use the TV. Let's see how people enjoy the phone experience. Like reading through the, the interview transcripts actually yesterday, a majority of customers were asking, when's it going to work on the TV? So I think we're seeing this as an increasing trends that, you know, as people are working out at home, they want to have that kind of TV experience.

[00:16:46] But even if you're on the TV, the phone is the super computer. The TV is just like a dumb terminal. It's like a dumb 4k terminal with Dolby Atmos surround sound. Um, but the phone is the super computer. And so, yeah, as you know, Eric, um, you know, a sense is underlying capability is movement recognition. We use the phone camera to motion capture the person in their living room. So we're seeing their skeleton in 3D, but then we're able to, um, you know, fit our developers are essentially saying, this is somebody doing boxing.

[00:17:15] And I need you to look out for a left jab, a left cross, a right uppercut or a knee strike. Um, and every time that person makes a faithful attempt to do that thing. Um, and what I mean by a faithful attempt is, you know, the caliber of Martin's left hook and your left hook, I'm going to guess are probably a little bit different, but we want to give you credit for your attempt just as much as Martin gives credit for his attempt. And so a sense is watching for what you're doing, recognizing when you're doing it.

[00:17:42] And so in real time, you know, however many frames per second, that camera on the phone is operating at, at the same frames per second. The sense he is like left hook, but he dropped his guard and his elbows, not horizontal enough. Maybe you want to tell them that. And all that data about the movement is driving, driving up to the app, but that's the stuff, you know, about us already. Like we do movement recognition, but fit are also wanted that kind of depth camera connect experience.

[00:18:09] You know, not a lot of people know this, but when you see a skeleton on screen, like it's pretty easy to throw a skeleton up on screen these days. That's like the university, you know, you know, day one project is, you know, use your camera to get a skeleton on screen. And our brains are the best machine learning neural network because they see that skeleton and they fill in all the missing information. Right. We can tell if it's standing or sitting or turning, but the machine doesn't actually know that.

[00:18:34] A skeleton from a machine's perspective is pinned at the hips and everything else is relative to where the hips are. Every other bone is relative to the hips. So even if that person shuffles to the left or shuffles to the right, we see the skeleton make that movement. And intuitively we understand that looks like a human moving to the right. But the machine doesn't know because that skeleton is just disembodied floating in space. So one of the things that we added to our SDK just before we met FITAR was another layer of computer vision technology called spatial computing.

[00:19:03] And spatial computing for every single point of the body, every landmark that we track, we measure how far that landmark is from the lens of the camera. So we understand the characteristics, the focal length, the curvature, the field of view of the camera. And we do a bunch of like this pinhole camera technology. We do a bunch of calculations to say the shoulder is, you know, 74 centimeters off the ground and 180 centimeters back. And so now we can do things like we know where the floor is.

[00:19:33] We know if the body moved to the left. We know if the body moved to the right. We know if it jumped, we know if it turns. And so that now means the body can be a controller, right? And a lot of the games on FITAR are very much just like, you know, there's almost like there's lanes on screen and get to this lane on the left and dodge this thing on the right. And or reach out and touch something over here. So, yeah, an amazing amount of technology that when you when you distill it down to the FITAR experience, it just means you can dodge stuff on screen or change lanes as you're running. And it just works. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:03] So what I really like is that we have those games where you can move from left to right. They can do all this kind of stuff. Like Steven was explaining about our kickboxing game, right? Our shadow boxing game, we like to call it. Where the avatar gives you, gives you a command so you have to do it. And once you do it, you get points for that, et cetera, et cetera. But on the other end, we also, and that's the beauty about the system. I think we also have, I created this program, this kickboxing program where I'm teaching, I'm talking to the audience and say, okay, guys, we're going to start with a jab. So how to do the jab now?

[00:20:32] And then you will see it will count the jab every time you do it. But the beautiful thing about the Asensi software is that you can also give feedback. So actually I can really give a class more or less where I'm teaching people how to do kickboxing, how to execute punches. So after 30 seconds, I would say, okay, after the jab comes across, you know, jab, cross. And then you see the user doing it. And if somebody is using the wrong arm, it will say about you using the wrong arm. Or if your arm stays low, lift up your arms, you know? So with the hook, the same thing. Okay.

[00:21:00] Elbow a little bit, rotate your body a little bit more so you can actually give feedback. And for now we're just doing a textual feedback, but we can also in the future, we'll implement voice to speech as well. So you have a real, real good experience, especially when you broadcast it to your TV at home, you have like a real life experience. With the fitner, fitner application. I think what's, what's funny there, Eric is like, you know, this is a great example. I mean, you know, Martin and I had very different martial arts backgrounds.

[00:21:29] I mean, I wasn't, yeah, I was university competitive. I wasn't professional competitive fighter, nor was I ever going to be. But we've both experienced that frustration as coaches. If like, if I'm not there in the room, I can't deliver the same experience. Like I need to be able to, you know, break it like me teaching a roundhouse kick. I mean, to this day, I could walk into a dojo and teach a roundhouse kick exactly the way I taught it 10 years ago. Because I know I'll start with a knee strike and then I'll start with a knee strike and pop your hip.

[00:21:58] Now it will be a knee strike, pop your hip and pivot on your back foot. And I'll, I'll build on the technique. And then eventually it's like, okay, I'll do one. You do one. Okay. I'll do one. You do three. Okay. I'm not going to do any, you just do them and I'll give you feedback. And so there's this like taking the training wheels off approach to teaching that you can't do just by watching a video unless the video is able to watch you.

[00:22:19] And so I'm just, you know, Martin, it's great for me to hear another coach say like, finally, there's a technology that allows me to deliver the kind of coaching experience that I would have, you know, you've flown to Indonesia to stand in a hall for, I miss these days to stand in a hall for a weekend, you know, for eight hours coaching two days in a row. Yeah. But now you can coach digitally and not have to fly to Indonesia to deliver a very similar caliber of coaching experience with the same content. I don't know if that's the mission. Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:49] So in the beginning, you asked me what kind of customers are target we are targeting. And that's like, I told you about schools and, uh, uh, and of course, uh, corporates or, or companies, but on the other hand, we also targeting some influence. We're talking Indonesia to a huge influencer, uh, with probably more followers than the country of Holland, uh, have as inhabitants. So it's huge, right? Indonesia is a huge country as well, but we created the platform so that it's so flexible.

[00:23:15] We can have that person's app powered by Fitnar and his NSA of course, and then put in our own content, which we Gapify then, how we like to call it, you know, which we, which make interactive. So it's, it's so flexible and it's so, so amazing. And they can also have their own colors, own look and feel, own logo, own everything, own content. Uh, yeah. And very, very specific.

[00:23:38] We're not in, because I know there's some application that gives you feedback on the, on the inch, for example, that's not what we're doing. We'd like to give you tips. We want you to have a nice fun and, uh, and good experience while delivering quality content. That's more or less what we do. And how have you seen, I mean, one of the things that keeps coming up within our industry, and this is the fitness and wellness industry is like the other 80%, right?

[00:24:06] Like he said, yeah, I know. I have a hard time. I just talk, it comes up so much, but is it working? Like, are you getting to people who are actually on the couch? Like that, that last 10% and you know, those people, those, those avatars you described, by the way, I, that could be. You could be me on any given day, any one of those. I could be the guy drinking beer on the couch. I could be the guy doing crossfit. I could be the guy doing. I mean, so like, are we getting to that, that last 10%? Are you seeing that?

[00:24:33] I mean, is there any proof that that that's working that the, you know, the fun component of fitness and the gaming component is actually engaging? So honestly, we're, we're launched the application just last, last summer. Okay. So we're still very much in the beginning of everything. But we see now that, for example, we have different things in our app. We have, for example, we have tournaments. We have a specific beginning and a specific end date.

[00:24:56] And in those tournaments, we all, we had, let's say we do a two week tournament with 10 challenges there. So one challenge would be who can do the most jumping jacks for 30 seconds. There's only 30 seconds a day, you know, then the second one would be how, who can do the most squats a day, you know? And then the next one would be how many punches can you give in 30 seconds for one day. And then now you're battling against each other.

[00:25:20] So that's kind of motivating people at the end of the tournament for companies that probably they, most of the time we have some companies here in Indonesia who are working with the FITAR app. For example, they giving out like free sports shoes for the winner of the tournament, you know, the next month I, they already told me they're getting a polar watch. So they're doing all this kind of rewards for the people who join in tournament. So that's, that's actually kind of helping them, you know, to get off the couch.

[00:25:46] The second thing is we have those challenges where, for example, I can challenge you, Eric, you'll be laying on the couch and you're like seven o'clock at night. I'm like feeling like watching Netflix and all of a sudden you get a pop up. But I challenge you for a 30 second, I don't know, jumping jack challenge. You're like, okay, let's do 30 seconds. And what we're trying to do then, once you start doing it, you're like, shit, I lost. Okay, I'm going to challenge him back or I won. Okay. You know what? I'm going to challenge Steven now, you know, let's see how good he is. So that's what we're trying to do.

[00:26:16] That's the dynamics we have there in our app. But then of course we have those, those, those games, which makes it very fun. You can do it by yourself. You can do it with your kids. You can do it with whoever you want to. So that's very helpful. And now the next thing we're launching and that's going to be very soon where we'll test it next week is the AI WhatsApp coach. And I know WhatsApp is not big in the U S but in everywhere in the world it is.

[00:26:39] So what you will get when you start, once you start with FitR, you will get a WhatsApp, which says, like a text says, hi, Eric. Welcome to FitR. Before we start, we'd like to know a little bit more about you. How many times a week would you like to train? And you will say, okay, one, two, three, four or more. You click three. The next question is, okay, what do you prefer? You like to work on your strength, your cardio or mobility or whatever it is. It's okay. Strength and cardio. Then the third question would be, okay, how would you like us to address you?

[00:27:09] So very direct motivation or whatever it is. Check a motivation. Then we say, okay, you know what? We think this is the right exercise for you. This is a good program for you to follow. So now you train on Monday and then Tuesday, you didn't train Wednesday. Didn't train Thursday. You didn't train. So in the evening you will get an automatic text. Hey, Eric, you said you wanted to train three times a week. If you want to reach your goal, let's start with a workout then. And you text back, I'm sorry, I'm too busy right now. So, okay, why not do a 30 seconds challenge? Only 30 seconds, you know?

[00:27:37] So, and they say, 30 seconds, I don't know, squat challenge. I have a problem with my knees. Okay, why don't we do punches then? So we're trying to keep you motivated to get off that couch and at least do a little bit of exercise. That's our whole goal. So yeah, how it's going to play out? The future will tell. We just started. We're booking very good results. People are loving it. People are liking it. But yeah, we'll see in the future how it goes. But we're very bullish. And I'm going to get myself into trouble here.

[00:28:05] But do you want a little bit of futures from a sensei? Oh yeah, I was just going to say, let's talk about the future. I mean, this podcast is called The Future of Fitness. So let's say, let's see. Apologies to my team that are like, you've told them about this. I'm going to do it. Well, let me, so we have, we've constantly, you know, my goal has always been to democratize access to world-class coaches and coaching. That's always been the fundamental goal. But you have to start as close to the silicon as possible, right?

[00:28:32] I've often joked about like, you start at the silicon and you work your way towards the carbon. You know, you start at the technology and you work your way towards the human experience that the technology powers. And so, you know, lots of people know a sensei for what we've been doing down at the kind of the silicon layer, the AI, the computer vision, the exercise recognition, all very hard problems that, you know, other companies with much more money and M&A and acquisitions haven't been able to solve, you know, any product that has exercise recognition and it has been stuck at 20

[00:29:01] exercises for the last four years because they can't scale. And so, you know, we've, we've operated at that level and that's the kind of price of admission technology. Now the companies come to us to integrate. We need to have movement recognition. But what we realized with our early customers is that's a fire hose of data. He threw a left hook and his guard was down and da, da, da, da, da, da. And all this, like, you know, all the stuff that, you know, you know, if Martin and I are like coaching

[00:29:28] a room full of people, you know, we just look over and be like, well, all these guys over there are telegraphing their kit with their back hands, pulling before they kick. We just see that stuff and we know to go and coach it. But that layer of, we call it coach IQ, that layer of coaching intelligence. That was another very hard problem that we had to solve. So essentially is like, how do we help our customers take that fire hose of data and contextualize it to the human being that's in front of the camera?

[00:29:54] If you're a beginner, what you would coach them is very different to if you're a black belt. And what you would coach is very different and how you would coach and the language you would use are they consciously or unconsciously competent. There's a lot that goes on into deciding what do I just say right now? And so that's in our tech stack today is, you know, the application developer just trusts a sense to say this is the piece of content audio or text to speech or video that I'm being told to play right now based on what's happening.

[00:30:24] But there's still a content problem, right? Our customers still have to go into a recording booth and record all the audio of their coach. If they want their coach, if you've got an influencer that everybody knows that influencer and they know their voice, like you need to record them saying two more reps, one more rep. Great job. Straighten your back. You know, kick your back leg. So we are now working most of us will probably figure out, but I won't like make any announcements on partners today, but we're working with partners that we can now clone voices of coaches so that that coach

[00:30:54] that you've watched on the television or followed an Instagram, it's their voice, but they're, they're contextualizing. Eric, last Tuesday, you were telegraphing your front kick with your back hand, like your legs, not on a pulley. I want you to keep your hands still and just, you know, lead from the hip. And so now he's using your name and, you know, talking about your workout last Tuesday. The second thing that we're introducing next year is starting to use LLM so we can train an LLM in two things.

[00:31:22] One, the LLM can have a good understanding. You can't just ask ChatGPT and you see people like, let's just have ChatGPT create a workout program. It's like using fire to warm your hands, not to heat steam, right? You're not really using the technology, but we can train and fine tune LLMs with the coaching strategy. Of course, Martin and I both studied Jiu Jitsu, but we probably work from different syllabuses and we had different teaching styles and different ways things were taught.

[00:31:49] So we can now train an LLM to understand how that thing should be coached. And then finally, Martin might train me in a very, forgive me, I'll call it an aggressive way, but more the boot camp instructor. Come on, give me four more. Come on. Whereas with another client, he might coach them in a much more nurturing or encouraging way. So now essentially we'll have the ability to literally spit out in the tone of voice and according to the teaching pedagogy and the teaching style exactly the content and text to speech in the voice of the athlete.

[00:32:18] So that's coming soon. We have customers working with us and that kind of stuff. Martin, I didn't know about the WhatsApp, so we need to talk because we can bring that to life. But the last thing I'll share, Eric, is you've probably seen a lot of advantage. Like today or yesterday, we saw OpenAI bring sort of where text the video and you've probably seen a lot of generate video where you can video capture somebody and then you can make them say things and you can make them move around. And we've been integrating those technologies into Asensi as well.

[00:32:46] So we can put a life like video avatar, maybe not while you're working out, maybe you're sitting down with your coach at the end of practice and let's kind of sit down and just debrief a little bit. So I think if we all agree on one thing, it's like AI is freaking nuts right now. And the pace of innovation is incredible. And what Asensi has that AI needs is we are the richest source of context about human movement and the athlete progression. And so that's context that we can feed into generating that AI.

[00:33:15] So digital clones of coaches that you can engage and interact with. Wow. Or, you know, that's going to be the state of the art this time of the show. Yeah. Martin, what do you think about the future of this extra gaming category and where it's going and the coaching capabilities of virtual digital platforms? Yeah, I think it's already, it's really taking shape now. And I think it's only getting bigger, better and bigger. Like it's unstoppable, I think. I'm very happy with this technology.

[00:33:44] I mean, like a few years ago when you said when you had to connect, you had to hold something in your hand, you had to do stuff. Now you can already do it with nothing, you know, with just you and your body. It's getting more, I think the user experience is getting better and better. I can't even imagine what's going to happen in the future, but I know there's a lot of good things coming and I know that I don't have to travel so much in the future. If I might add something out of, yeah, the thing I've always been excited, I've always looked at gaming for UX design, right?

[00:34:08] I've always kind of looked to the underlying behavioral mechanics of gaming, but also just the motivational UX. You know, if you watch kids playing Roblox or Fortnite or whatnot and the right information is, there's a phenomenal amount of information that you need in a game of what's going on with 100 other players. And so gaming has done a very good job of figuring out the design patterns of like, how do you surface the right information at the right time?

[00:34:32] So I think we'll move away from the very cliched, let's have the timer in the top right, let's have the progress bar here, let's have the leaderboard here, the car dashboard. And we'll move much more towards these very interactive experiences where information is surfacing and sometimes it's audio only, it's not even necessarily visual. Because we're running in this unity, you know, Fittar runs in this unity gaming environment where we can have, you know, metahumans, photorealistic, you know, animated rig characters.

[00:35:00] But I think, you know, a trend that would encourage us to watch for is we're already like we have one customer, Europhoenix, so neurological rehab, so rehabilitation for people recovering from strokes. They are also running in a unity environment.

[00:35:15] They are also using gaming experiences to, you know, give you that immediate visual feedback of your motor movement and try and kind of create those pathways if you like that, you know, that retrain that for prior exception by controlling something on screen. And so, you know, for people that sit here and think gaming is just kind of frivolous and if you're not working out in CrossFit or if you're not, it's not.

[00:35:37] Gaming is a game mechanics are a very interesting way of us actually training human beings to move better, you know, even all the way up to, you know, recovering from stroke. So I'm really excited to see how this permeates into the rest of the industry for acquisition, for engagement, for enjoyment, most importantly, and then for retention. There's only on the screens, right? So it's very hard to pull them away from the screen. So at least do something good with it, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the big thing is you're going to meet, you're going to meet.

[00:36:07] Meet them where they are. Yeah. You know, that that's just the reality of the situation. And I want to get you guys insights to the few minutes we have left, but what about like mixed reality, augmented reality? I mean, that's something that was talked about quite frequently, you know, 2020 to 2023 within our industry. It seems to have kind of quieted it a little bit, but it doesn't mean it's, it's not evolving still.

[00:36:29] So where do you guys, you know, paint us a picture maybe by 2030, like, where do you think that, that technology is going to be playing a huge part in what we do in the, in the fitness and wellness world? Do you mind if I go, Martin? Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Because it's not really, we have on our roadmap with FitR, but I know it's going to be big, but not for us at this moment in time. But I believe that mixed reality AR and it's huge, especially when you look at those Ray-Ban glasses now, you know, like, it's amazing what they're doing, you know?

[00:36:56] And I think it's going to be huge. I leave it up to Steven because he, he's more into it than we are. No, I'm excited. I'm excited by this. And listen, you know, my first two investors into the company, Eric, were from Industrial Light & Magic, the CTO and the General Council of Industrial Light & Magic were my first investors. I was living in Marin at the time. And you know, you can't walk around Marin and go into a coffee shop and not bump into someone with a Star Wars crew hat.

[00:37:21] You know, it's the home of Sky, Skywalker Rise. So those guys worked, they went on to work in VR and like the, the Kinect team that I know went on to work on HoloLens and actually work on Apple Vision Pro and AR and VR for Amazon. So that, that diaspora, they're all still working on AR, VR. I'll share this. Just over a year ago, a sensei was on stage at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit.

[00:37:46] So for, you know, not everyone in the fitness industry necessarily knows who Qualcomm are, but they make the chips that power VR headsets and smartphones and, you know, Ray-Ban Meta. And Qualcomm did a showcase of a sensei integrated with light sport, which is a VR title. And we showed this fitness experience where you literally have, you know, the trainer is in your room and pass through reality. They're literally just standing there, but powered by a sensei, they know you're not squatting deeply enough.

[00:38:14] They're showing you the correction or congratulating you when you make it. So what I wanted to share about that was, you know, we did that keynote. It was in Maui. We kind of knew that like we're going to get a lot of inbound. I was thinking the inbound was going to come from all the games developers, the gym class VRs for basketball, the golf pluses for golf. The inbound all came, I won't say who they are, but we had three or four meetings with the largest telecommunications companies in the world.

[00:38:40] So what I want you to know is it is already inevitable that they know that one day this will not be the thing that is their top line revenue. The screens will disappear, that they will be eyewear. And they're already trying to figure out like, how do we this, this cash cow that we have milked the mobile phone will not exist. And we have teams of hundreds of people trying to figure out how do we monetize our eyewear, not the phone in our pocket. So it's inevitable that it will happen slowly then suddenly.

[00:39:10] And so that's why we made the decision to be on the unity platform is, you know, we're already ready for these headsets and we enjoy working on headsets. And I think mixed reality is the perfect, the perfect experience to put that trainer in your garage or in your living room. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it can't be overstated, right? The angle of the hockey stick of technological development that we're living through right now. It's, you know, when you zoom out, it's, it's, it's bananas.

[00:39:39] Like I, people think, oh, you know, 10 years from now it's, it's, you know, we're going to have, you know, like, no, it's, it's going to be in the next two, three years that we're going to see all this. We're in the industrial revolution right now. Yeah. Yeah. I watched last night, I don't know why I do this before I go to bed, but I watched an interview with Sam Altman from recently the New York times events. And it was very, you know, very engaging, very, there was some conflict within, you know, the interview and, you know, thoughts of what's going on.

[00:40:09] And, you know, even with someone who's leading the way like that, he, he really doesn't know what's going to happen. Right. And we're just pushing forward. Yeah. As a species, because that's just what we do. It's a little bit Oppenheimer, right? Yeah. Like, you know, like we were talking about safety and things like, not that that's, you know, I'm anything I'm worried about with what you guys are doing, but it was, it was just really, it was very eyeopening. And like, okay, well, technology is, people are like, nah, you know, like me, I'm retreating into the woods of Montana.

[00:40:35] Right. But like, it's still, you know, for, for most, for just about everybody on the planet, technology is going to change everything. And we just got to work with it, right? Engage it. Find the things that we like. Find the other opportunities to disengage at times. But I think what you guys are doing, making more interactive, meeting new wellness consumers where they are, right, is really critical. And it's, it's got to look for all of the technology and all of the work that you guys are putting in the back end. The front end, it's got to look simple. Right. And that's the hard part. Right.

[00:41:05] And you're like, yeah, you think you guys are doing a great job. Well, thank you guys for joining us. I know Steven, you know, a lot of people already know where to reach you on LinkedIn and your website, Sensei. What about you, Martijn? Where would you like people to reach out to you or look into you more if they're going to? You can check out the website, www.fittar.eu. That's our website. We're on LinkedIn as well. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm all over the place.

[00:41:34] So TikTok even. So wherever you, you can find me, you know, just write my name the right way. Martijn Diol. You'll find me. Awesome. Well, you guys, thanks for, thanks for coming in and educating us. This was a lot of fun. And yeah, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was an amazing time. I'm sure you had a great day. I did feel how much I was doing.