Show HN: Jumper, a robot to help you exercise every day (opens in new tab)

I am having the same thoughts. As lazy engineers, we try to optimize and automate everything. Heck, even food is optimized with things like Soylent, but for workout and muscle building there just isn't anything yet. There are so many things I want to do in my day, and putting an hour away to go to the gym and do a few reps here and there is time that I would really love to invest into something else.

I'm wondering if it's really that difficult to 'invent' something to make it easier. Recalling my school biology lessons, muscle build because of ripped muscle fibers that grow back together, just stronger. It sounds so simple to build something artificial that does this automatically to your muscle zones without working out.

On the other note, maybe it's good that we don't have that yet. A good physique, big arms and things like visible abs are a great trophy you get for investing hard work and time. Not everyone has it, which makes it so desirable.

I've just recently gotten into http://zwift.com/, it's the only thing I've found that makes riding indoors tollerable, almost fun. The power meter on the bike connects to zwift, the more power you put out, the faster you go. There are a few virtual locations you can ride around, ride with other people. There are also workouts, where you need to hold a certain power for certain time. The workouts are scaled based on the power you can do. I prefer working out with power than heart rate since it responds a lot faster and is less affected by other things going on in your life. Mind you, a bike, a trainer and a power meter is pretty expensive if you don't already have them.

I combine my meditation with my cardio. I try to focus on rhythmic breathing and not letting my thoughts wander (especially not to "intellectual" topics since that is my default mode all day).

Works really well.

Jumper actually started out as SMS. It operated solely on SMS for about 2 months, but the unpredictable message delivery, high cost or messages (esp. images) and lack of access to user profiles made me switch.

Is there another chat platform you'd prefer to use? Slack? Google Hangouts? Telegram?

Looks very nice and a nice idea :) you could expand the idea to other fields (like going over bills, etc.) Makes me think of a backward Tamagotchi where the computer takes care of the human :)

So the "friction" conversation about a product like this is pretty interesting imo.

One one hand, the bot is easy to get started with: Almost everyone already has the software (assuming Jumper works on multiple chat platforms) to get started right away with very little friction or commitment (no "signup" required).

On the other hand, once you are started - the chatbot interface is certainly higher friction than a traditional app would be (say, with two big buttons as you suggest).

But the while the app approach is lower friction once you've started, getting people to download and install an app is quite tough. Have you seen the latest data on how many apps the average American downloads in a month? It's zero!!! Crazy eh? So that barrier is one I wanted to avoid.

In the end though, the reason I chose the chat platform and the reason it is the final implementation for Jumper is that I've been super interested in the power of conversational interfaces and their ability to change human perception. Don't get me wrong - the "chatbot" craze is pretty exhausting to me too and I feel most chatbot products/services could have been built in a more traditional interface and have been far more successful. In fact, I built a failed chatbot for analytics not long ago. But when it comes to motivating people to exercise, I think having a conversation with an "exercise buddy" is more likely to get people to exercise. I mean, if I didn't believe that, I would have just used one of the currently available fitness apps and set up simple reminders. Of course, I may be very wrong here haha. But so far it's working!

Yes, one of my co-workers had a spin desk. He said you couldn't really ride with a heart rate above 100 bpm and still concentrate. He was doing a huge amount of very low intensity riding, it didn't have much benefit, but hugely increased appetite.

I probably should have said "chatbot" instead of robot. :/ And thanks for the congrats! I really appreciate you letting me know your impression on it.

This sort of stuff is really interesting to me. I think any app/service can use ML though, it doesn't have to be a chatbot. I'm actually surprised we aren't already seeing more of this. I feel like most all fitness trackers are more concerned with the very specific details of your current workout (speed, heart rate, etc) but don't look at the wider trends across many days, weeks, months, etc.

If anyone has seen a service that does this, I'd love for you to share it here!

Thank you!! :D

I actually started out on SMS with Twilio! I switched to Facebook Messenger simply because it was starting to get expensive and I really started to miss the niceties of using a proper chat platform: thing like predictable message delivery, getting someone's first name without asking, and easy/free image embedding.

I'm going to try and do Google Hangouts and Slack next - unless someone has other good ideas for platforms to support?

Thanks so much! Honestly, I think I'm more excited about the landing page than I am the chatbot at times haha. I built it using http://tachyons.io and I'm not sure I've ever had more fun writing HTML/CSS. Definitely check out that CSS framework.

Thank you so much! I've been operating Jumper for ~4 months with a small group of people and the conclusion most people have made: It's useful because it's very lightweight and the personal style interaction helps with motivation more than say, a RunKeeper iOS push notification. Whether that conclusion holds true for lots of people, who knows! But it's sure been a fun project so far that's helped some people get into better shape. :D

haha this will hopefully do the trick! If it doesn't, let me know how it could be better! :)