“in old age, physical activity may delay the slide of cognitive decline into dementia.”

Harvard Health Publishing. Why we should exercise – and why we don’t. 2008

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My name is Dr. Carl Juneau. I’m an exercise scientist with a PhD in health statistics. I’ve been a coach all my life and a trainer for the Canadian Forces. I’ve helped about 10,000 people get in shape I-on-I, in group classes, and online.

That’s how I found out that training is hard. It requires time, knowledge, and motivation. And just when you think you’re doing everything right, you can still get injured, get stuck, or lose motivation, and quit. And when you quit, you lose all your gains, and you have to start all over again… And if that’s ever happened to you, you know how tough that is. Take it from me: I know.

In 2009, suddenly, I had trouble eating. I had no energy, couldn’t train, and felt my IQ had dropped 15 points. I used to get on the scale at least once a week to track my progress. But I stopped doing that: it was becoming too painful to see I was losing all the gains I’d worked so hard to make. Have a look:

On this chart, On the left, you can see that in 2005, when I got on the scale for the first time, I weighed 143 lbs. In 2009, 4 years later, I had gained 18 lbs of muscle. I was proud Of that!

But by 2010, I was down to 140 lbs—see that big dip on the right?

What happened is I had become intolerant to gluten. But doctors took one year to find out. So that year, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t train, and I ended up lighter than when I first started out.

By 2011, I had learned to manage gluten. I moved to London (England) for my PhD. And I started training with Dave Beattie.

Dave was a 5-time world champion in powerlifting, and a world-record holder in the squat. And while training under him…

Now granted, when you gain back muscle you’ve lost, it’s quicker. But still, in 3 months, I gained as much muscle as I had in 4 years.

What I should have done from the start (and what you should do) is to focus on a single fundamental training principle. Every good trainers knows this. My coach Dave in London knew it. In fact, it’s exactly what the American College Of Sports Medicine recommends (ACSM, 2009).

And that principle is progressive overload. Progressive overload just means that to get in better shape, you need to “overload” your workout…

But the way you “overload” has to be very specific: you must increase at least one Of the major training variables Of your workout progressively… so that you keep on challenging your body to transform.

Just by increasing the load, or repeating each exercise more times, you make your body think :

And your body will improve and adapt by building muscle and burning fat. Over time, men usually end up quite muscular, and women, more sculpted; and both get leaner.

You improve your self. I believe in self-improvement, and I really believe getting in shape is one Of the best ways you can improve. It’s helped me tremendously.

But to make it work for you, your workout needs to start at your level, and improve with you. And the best way to ensure that, is to let a personal trainer guide you, motivate you, and update your plan in real time, as you do it. But trainers are expensive…

I know: I’ve been a trainer for 18 years. Here are just some Of the men and women I’ve helped :

Now their results are not typical, and if you really want to get in shape, you’ll need time, knowledge, and motivation. That’s why training is hard. And why so many people fail, especially when they try to do it alone, without a trainer.

So, in 2016, I finished my PhD, I gathered a small team, and we started building this new technology. Our vision was to give you the ability to improve almost as fast as if you had trainer, but for much cheaper.

With this technology, you apply all the latest science and the proven tricks of an experienced trainer, automatically. Under the hood, your training is built around progressive overload. Your program :

In short, it’s more advanced, so you get in shape faster with us.

It’s also more fun, easy, and fast. As one early access customer put it: ‘It’s like a surprise every workout”.

Exercise by exercise, workout by workout, Dr. Muscle can take you from the beginner stage to the advanced level. It automates almost everything, through the entire process. It’s like a personal trainer in your phone, but 10 times cheaper, always up to date, evidence-based, and 59% faster.

References

ACSM. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 Mar;41(3):687-708.

Greg H, Triplett NT. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Fourth edition. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2016.

Prestes J et al. Strength And Muscular Adaptations Following 6 Weeks Of Rest-Pause Versus Traditional Multiple-Sets Resistance Training In Trained Subjects. J Strength Cond Res. 2017 Apr 4.

Risks and challenges

We’ve been building this app for 2 years. To be honest, it wasn’t easy. We started out with just 3 people, an idea, and little money. I wasn’t sure the idea would stick. The main risk was spending all the money we could raise to build our prototype, just to see it fail.

But today, we’ve already fine tuned our prototype with data from 655 early access customers, and we’ve had a successful launch (for version 2.0) on Indiegogo. All backers got their rewards, we make enough money to keep the ball rolling, and we’re here to stay. How much funding we get will only influence how fast and how big version 3.0 will be. So, you don’t risk backing this project and getting nothing in return.

Building the right features is another challenge. My job is to make sure we build the features you want. My boss is you. To get your feedback, we’ve set up a special website. There, customers (like yourself) get to suggest and vote for new features. We implement features with the most votes first. So, we really value customer feedback. And when you become a customer, we will reach out and want to hear from you.