What’s the first thing that gets brushed aside when life inevitably happens? You miss your workout. As much as we try to plan out our days, weeks, even months well in advance, it never works out how we expect. Add in a personal training schedule that’s tailored to the trainer or a gym and not to you? You’re probably not going to go as often as you’d like — or, ever.
After working in training for several years, Jeff Shapiro, founder of Spindle, saw that this was an inefficient way of working with people who need the accountability of one-on-one training. “We wanted to come up with a more efficient way of delivering a similar value that’s less restrictive schedule-wise and more affordable.”
Spindle was founded in early 2014 with these things in mind — plus, a technology component of putting the training program in people’s hands via their smartphones — and we opened our doors in November 2014.
Since then, Spindle has been growing and figuring out what kind of company we are and what we want to be for our members and trainers. The community we’ve built over the last three years has been a huge part of that.
“We’ve really figured out who we are, what we’re all about, and what we want to put out into the world in relation to our personality and company. Even down to the product and how we deliver that,” Jeff says. “We felt like now was a good time to tie everything together. We wanted to deliver information in a way that’s simple enough for people to understand it.”
Fitting the Pieces Together
Spindle might seem like a complicated or even confusing concept to an outsider, but we’ve broken down our message and purpose into four simple pieces that fit together to create a full fitness and training offering. These pieces were all taken from a member survey of what they value most about Spindle:
Personalization: Each Spindle program is customized to every individual and can be accessed on the Spindle app. As a member, you’re working on a plan that’s tailored to you: your strengths, struggles, what you want to work on, any injuries you might have — even down to coaching and communication styles that work best to motivate you.
Coaching: Spindle provides expert coaching. No matter when you do your training, there will always be an expert nearby to teach you how to setup, move through the exercise, and offer information behind why your trainer chose what they chose for you. They also provide guidance, support, and encouragement — or leave you alone if you’re having a bad day and just need to do some battle rope slams.
Community: The Spindle community was something that developed completely unintentionally. But the environment that this style of training creates helps people to stay motivated, keep coming back, and progressing. While there is a great deal of autonomy because everyone is doing their own program at their own pace, there also is a community of other people doing it alongside you — on the mat beside you, even. There’s a real sense of belonging at Spindle but, at the same time, everyone’s training their own way.
Flexibility: You can come train whenever you want and wherever you want. Rather than adhering to a trainer’s strict schedule, you can fit Spindle into your life when it’s most convenient.
After figuring out these four pieces, the Spindle Team is excited to see what the next year will bring. We have exciting goals we’re working towards but most of the fun is derived in the short-term goals along the way: The day-to-day interaction with staff and members and all the people we’ve been able to meet by developing this community.