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Stefan Van Biljon | Kinni
93 Plays2 years ago
In this episode I speak with Noble Pro and Kinni Founder Stefan Van Biljon and we chat about Kinni.
Kinni is a flexible workout planner for treadmill and outdoor running.
Reasons to use Kinni:
1) Library of Athlete focused workouts.
2) Create your own totally customisable workouts.
3) Train indoor with your favourite apps. For example connect to Zwift & control the treadmill with the Kinni app.
4) Train outdoors with custom voice prompts.
5) Share and download your fit files.
Check out Kinni on:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to UK Run Chat Podcast and Guest Stefan Van Bijon
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the UK Run Chat Podcast. I'm Joe Williams and in today's interview I speak with Stefan Van Bijon from NoblePro and Kinney.
Overview of Kinney - A Flexible Workout Planner
00:00:11
Speaker
Kinney is a flexible workout planner for treadmill and outdoor running.
00:00:15
Speaker
It connects to heartbreak monitors, foot pods, treadmills, and some very cool features to be released in the near future, all of which Stefan tells us about in the upcoming interview. If you want to get in touch about our podcast, then you can do via email to info at ukronchat.co.uk. Enjoy the interview with Stefan.
Meet Stefan Van Bijon - Founder of NoblePro
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome, Stefan. Thanks for joining us today. How are you? Yeah, thank you very much for having me, Joe. Yeah, we're doing really well this time and yourself.
00:00:43
Speaker
Good, yeah. Yeah, I'm very well today. Thank you very well. I had a rest day yesterday, so I'm planning on getting out on the mountain bike today, up to the local hills, which will be nice. Very good. Scratch that itch, you know? That's it. That's it. So I've done a little bit of an introduction as to who you are, but would you like to start off by giving us a bit of an introduction to yourself, please? Yeah, not a problem at all. Yeah. So my name is Stefan Fambulion. I'm one of the founders of
00:01:14
Speaker
Noble Pro as well as Kimi, our new software app. And yeah, we were really born from the community, giving us feedback and growth and personal experience really within the running community. So the story goes that we originally had a hiring company, hiring
From Fitness Equipment Hire to NoblePro Innovation
00:01:43
Speaker
number of fitness equipment. And a gentleman wanted to some assistance running the Berlin marathon for 220. And we got involved with him to look at what, you know, treadmills and what kind of features would make sense for him. And we got more and more involved in this, this gentleman. Yeah, which, which was a great experience for us.
00:02:12
Speaker
and which eventually leaded to us creating our own treadmills, creating software based on what we've learned throughout the years of training and making it available to the community really. Just before I dig in, because I've got questions about that straight away that I'd like to unpick. Not a problem. Tell me a bit about yourself in terms of your personal background in sport and how
00:02:42
Speaker
you know, how you got into making treadmills. Yeah, not a problem. Yeah.
Stefan's Journey: Cycling, Oil, Gas, and Fitness
00:02:47
Speaker
So it all started with me more on the cycling front, to be fair. Yeah. I used to cycle for my provincial, which is a county here, because I grew up in South Africa. Okay. Cycle for the county, in effect. Really loved it. Really loved it. And then I got into running. I really enjoyed that.
00:03:13
Speaker
Uh, and then, uh, you know, life you go to work, uh, and kind of get on with, with life. I used to work in the oil and gas side of the world. And, uh, we just decided, no, we want to get to back to things that we enjoy me and my wife. And therefore we started, um, initially hiring out fitness
Identifying Gaps in the Treadmill Market
00:03:36
Speaker
equipment. That was our initial development.
00:03:40
Speaker
And then we realized that there was a big, big need for good, um, trademarks within the market. Um, and it was just lacking, you know, we saw within the running, sorry, the cycling community, the turbo trainers and the development. And it was incredible. The amount of progress that was being made on, on the cycling front. Yes. Um, but not on the running front. And, uh,
00:04:09
Speaker
I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, by study, and decided, no, we can make this better. And I just decided to go head first. And based on, like I was saying, the people we were getting involved in and the runners
00:04:31
Speaker
both beginners to advance, getting feedback, make things better, working on communication or integration. And we kind of just built it rather on, rather than having a big board like a full talk and tell you what to do, rather than that we have a small team, very much focused on
00:04:53
Speaker
on the running community itself and their feedback and what we need to focus on. And essentially build something for the people rather than for that. Just for the sake of it.
00:05:09
Speaker
We got into it. That's interesting. Let me just go back to you cycle for the county. Yes. What did that look like? You competed against other counties in South Africa, did you, in sportives? Yes. Very similar to the UK. We used to have county tryouts. You get your
00:05:36
Speaker
your provincial in our case, colors, form teams. And then you go and do a number of tours. So you would imagine a mini Tour de France, essentially. So you would go and do that. And then you get different rankings, et cetera. And then you would go and cycle international chosen for.
00:05:59
Speaker
a certain professional team or your international team, so African team. Yeah. Okay. Go and hit the European circuit, as they used to say. Yeah. That was a good show. You've been in good shape then doing that at that kind of level. Yeah. And I really enjoyed it, you know, really, really enjoyed it. So there's definitely a good
00:06:26
Speaker
competitive spirit and that range throughout the whole team to be fair. So they've either been
00:06:34
Speaker
members of our entire crew have either been in some form of county level or provincial and South African based sport. So it's just ingrained within the whole team really, which is awesome. Yeah, that makes sense. So what were you using when you were cycling yourself? Static bikes and
00:06:57
Speaker
you know, we were your young engineering was your young engineer in mind cogs already turning on how you could improve things. Yeah, 100%.
Why is Cycling Tech Ahead of Running?
00:07:07
Speaker
So yeah, 100%. So so back in the day, we were using rollers a lot. Yeah. And so the training has just got really got onto the scene at that stage. Yeah. And in my youth, as I would say,
00:07:22
Speaker
Um, and it was a really, as you were saying, cogs, cogs taking your long going, Oh, this is very interesting. You know, how can you integrate this? Um, how can we get programming involved and, and tap into the, the human as a, uh, as a piece of hardware, which, which is very fascinating, you know, to try and try and optimize and.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's just kind of how the engineering mind works generally. So yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. And it's interesting that you say that, because you're quite right, if you think, you know, you think of cycling and the indoor bikes, they were more advanced than the treadmills at the beginning, weren't they? And we actually see that if you look at our UK cycle chat threads,
00:08:09
Speaker
Some of the conversations can be a lot deeper and a lot more technical. Do you think that's just because of the sport or why do you think that is? I think there's numerous factors associated with that. So my general rule of thumb is that running is 10 years beyond cycling. Be it on a hardware development, be it on a training development site.
00:08:40
Speaker
And I'm not talking about the elite group here in general. I'm more talking about what trickles down. So the reason why cycling is more popular than running in general, and more money's been invested and effort's been invested in general again, is that cycling has a much broader age range.
00:09:06
Speaker
So you can have somebody that's 14 and you can have somebody that is 90 and be able to cycle quite happily along. And injury is not necessarily a big factor in that sense. Running has a narrower band. Injury is more likely in that sense. So you have to look after yourself.
00:09:32
Speaker
So inherently your group size is a bit different in that regard. The advantage for running is obviously accessibility, right? You just suffer a pair of trainers and off you go. So that's lovely in that sense. You don't have to be an elite athlete to go and enjoy your running. But it also means that people don't necessarily want to climb the ranks, if you know what I mean, within your club.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. We're in, in cycling tends to be a, a large investment, you know, spend a few thousand pounds on your bike. Yes. And then you kind of feel
Developing the Kinney App: Challenges and Integration
00:10:12
Speaker
bad that you're not using it. So you tend to go, you tend to go out. Yeah. That, that inherently has a trickle down effect from the top down able to go. There's more people doing it. There's more coaching involved, more science involved.
00:10:29
Speaker
more money involved, right? People don't really want to talk about that. But it doesn't have an effect on the trickle down effect. Yes. And, you know, the big boys of the cycling will definitely get a lot more publicity than the big, big boys and girls of the running community, which is, which is unfortunate, because when it comes to talent and
00:10:53
Speaker
and and effort etc you know they are they're all absolutely amazing athletes yeah definitely definitely yeah i find it quite interesting yeah it is yeah i hadn't considered that before um so you started that example you gave then you started very specifically so somebody approached you to help
00:11:16
Speaker
to help them with their Berlin marathon target time. How did that come about then? Was that a friend and somebody just knew that you were in the equipment space? It was interesting. There was a gentleman at the blue really contacted us and he said, never use the treadmill, but I want to be able to break a 220. Berlin seems like a good
00:11:45
Speaker
aim for us for myself or for him. And he would like to use a treadmill because he's read that it's good for speed work. And, you know, he's a new father. So and he's got three kids now. And it helps helps just with time. You know, he can do babysitting as well as do a good session at the same time.
00:12:15
Speaker
So it was purely him reaching out to us who was visible in the community and asking questions and me going over to his house. You know, it kind of reminds me of like a Bill Gates in the garage scenario. And yes, I used to go to his pain cave and ask him questions. How did this work? What do you like about that?
00:12:41
Speaker
Slowly but surely we went from one model to another to understanding the hardware is now in a good space, but we're very much lacking in the industry with software. How do we change that? And so constantly on this trajectory of figuring out what's needed really, people saying, cool, my trademark and I lost 10 years, but
00:13:08
Speaker
My goodness, nothing can control it, you know, how frustrating is that? But my turbo trainer can do it. Why can't I do it on my treadmill? Sounds like we've got a challenge in our hands, folks. Yeah. That's that. That's how we kind of go from.
00:13:23
Speaker
from one problem-solving scenario to another, you know? Well, that was my exact next question. We go from treadmills to producing an app like Kinney. And I was kind of pondering over that before we started to record. And I was thinking, you know, was it the pandemic? Did you?
00:13:43
Speaker
You know, when, when did you start to do this? And, um, yeah, go on. Let me, let me move from making treadmills to producing an app like that. Yeah. I mean, it's been a journey. Don't get me wrong. Um, we started off very basic just by again, feedback, people saying we need something to fill this gap and slowly but surely just chipping away things. So we started off not.
00:14:12
Speaker
not necessarily fully understanding the complexity, particularly of Bluetooth within the treadmills scene. I think that was our first big hurdle and it still is a hurdle. To give you an idea, when communicating with a turbo trainer, it's got one language, right? So imagine everybody speaks English in the turbo trainer world. Once you start talking treadmill language,
00:14:42
Speaker
You know, the initial assumptions always, oh, everybody also speaks English. That was definitely not the case. So we found, you know, Arabic, and we found French and German. And eventually it's like, oh, my goodness, there's a whole world of, of, uh, terminal languages. Yeah. And, uh, and that still is one of the biggest challenges, you know, for us.
00:15:06
Speaker
And so our first challenge was to kind of break through on how to control and offer the user that initial experience of managing their treadmill and doing workouts on their treadmill. And the amazing thing for us on our journey is we've got team members that have joined us that have amazing skill sets.
00:15:36
Speaker
to dedicate developers on this, much smaller than some of the big corporation sites, the garments of the world, et cetera. These guys are amazingly sharp and it's like being part of a family. And we just love going back to the community and go, cool guys, we've smashed that request at the park. What do we feel needs to come next? And they'll go, cool.
00:16:06
Speaker
How about this? How about that? And it would be people that would reach out to us, be it at the blue, be it from California, be it from Australia. And they go, we really like what you guys are doing. And what do you think about this? And we go, wow, that's really cool. And we would have a discussion within the community.
00:16:29
Speaker
Add it to the list, you know, and just keep making things better and more focused on what people really need, you know. So it's not just making it for making it safe, but rather people have a purpose for it, which is important. But, you know. Yeah. If I just think about, just to comment on what you said there, if I think about my running and my fitness on my phone alone, I've got
00:16:58
Speaker
Strava, Garmin Connect, MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, Kiney, the Wattbike app. And that's just apps. And then what you're talking about, and I'll let you explain how and what Kiney connects to, but you're talking about pieces of equipment, as well as the apps, foot pods, heart rate monitors, treadmills. As an end user,
00:17:27
Speaker
I just expect it to work. And you don't know anything that goes into the back end of that. So go on, explain what that process looks like then. How do you find out what language that treadmill's talking or that heart rate monitor's talking? And then what's that process look like? Yeah, so there's two sides to that really. The first thing is just to understand if
00:17:58
Speaker
There's no point in reinventing the wheel. So if they are, as you were saying there, there's tons of apps, tons of running and cycling and just general exercise apps and going, what's the point of making something that already exists? You know, people are not going to be interested. They'll use whatever they're really comfortable with. So finding the niche, finding a user base that people go, wow, you know, we need this.
00:18:27
Speaker
And we want to develop it for that reason. So that's the first thing. And then one of the bits that we identified was device communication. So the big apps of the world, let's talk about, say, Strava, Strive even now, and Garmin, they tend to be
00:18:55
Speaker
very minimal in what they connect to. So the general would be, say, a heart rate monitor. Maybe their own hardware. So let's go with Garmin, in that sense. Incredible functionality, but yet it's only within the environment, really. And we think it's very limiting for users, right? So therefore, if you want to use
00:19:24
Speaker
all your devices at the same time and use them well and be able to shave back, you're sitting with an integration problem and a communication problem. So you do have some really friendly folks that would share the language that all these devices talk. And so FTMS is the big one now in the treadmill world. And it's basically a language, right? A Bluetooth language.
00:19:53
Speaker
And it's well-defined. So it's almost like having the Oxford dictionary for English. And you can go, cool. Capital means this. And it's nice to have that defined. But vast majority of devices don't use standardized communication. So it's like hunting for that dictionary within that world. In some instances, and in a lot of instances, you
00:20:22
Speaker
you physically have to go and get the device and figure out how it works, which is challenging within the treadmill environment or running environment. So it takes a lot of engineering behind it to make something that looks relatively simple for most users, which is a good thing, right? If it's simple and it works,
00:20:51
Speaker
Doesn't matter how complex this is at the back, that means you've won. And it should be self-explanatory. And I think including ourselves, if that is not the case, having it simple and easy to use, then you need to change it, right? As the end user, it needs to be a frictionless experience. And that's part of the challenge.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah. So I've dug in quite deep, deep there quite
From Treadmill App to Versatile Running Companion
00:21:22
Speaker
early. Just strip it back for us. Tell us exactly, tell us what Keeney is and who's it for. Yeah, no, not a problem at all. Right. So Keeney was a, a, a child of noble pro. So it started off as a, think of it as a companion app almost for the noble pro trademarks. And it was based around,
00:21:48
Speaker
Um, being able to create workouts for your treadmill, being able to control your treadmill. Um, and that was really the basis for it. And then we realized there was more and more people at the blue messaging that's going, Hey, do you mind making this thing work with my, you know, X treadmill? You're going, well, yeah, why don't we try? Um, and slowly but surely we started realizing.
00:22:17
Speaker
There's a lot of people that are looking for this functionality. Why not make it available to more people, which is what we've done now. So we, uh, we called the development, um, Kenny, Kenny, um, that's the app. And, um, the whole purpose for us for Kenny is to have people forum, both, um, from a beginner's level.
00:22:46
Speaker
to a level where you're looking for more flexibility in your workout builds and library to have that functionality in one place rather than having it split throughout. So be it, I want to connect it to a treadmill and a heart rate monitor, foot pod, or I want to use it as a mix. So run it outside with GPS and my foot pod or just GPS.
00:23:15
Speaker
and have it give me some voice prompts along the way that you put in yourself or self-defined. It provides you that broader use case, which is currently missing within the industry. So if you want to be in the gym and you want to use a workout, you can use it. If you want to be in your cave, your pain cave, you can use it. If you want to run outside with your
00:23:44
Speaker
your pods on and listen to music and it gives you the guidance that you've got as part of your workout. It does that. And that helps both people who are just starting off to people who want to reach a certain goal. It has a nice broad reach for most runners. Yes. So that's a really important point because I think
00:24:12
Speaker
naturally people may associate because of because of how this is born and the problem that you foresaw with side static bikes for example and the connectivity between those people may assume that this is just just for with noble pro treadmills but what you're actually saying is there that
00:24:29
Speaker
that you're looking for to work with any or all treadmills, and you don't have to even be on a treadmill. You can be outside doing your normal runs as you would be. So would you always need a foot pod to connect to outside then, Stephanie? Does it work if you're not on a treadmill? That's a very good question, right? So at this stage, we have it connecting to roughly 140
00:24:55
Speaker
different terminal brands and models. We are connected to all BLE, our trade monitors, and all BLE, so it's Bluetooth, low energy, and foot pods, which is great. So you've got a whole selection of devices you can choose from, you can connect to. Is that, forgive me, I don't know what, so BLE, is that what a lot of the devices are on then?
00:25:21
Speaker
That is correct. So the two main ones in the world of communication is Bluetooth. Well, they call it Bluetooth and Low Energy, B-R-E. And the other form of communication would be Ant Plus. So that's the garments of the world. Yes. Which is technically not a Bluetooth, but it's a form of communication. So you'll generally have those two ways of communicating with a fitness device. Okay.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah. And they each have their own quirks and way of communicating their own language. Okay. Yeah. So those are the two general ones. But to answer your question about running untethered, right? Yes. At this stage, we have obviously device connections. So you can run outside with a device that can track your performance, essentially. Or you can run with no devices outside.
00:26:22
Speaker
Um, and it can still give you your workout prompts, et cetera. And we are in the late phases of releasing GPS tracking as well. Yeah. So that means, uh, what you would have seen from say the Strava's of the world, we have a map and it provides you all that information. And, you know, which route you ran your.
00:26:46
Speaker
uh, elevation gain, et cetera. So it's bringing, bringing that functionality in into the app as well. So you don't just have a voice prompted workout with what's your whole workout structure in it, but also to see it cool. How did that look on a, on a GPS map? Yeah. The cool bit is that means you can go and run a, say your park run as an example, you're going to run your park run.
00:27:16
Speaker
using GPS, you record it. And then from that point, you can run the same path run on your trademark. So you convert your workout, or your session rather, to a workout. And you say, well, you know, I did that path run for arguments, like 30 minutes. I want to try and do it in 28 minutes. And it will do the same elevation gain, same speed, you know, adjusted for you, yeah. Wow, that is cool.
00:27:45
Speaker
That is very cool. So it's the same concept with say, you know, Hot Topic, Berlin Marathon as an example, or any of the big races. The concept is that you put it in, off we go, and then you can try. You can't lie with a treadmill, right? Yeah. If you're doing 20k, you're doing 20k.
00:28:11
Speaker
So it helps you do that kind of speed work and train your body to be able to do the pace that you're aiming for. So you can take from outdoors back to indoors, which is amazing. Yeah, that is very cool. Is that what's kind of driving the direction of Kenny then? You mentioned finding the niche before. Is that what's driving that direction? Something unique? Yeah.
00:28:38
Speaker
From our side, it's been largely what the community requests, rather than us dictating to a large degree. So as an example, that's a good point. So we've got another, there would be community discussions on, say, the Facebook pages. We're very active on our Discord.
00:29:09
Speaker
So Discord is like a Facebook, essentially, good chat. Very prominent for cyclists as well as runners in today, which is great. And as an example that I would use is we had Russell Bentley reach out in the beginning of phases of development about a year and a half ago. And I said, you know, I think it would be really cool if you guys could make a work out for them.
00:29:38
Speaker
And we went, OK, that sounds quite interesting. What would make a difference to current workout builders? And it was a pure discussion with runners, right? Not a board, not some bunch of developers. There was people that were really interested in solving the problem that we as runners have. And sitting down with them going, cool, it's not just a distance and a speed problem.
00:30:08
Speaker
I want to do an elevation gain as an example. So what I want to do, he likes his heels, right? I want to be able to climb 500 meter elevation at, I don't know, 15k an hour. And it provides you that flexibility and that goal. And that really is what drives us and our
00:30:36
Speaker
and development structure and goals is people highlighting what is important for them to be able to achieve their goals and going, you know, this little feature would be really, really good. It would help me identify a certain aspect of my training that I would need to improve. So average cadence is an example or stride length is a good
00:31:04
Speaker
within a good range that I need to aim for. And then just kind of chip away at it, you know, yeah, make it better, better for people to use more usable. And that's really been our goal with with overarching philosophy of providing a an interface that is usable for both beginner and in advance to to guide themselves
00:31:34
Speaker
to run better in achieving the goals, you know? Yeah. It's been interesting. Yeah. Different approach, should I say. Yeah. So if somebody was about to take on catch to 5K and they already knew what their end goal was, their end 5K, they literally, I don't know, say I was their friend and I'd already run that 5K, would there be a way that I could then
00:32:03
Speaker
share that route with them and then they could aim to have that as part of a treadmill workout at the end of the couch to 5k. Is that possible to kind of upload your own workout? That's a very good question. So that was one of the requests that we've had and it's definitely part of our end goal. At this stage, we are able to share them and in the near future, you'll be able to upload them. So imagine having them as
00:32:33
Speaker
and throwing them into a community of workouts that you can therefore then search. So it would be a community based part of workouts where you can either give it to your friend or other people can run it, which opens the doors for some interesting finding of roots, interesting workouts to try
00:33:02
Speaker
And it's interesting challenges to do, you know? Yeah, you could have a little bit of a little bit of competition between your friends, on the same route. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So we are definitely striving for that. And that is, once again, you know, hard, hard for the people who, who actually use Kenny, and to say, you know, we really like this, we go, wow, that's very cool. Let's put that on the list.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, that must be nice as well because you mentioned earlier on, there's obviously some very big companies and you said that you've got quite a close knit team. So having a close knit team like that, when you have new suggestions and things like that, you must be able to adapt quicker, I suppose. And if you're working closely together like that, it gives you the opportunity to be creative like that. Is that a fair comment? Oh, 100%. So having a small
00:34:02
Speaker
set up in a focused team helps you to firstly be open about your goals and what you should try and achieve and what the community is asking for. And it opens a level playing field to a degree. So it's not a case of say myself thinking that something needs to go in there and
00:34:32
Speaker
and thou shalt be done. It is the philosophy for us is you present it to the team. So say a logistics manager has a great idea. She's an incredible runner herself would come to us and say, you know, guys, I had this amazing idea. You're like, cool, tell us about it. Let's have a look at it. And then that enriches the whole processing
00:35:01
Speaker
work for us, you know, yeah. So that means that within within a few weeks or sorry, you've got something in there that you know, your team thought of, and you don't have to go through a number of board meetings. And yeah, yeah, so it helps, it definitely helps to, to keep you focused. And it also helps you to
00:35:28
Speaker
to fire through a number of incredible ideas that you wouldn't normally get. Tell us more about the workouts within the Outland Workout Library and give us some examples.
Enhancing User Experience with Customizable Workouts
00:35:41
Speaker
Oh yeah, not a problem at all. So the cool thing that we've recently launched was a whole set of predefined workouts, right? So it's a library of workouts. So if you're looking for a session that's focused on heel training,
00:35:58
Speaker
And it's a certain time. So you've got 20 minutes that you want to do a bit of field training and it fits within your training plan. You can quickly do a filter, find it, customize it if you wish. So you can open it and change your max speeds and inclines and add a few voice prompts if you wish. So.
00:36:22
Speaker
can go, hey, Bill, you know, pick up your socks, let's go at a certain point and you can add that, which is great because, you know, people want to focus on certain things. So you can customize it and off we go. So it helps you fast track your workout process. As well as, you know, I found myself in the same instance where you kind of get into the same routine
00:36:51
Speaker
I would say even in the same right and having a selection of workouts you can just dive into and kind of make them your own and save them to your own profile definitely helps in that front. That's quite cool isn't it? So you could get
00:37:08
Speaker
I don't know, if you if you're going out on a long training run, and you know, two or three miles before the end, you might be phasing a bit, you could get one of your children to say, Come on, Mom, or Come on, Dad. Yeah, it's cool, right? Or, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be. It could be something like that. So, you know, it does, it does help in that regard. And the great thing that we implementing at the moment is a number of
00:37:37
Speaker
Uh, workout plans that go with that. So we've got a number of workout plans that you can print out as an example. You know, a lot of people like having them on their wall, not just physically. Um, so that those workouts and those workout plans would be focused safe for a 16 week, uh, 5k plan or, uh, say an intermediary runner. Yeah. And then those workouts, um, name and description, et cetera, already within the app. So.
00:38:07
Speaker
All you have to do is just go cool. My program says the following, find that workout and fire away. So it helps you reach a goal much easier in that sense.
00:38:21
Speaker
How does, you actually asked a question like this, when you hosted the hour week before last, with regards to the training plans and the workouts, then with the app, what happens if somebody wants to edit those? Because, you know, people might miss a workout or during a workout, they might not feel, they might be doing better or not doing as well as they thought they were going to do during the workout. How does the app facilitate that?
00:38:51
Speaker
That's a, that's a very good question. So, and it's a question that we, we get asked a lot because a lot of platforms don't consider, um, changes with, within people's schedules, right? The real world. So people tend to run around their life rather than their life revolving around their running. Yes. So you have to be realistic about it. So.
00:39:20
Speaker
And at the moment, it is a guide on a more traditional guide on that kind of structure. So it's not that easy to necessarily be adaptive with it. However, we're very close in the development phase where it is more based on a
00:39:43
Speaker
a looser structure that you can change, reevaluate your goals. And I didn't, I couldn't meet this particular workout. What does that mean for the remaining of my plan? So more, more in the sense of an AI in intelligence training plan, rather than this is the 10th place and off we go. Yes. So that helps in many regards because
00:40:13
Speaker
What we see with the industry as a whole is I don't want to say we are, we are stuck in a rats or I would, I would even dare to say people are not pushing innovation on that front. Um, where they would go, this is the training plan based on your initial input. Boom. And then that's it. And at the moment, what we finding is coaches are really filling that gap. Right. And not a lot of people are getting coaches. So.
00:40:42
Speaker
You have a lot of people that fall between the cracks of, you know, naturally motivated to go running today. Um, because I'm just doing the same old thing. The whole point of this is if you miss something, then kind of restructures it for you and reevaluate midway. And, uh, it helps you, helps you keep on track, even though you might have fallen off the bandwagon a few times.
00:41:07
Speaker
Um, and once again, this is all driven by community feedback, you know, say, Hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? And, and running a few polls and going from there. So we're definitely working on making it a lot more, um, malleable, more flexible, uh, and that regard. So keep keen for, for the community to, to guide us through what makes sense for them, you know?
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, very good. So any other developments in the future and what are the end goals for Kinney?
Future of Kinney: AI Training and Coach Integration
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah, so future developments for us for this year, quite excitingly, we spoke about the more integration of the GPS side. Yes. So that would be a big feature for us. It would be more interactive than vast majority of the features of other apps, which is great.
00:42:04
Speaker
AI training plan is where we at. So it provides you a more algorithm-based, more intellectual structure towards that. And at the more latter part of the year, beginning of next year, we're looking at more coach integration, so understanding what that means for us. And once you get to a phase where you feel, I would like to get
00:42:33
Speaker
I would like to get that additional input, that additional valuation of it and play is to have that interface. Now that the big thing for us is a lot of people using say training peaks as an incredible platform. But you do need preferably need, I need somebody's eyes over it, you know, of wisdom, which is great that we are reintegrating training peaks.
00:43:02
Speaker
Being able to have all of it in one place makes life simpler and easier. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It's amazing. So tell us where and how people can try the app and all that good stuff. Yeah, so we are available for free download on
00:43:30
Speaker
both Android, so that would be Play Store, as well as the App Store for Apple. And yeah, you just search Keeney, K-I-N-N-I. And you'll find it straight away, you can install it. And then yeah, free to use. And there is also a subscription version, so more like a premium that adds a number of extra features to it.
00:43:55
Speaker
If you do wish, but it's at the box. It's got some amazing features already for vast majority of the users, you know. Yeah, brilliant. And then I noticed there was an offer of $1.99 for the first three months as well on that premium, which is very good. And additionally, we have a competition running as well at the moment where you can win a Garmin and a pair of ASICs running shoes. And to enter that, you need to download the Keeney app.
00:44:23
Speaker
Share a workout with hashtag KeeneyWorkout, which is a monster prize. Really, really good. So do get involved in that. That's running until the first week in November.
00:44:38
Speaker
Stefan, thanks ever so much for coming on. It's been great to chat. It's really interesting to hear about your thinking towards this. I was going to make a comment that engineers should be running the country at the moment, but we won't go into politics. I appreciate the time and I appreciate what you and your channel and channels, should I rather say, are doing for the community. Inspirational,
00:45:08
Speaker
and just motivational. So well done and keep up the good work, you know. Thank you. Cheers, Stefan. Thanks very much. Thanks, Jay.