The fitness chain business model, as is widely known, relies on you not working out. A gym sells more memberships than it can comfortably handle, based on the assumption that most of its members won't show up. But what if there were a gym where you paid less per month the more you worked out?
That's kind of the concept behind Fitmob, a website and iOS app that launched Thursday, except that Fitmob shuns gym locations in favor of outdoor classes and indoor spaces rented by the hour. Anyone can sign up to run a class, which gets a star rating and reviews from participants.
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Here's the key point: the first time you work out with Fitmob in a given week, you pay $15. Workout a second time and your cost for both classes is reduced to $10; go to three classes and you're paying $5 each. In other words, three sessions will cost you the same as one — so you have a financial incentive to keep coming back.
"We want to put the economics of fitness back in the hands of the people," Raj Kapoor, Fitmob CEO, told Mashable. Although he won't specify what Fitmob's cut is, he insists that "most of the revenue goes to the trainer."
There are some 250,000 certified fitness trainers in the U.S., according to Kapoor, and most are under-utilized. Kapoor was the first investor in Lyft, the pink moustache-themed service that allows anyone to use their car as a taxi; Fitmob aims to do the same for fitness instruction. You don't even need a certificate to run a class.
Trainers will have access to the whole Fitmob dataset, with the idea being that the most popular classes will rise to the top and be imitated. The 30 classes that the service is launching with offer eye-catching titles such as "Weapons of Ass Reduction" and "Twerkout Conditioning." Fitmob drew its inspiration from Tony Horton, creator of the popular home fitness program P90X, who told Kapoor: "Machines don't get you motivated. People do."
Fitmob's entire 13-person team aims to participate in as many classes as possible; the company's HQ in San Francisco is one of the listed workout locations. Kapoor himself has taken the twerking class, and became a convert. "By the end, I found it quite enjoyable," he says. "I don't think I could ever do it on stage, though."