GAIN Fitness pumps up with $650K in new funding

Health enthusiast iPhone app will help you shed those holiday pounds

Something in common between all fitness enthusiasts, whether you're adopting healthy living as a lifestyle or just trying to shed a few extra holiday pounds -- we all need a little help when it comes to working out. In fact, this is something fitness mobile app maker GAIN Fitness is counting on.

The San Francisco-based GAIN Fitness announced Thursday a $650,000 round of seed funding, in support of their new interactive personal trainer mobile and Web app. Investors include InterWest Partners, Keith Rabois, Ben Ling, Michael Tanne, Brent Hurley, Seraph Group, among others. The new app is free for iOS, and the Web.

"More than 600,000 users have created more than 1M workouts," said a representative from GAIN Fitness to VatorNews. "[Our]...app personalizes and scales exercise science to fit individuals’ unique lifestyles. [We've] created algorithms that apply exercise science to create highly personalized, dynamic workout programs."

The GAIN app in its current, free iteration is basically a workout recommendation solution. The app currently works by having the user enter how much time he or she is able to dedicate to work out, and then figuring what exercises that user should do when. If users miss a work-out, the app will factor that in and encourage them to make up for missed time, focusing on exercises that were missed.

While that sounds like a simple enough task, something one could do with, say, a pencil and paper, I would argue that any simplification of a task as fraught with insecurities and potential for backsliding as "working out" is a good thing.

The app seems to take the guess-work out of exercise, for people who are already dedicated enough to hit the gym but who might find themselves suffering from the old "paradox of choice" problem. In one demo video for the app, a GAIN Fitness employee quoted a stat that 30% of gym-rats decided how to work out just by doing what everyone else is doing.

While that seems like a sort of sketchy figure, there's no doubt that gyms these days have a lot of fancy equipment, such that the process of finding the right routine could sap the will power of would-be exercisers.

While the GAIN Fitness app is currently free, come January a new version will be released, geared toward personal trainers, rather than exercisers themselves. This iteration of the GAIN app will actually walk exercisers through each workout routine, or "trainer packs," with video and audio prompts. These variations, which can produce up to 100 different kinds of work-outs, will cost between $5 and $10 apiece.

"The company’s next product release...will create a marketplace where professional trainers can design and sell fitness multimedia “packs” that target specific fitness goals (fat loss, muscle gain, etc.), usage scenarios (gym, on-the-road, or at home), fitness levels (off-the-couch to advanced athlete)," said the GAIN Fitness rep.

Other expansions of the company's service, hinted at in one report, have a decidedly social networking flavor, with features including public profiles, workout sharing, and social challenges.

"The [new] funding will be used to expand the company's footprint in the fitness market," said the GAIN rep, "to scale its trainer network, and to bring on new talent in engineering and business development. [We] will monetize via partnerships and [our] upcoming marketplace, launching in January."

(Watch CEO Nicholas Gammel pitch GAIN Fitness on Vator Box)