Yesterday, we launched our 3rd app – MoveWell – the personal mobility coach you can take with you anywhere. It’s the fastest way to feel better in 15 minutes or less and it’s free. 🙂
Today I’m going to share exactly why we built the app and some of the goals I had in creating MoveWell.
If you’ve been under a rock, here are past few apps we’ve been actively developing (and we’ve got a couple more on the way)
- App #1 – The Cold Shower Therapy App (new announcements on this are coming soon)
- App #2 – Paleo (io) – A paleo food reference tool and a top 20 iTunes Health & Fitness app since it’s launched.
The third baby – launched yesterday – is MoveWell.
Movewell
Table of Contents
MoveWell is a personal mobility coach you can take with you anywhere to improve your personal mobility, alleviate pain and move better throughout life. Here’s a preview of what it looks like and how it works.
Why Mobility
Mobility might seem like a bit of a strange area for me to dive into at first glance.
I’m very good at going, going, going. Tell me to run a marathon, jump out a plane, or off a bridge an I’ll be there in a jiff.
Slowing down and taking care of myself though? That’s another story. I have an incredibly hard time relaxing, doing nothing or even mobility (which feels a lot like doing nothing with a side of pain).
So let’s rewind a bit – circa September 2014 – to see what sparked my change of heart.
Patagonia, Chile
Patagonia International Marathon – Mile 24 of 40.
The wind has been incredibly strong all race – but thankfully most of the time it was at our back and nudging us along throughout the race.
As I climbed a hill, I came to the top and the road curved to the right and back downhill. As I made the turn, the wind shifted to my body and pushed me hard.
Coming off my feet, I lost my balance as the gust literally blew me across the road.
As I tried to regain my balance mid stride, I tried to steady myself with my left food and it gave way as my foot planted, but my leg kept going downhill and to the left.
I rolled my ankle and I rolled it bad.
I’ve rolled my ankle in the past, but this was different. I didn’t know exactly what the deal was, but I knew something was up.
However, the race was run as an essentially unsupported race, so I had to get back to the finish line one way or another. I gutted out the last 15 miles home in an ugly manner while trying to figure out why it felt like a rubber band kept “snapping” in my ankle.
It wasn’t until later that I would find out that I basically strained the tendon pretty badly. I also found out that the “snapping” I felt, was a subluxation of the tendon (basically, I blew it out of it’s normal position and the “snapping” was it moving in and out of it’s correct position).
I finished the race and stupidly tried to simply just play it off. I figured rest & some ice would be good enough to get me back to racing condition.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
After getting back to San Diego with the issue not getting any better, I knew I had to do something.
A couple months of Active Release Therapy and a club-sized re-introduction to mobility (this time the importance of which came from experience rather than simple “theory”), I started to get better (very slowly).
But personally, I wasn’t doing so great.
Injuries suck. Like really suck.
When you go from being able to run 40 miles to barely being able to run 1/4 of one, that’s not just disappointing – it’s demoralizing.
I’ve never been the faster, or the smartest, or strongest, but I could gut it out with the best of them and this was one thing that I couldn’t just “gut” out. In fact, even if I did, I was going to do more long term damage than if I fixed it,
I spent a good couple months whining over the injury (I have an annoying tendency to do that), before finally putting on my big boy pants and vowing to do something about it.
I often talk about how fitness is more of a mental game than physical. I get a lot of pushback on this (mostly from people who don’t participate), but this is another example where another fitness element (in this case, injury) affected me as much mentally as physically.
So Why Mobility Work?
As much as injuries suck, mobility work sucks too. Ask almost any athlete about their relationship with a foam roller and they’ll tell you they it’s a hate/love/hate relationship with it.
The thing is, mobility sucks – but it just sucks way less than being hurt all the time, constantly being in pain or not being able to do the things you love to do.
So, while it’s not fun, mobility work is necessary and with MoveWell – we want to make it easier.
And the amount of time you have to dedicate to mobility work isn’t that much. In fact, by focusing your time & energy and KNOWING what to do, you can cut through the time wasting of ‘not knowing exactly what to do” and simply focus on getting healthier and moving better.
That’s why we created all the routines in MoveWell to be completed in less than 15 minutes – so you don’t have to waste time, as one new user said, “like a monkey humping a football.”
But mobility awareness is growing. Thanks to people like Kelly & Kate, people are starting to see that mobility is painful in the moment, but it’s worth it.
Dealing with 10–30 minutes of pain through mobility workouts every day is better than living in pain or always having nagging injuries you can’t seem to recover from.
The MoveWell App
So, with all that in mind, I’d love for you to try out the MoveWell App. It’s the fastest way to get started with Mobility and stick to it in simple, fast workouts.
Oh, and it’s a free download (with a few items as in-app-purchase downloads).
You can download the app here:
If you download the app and find it useful, you can also support the app in a few specific ways:
- Try a routine and send us feedback. We are constantly developing the app (you should see our roadmap these days) and feedback from you will be incredibly helpful in determining the future of the app, additional functionality and future routines we’ll include in the app.
- Leave a review! Ratings are great, but if you can take the extra 5 seconds to leave a review, it will help IMMENSELY! People love to read reviews and the first ones we get are enormously important.
- Tell a friend. If you know someone who is into crossfit, fitness, athletics or just could use a bit more direction with their mobility work – let them know about MoveWell and share the love with them. If you’d like to share a link on twitter, Facebook, or instagram – even better!
And if you want a preview of what the app looks like, here’s a few screenshots for you:
Testimonials
If you don’t want to be a guinea pig on a brand new app, I understand. Luckily, we’ve got a bunch of feedback from people using the app already. Here are some of the 5 star experiences shared so far:
As a Crossfit lover and a runner I find it hard to know just which mobility exercises are best for hitting the spot that hurts. This app is a great solution to that! Looking forward to more routines as they are added!
I like this app as I’m not very good at recalling what stretches to do for particular workouts. There’s a lot of good variety here.
I love how easy MoveWell makes mobility training. I’m still learning the ins and outs, but this is the perfect resource to get me going.
I just did the upper body primer and feel like I lifted so much more. Extra 8 pull-ups and an all around better workout.
More Mobility Features Coming Soon
We’re going to be adding quite the feature set to MoveWell over the upcoming months. While functionality will continue to improve, we’re also going to be working on expanding our content library.
Android Versions
We’re not actively developing Android at this point in time, but if things go well, we certainly will.
For more on my iOS first philosophy, please read this post. In short, it’s faster to recoup and test an investment on iOS first than Android.
Thank You
Thanks so much for reading Impossible and checking out MoveWell.
If you have any questions, please let me know. I’m looking forward to sharing more about our app development and mobility in my own journey in the future.
Shaun says
Please lose the “monkey humping a football” comment. People who are offended by coarse sexual comments may lose trust in you and cease to read your otherwise inspiring and clean blog!
Joel Runyon says
Hey Shaun,
The intent wasn’t to offend, it was to provide a humorous visual reference. I have a pretty strict line for my site and I still don’t think that would qualify as “coarse.”
ops30 says
As someone who just started mobility work recently, I can attest that the monkey/football analogy is spot on. Nothing about starting mobility work feels natural.
I look forward to an Android version in the future, but you’re right Joel…iOS first is still the best route when introducing new apps.
Thanks for all you do Joel.
Lizbet E. S. says
I think the fact that it’s quoted from a user distances any crudeness any way.
I’m hoping you’ll find your ios investment profitable enough to add it to android, I’d like to use this tool!
Colin says
Seconded! I have absolutely no idea where to start a mobility workout (other than the stretching from high school track & field 5 years ago). I’d really like to see what direction you are pointing folks in.
Joel Runyon says
We’re planning on android as soon as we nail down the product & content features for the iOS version. Hang tight!
Steve Roy says
Yea Joel, that comment was highly offensive and disgusting. Is all you talk about here sex related?!? This is a fucking outrage!
OK, seriously now. I just downloaded the app and like what I see. As a trainer, I see a lot of mobility issues and do spend a lot of time working on that with my clients. So important.
Also, I’ve been following your journey for years (you do remember our interview, don’t you?) and continue to be inspired..
Alison Bowling says
I might just have to do a review on this fitness baby myself, I really love a fitness app that does what it claims to do, they can make such a difference on a really busy workday by cutting out so much time and planning, and some you completely forget are even there til you need them to be. I hadn’t heard of this one yet, I’ll give it a go!
Ethelyn says
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Joel Runyon says
Which one?
simon says
I will have to try this out. Also I love the design. It is so clean and easy to use.
Angelo says
Sad that I cannot download it because I just have an iPhone 4 and the App requires iOS 8.
Any way, great works 🙂