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The Bodbox Revolution: Take the step from "tracked" to "trained". 

12/28/2016

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old guard (n.) - "the original or long-standing members of a group or party, especially ones who are unwilling to accept change or new ideas."
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From Chuck:
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​​As the initial creator, I wanted to explain alongside our latest team member and pro sports scientist, DJ Williams, why it's been influential to my training approach as an American record holding US swimmer and how it will alter the way it's user perceives "fitness". It allows the world to take a step forward from tracking their fitness to training themselves in the most optimized manner for their goals and body type. The Bodbox gives us all the next step. 

To begin, our team doesn't subscribe to the word "fitness". Often times it's an easy to use marketing term applied by those who often have never experienced the mental, physical, and emotional endevour of pursuing an athletic goal. As athletes and world class trainers, we know that's unfortunate. However, "fitness" has undoubtedly inspired a societal awareness of the importance of health, resulting in a large scale willingness to take actions necessary to better onself. This was the first step. Bodbox is the next. 

When you begin using the Bodbox and you recieve your first bodbox workout text after turning on the robot for the first time, you'll experience how the movements the bodbox selects for its user are based on world class training programs but geared specifically toward your goals as a trainee. Movement selection and workout optimization is data driven. The bodbox provides you the freedom to no longer need to interpret the data you're collecting on yourself - it's automatically applied in the best possible way for your body and your goals. 

As DJ Williams, sports scientist and the elite training staff behind the Bodbox approach explained to me, the only difference between traininng a gold medalist and a beginning athlete or trainee is that the Olympic body or the world class competitor has "talent". Talent, however, can be defined as the ability of one's muscle fiber to adapt to a movement quickly. That's it. The faster your muscle fiber adapts to the movements you train with, the quicker you'll progress in your given discipline, whether as a swimmer, triathlete, or Victoria Secret hopeful. Via the 100,000 data points collected from your 45 minute Bodbox workout, selection of movement, optimization of reps and weights occurs automatically, allowing you to achieve your" "talent" more efficiently than ever before. 



The core underlying technology of the Bodbox is computer vision, allowing it to perceive movements much like a human. In fact, the data it collects on specific velocity points and posture would take years for a single human to collect. 

The Bodbox is a breakthrough robotic platform that allows us to take the next step in leveraging technology to reach a state of optimized training. Each time you turn on the Bodbox you're receiving the perfect workout for you on that given day, at that point in your season. Everyone who uses the Bodbox trains in a season or 'Szn' - starting with "Szn1".

Because of the Bodbox's innovative and drastically unique approach, you will feel better, race better, and perform better. As an athlete and Olympic hopeful, I couldn't be more excited to ship robots to our first training group Szn1 next week and train alongside our earliest purcahsers who are taking this next step forward with us.

Love,
Chuck + the robot

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From DJ Williams:

​The phrase "old guard" captures the need for improvement that the Bodbox is filling. Many individuals, coaches, and trainers who have the ability to progress the field of preparing athletes for battle are already discovering that the Bodbox can take their athletes to the next level. Instead of basing training decisions and workout performance simply on "feel" or what they percieve an athlete's capabilitites to be, this provides a groudbreaking step toward making decisions in place of the often fallable human eye. The Bodbox is not based on "feel". Training is more scientific than "feel". The Bodbox allows us to automatically apply the data we're already tracking. 

Far too often, I recognize a lack of athlete involvement in the training process due largely to lack of communication. The athlete, our user, is the only person that actually matters to the Bodbox robot. Any individual looking to reach a pinnacle in their performance must take into consideration who they are, where they come from, and what has allowed them to be successful in the past, in order to create an environment in which  they can grow to meet their potential. By automatically selecting, optimizing, and providing feedback on its user's workout, the bodbox provides this focused, personalized environment to a trainee. 

We must allow the athlete or individual who entrusts us with the responsibility to help them succeed to express themselves fully and simply provide them the training they need to perform. The world class coach, the trainer, and now the Bodbox provides the correct guidance and then steps aside and lets the athlete perform. 

This sensation of personalized, data driven, individual driven success is difficult to find in most weight rooms, large group training or within the authoritarian style of training that has been promoted by an old  guard because they have little impetus to devise the solutions athletes really need. This is a disservice to the people who entrust their life and well being to training decisions.

We are your voice, we are the driven, we are the seekers of truth and now it's our turn to leverage The Bodbox's groundbreaking technology to get you to your "talent" faster than ever before possible.

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The Factors of Athletic Outcomes

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Chuck's talk @ Harvard: "Divergences From the Mean - Why the Bodbox matters"

11/22/2016

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Last week Bodbox gave a chat to a statistics course at Harvard about the world's first intelligent robotic trainer and why divergences from the mean are so critical - full video en route soon. 

Sitting on the floor of my Berkeley apartment with an ethernet cable stretched the length of the tiny room, I would not have believed my life could transform so fast.

If you had told me I'd be giving talks at both Stanford and Harvard about a robotic trainer based on open cv I would have burst out in laughter. It's not that I didn't want to build this sort of impact but more that I had never seen the path or felt capable. I believe a lot of us struggle with this battle between pursuing what we actually want with complete focus and getting stuck in a common role of making excuses based in part on what we subconsciously believe others think we're capable of accomplishing. If everyone followed the second path, we'd never have outliers. 


And deviations from the mean are what fuel the Bodbox patent pending training engine. Frankly, I was crushed by the outcome of Olympic trials and I needed something to put the same amount of energy and focus behind. I had gone into full coping/creative mode, rarely answering my phone even from family calls - all I wanted to do was create some sort of value where I saw mine taken away. Who was I and why did I just dedicated seventeen years of my life to something that didn't work? Startups are hard. But they're actually more likely to work than someone is to qualify for one of the two swimming spots on the Olympic team. Riddle me that. 

Sean Mahoney, a good friend and current roommate, nearly banged down my door one day when I was deep in the heat of creation, selling Caffeine 2016 satirical coffee relentlessly. I could've stayed on my email all day, selling:

"I'm training you. You need structure. Tomorrow morning. 5:30. White Camaro on the corner of Telegraph and Dwight"

He slammed the door on me and it was my place - deviations from the mean.

Honestly I'm not sure if I was confused or inspired but I met Sean on the corner outside my place the next morning bright and early (after about two hours of sleep). But two hours of swimming and shadow boxing later, my demons somehow felt controlled. I was freed and clear to go back to the lab and build something valuable without distraction. Energy can be harnessed by structure. 

I needed this structure and it's beautiful to me that as I continued to create and search for a place to provide some sort of value, I built the very service Sean provided for me as a life long friend. He provided me workouts, watched them, gave me feedback, and forced me to clean up my diet real quick. I'm not sure if he realized how helpful he was to my process as an athlete and entrepreneur and I'm still not sure what or who pushed him to come bang down my door. 


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To provide a service like Sean did at scale greater than 30 or so clients or athletes, there had to be an intelligent manner better than a simple app or online coach. There had to be something concrete, data driven - something that understood how the best athletes in the world worked and could apply it to anyone (even them) in order to give people the same freedom I experienced. Even if it was simple and watched and optimized a few of my movements, I understood immediately that the impact would be massively freeing. 

Sean walked into my place a week after he had so perfectly interrupted my creative flow and his jaw dropped. What looked like a tornado of computer components, cables, and cords had been reborn into a single, self contained box. Thus the bodbox was born.

 I used it to start optimizing my squats the next day. Could it tell me how many squats to do based on data from the best in the world? Yes. To train myself more optimally based on who I was and who I wanted to become felt overwhelmingly inspiring. And even if Sean was away, the Bodbox was there next to me at the rack. Always. And it wanted me to be the deviation from the mean. It could actually compare me to that deviation to decide what to text me as feedback (or squat rep counts in my case).

That's why the Bodbox matters. It (and Sean) showed me very clearly how not qualifying for the Olympic team was the single greatest thing that had happened in my life thus far. It directly sparked an understanding that pursing goals relentlessly in hopes of being the outlier you envision yourself is far and away the most rewarding way to move through life. With purpose, with focus, with a goal, and with a self determined fate.

"Impossible" in sports or business is very simply the outliers being discussed in Professor Parzen's statistics course. There is a process to becoming that deviation but we have to make an active and at times misunderstood or ridiculed decision to move in that direction. 

Thank you early adopters for recognizing the importance of what we've built so far and where we're headed. 

Love,

Chuck + the robot
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What inspired the Bodbox color scheme?

11/10/2016

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Chance. Well, chance the rapper. At least that's the short answer. The long answer is a little more complicated. And it began with a GQ article called "How Chance's life became perfect" - it's funny how such a sad situation could make for such a beautiful opportunity. And how such a negative aspect of his life could have such a positive impact on mine. And on our company's, for that matter.

I never listened to Chance's latest album until after I had to kill a few minutes waiting for a meeting and happened to read through the aforementioned article. This was the week after Olympic Trials and the world didn't seem to hold the same brightness as before. In fact, it was clouded with darkness. And it most definitely didn't have a pinkish red-orange #ff6a71 hue. 

Chance refused deals from most major record labels. Why? "He wanted to do it his way". He would rather sell merchandise and give his music away for free than go the normal path. "Who gets inspired by the normal path?" Some people, no doubt. And that's a viable option for many lives. "But how many are intrigued by that one sheep that runs the opposite direction?" Everyone. And that isn't dependent on some measurement of "success" - people watch that one no matter what. 

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Now we're here. For you, by you. (A thank you post from thebodbox.com kickstarter) 

10/17/2016

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"I don't really celebrate the wins. I don't sulk over the negative. I just keep it moving'" - Drake


Well. This is the coolest feeling. What began as an idea and months of sleepless nights, obsession, passion, coding, building, thinking, learning, and exploring is no longer just an idea. It's real. And every other item on that list is just as present now as when I set out, if not more. 


I will continue pouring every ounce of energy I had been previously using in pursuit of my Olympic goal into coding, building, and fine tuning the Bodbox's software and hardware until I am 100% confident that it will alter the way you live your life and help you level up while feeling great in the process. Forgetting to eat and sleep because of this idea made clear to me it won't stop there either. 

You deserve to know how great you are and the robot knows how to get you there. I am not celebrating or looking to be inspirational at this point but rather am cognizant that this is only the first minuscule step on a relentless and perfection seeking path upon which the company has embarked (1:11 AM here in Berkeley and back to coding after this email gets out).




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On Single Mothers, Caffeine, and Refuting Reality

7/26/2016

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The checkout clerk cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, ma'am. That card didn’t work."

She looked up from behind the cash register and feigned a smile. She was acknowledging the fact that this was the third card she had tried, while still trying to avoid an awkward situation.

That’s when Joanne started to cry

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Never Outshine the Master : The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (1/48)

7/11/2016

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Greene Laws of Power
The author and his most famous work on business acumen.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power
         
Stately Photographer
This is what power might look like.

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"I just believe that the feeling of wonder is amazing. I am pushing myself as far as I can humanly push myself... I can only hope for the best and expect the worse." -David Blaine

7/11/2016

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How I Hacked Harvard in 9 (way oversimplified) steps

7/10/2016

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 I had created this experience for myself, from my own mind, by my own initiative. I shouldn't have been there... But I relentlessly forced the cards in my favor until I got there. The other players at the table didn't stand a chance.  
​​Perhaps my approach was fated to lead me down this path. Maybe the very manner in which I got there was bound to push me away. After two years of being at the school of my dreams, I left. Or maybe because it had been a dream for so long, disillusionment was bound to strike. Either way I hope that the lessons I have drawn from this experience can help someone else looking to follow a similar path...or maybe just part of that path. I will break this into a series of posts, the first of which I will employ to elucidate the mindset and achievements I found necessary to make it into a top tier institution. In a later post, I'll explain what led me to leave and the lessons that emerged along with those I gleaned from my time at Harvard.  

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If I ran a tumblr...I'll be alternating boring thoughts on achieving your goals with a more aesthetic sort of exploration. 

7/10/2016

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