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Demystifying the conversations we're already here at RRE and with our portfolio companies. In each episode, your hosts, Will Porteous, Raju Rishi, and Jason Black will dive deeply into topics that are shaping the future, from satellite technology to digital health, to venture investing, and much more.
Raju: And it turns out my German Shepherd sleeps on my side of the bed.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: I could not rely—
Will: That’s hysterical.
Raju: It’s crazy. Well—
Will: You’ve got a proxy sleeper.
Raju: I’ve got a proxy sleeper.
Will: [unintelligible 00:00:12] canine.
Raju: I’m like, my wife’s cheating on me, and with somebody who’s got a really heavy heart rate [laugh], you know? And no, that’s not happening. It’s my German Shepherd. He’s like, “He’s not there.” And he’s like 80, 90 pounds, so the Sleep Number bed is like, “Yes, it’s you.” [laugh].
Will: You wish you could sleep as well as he does [laugh].
Raju: I know. He sleeps soundly.
Will: That’s great.
Raju: Yeah, it’s so funny.
Will: Yeah.
Raju: I’m Raju Rishi.
Will: And I’m Will Porteous. Welcome to RRE POV, the show in which we record the conversations we’re already having among ourselves, our entrepreneurs, and industry leaders for you to listen in on.
Raju: Hello, listeners. I’m Raju Rishi. I’m joined by my partner, Will Porteous, and this session is going to be focused on exercise and wellness tech. So, I’m sure people who have seen me in the past several years have seen that I’ve shifted my personal behaviors over the last, sort of, three years, focused on physical fitness and wellness. And it’s mostly because every time I look at Will, I go home demoralized, and eat a bucket of KFC.
Will: Dude, what you’re saying is you got ripped [laugh]. You got buff and—
Raju: No, no, no. No, you got to put your motivators on the wall. There’s just, like, a picture of Will Porteous is on that wall. I got to ask you a question.
Will: I’ve not motivated anybody.
Raju: I know… I know you don’t like to brag, but you’ve been focused on exercise and nutrition all your life, and I want you to tell the listeners about some of your accomplishments: your rowing accomplishments and your climbing accomplishments. And if you don’t do it, I’m going to make it up.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: I’m just going to make it up.
Will: Well, I won’t let you make anything up, and they’re not that remarkable. I was fortunate that I got into climbing when I was pretty young. But I kind of also found my calling as a cardiovascular athlete and endurance athlete when I was pretty young, too. So, I used to race bikes when I was in high school. Looking back, that was kind of a weird thing for a kid from Louisiana, right? Louisiana produces, like, football players and basketball players and, like—
Raju: Yeah, totally [laugh].
Will: They go on to great things. And like, it’s not a place to race as, like, cyclists [laugh]
Raju: No.
Will: I was a competitive cyclist for a long time, and then got into climbing. And climbed Mount McKinley when I was pretty young. Had my 17th birthday, actually, on the mountain, which was kind of a mind-blowing experience.
Raju: Now, at one point, Will, you had told me you did some firsts, right, like, first person to climb X or Y?
Will: Yeah, I was fortunate to go to India to climb, in the fall of 1992. I was a sophomore in college and I was invited to be part of an expedition that opened up a section of mountains north of Delhi in an area called the Garhwal Himalaya, which basically surrounds Nanda Devi, the sacred mountain of the Hindus. And there are all these peaks around Nanda Devi that have never been climbed before. And it’s a pretty remote area, and so thus we were some of the few people who’ve ever been there to climb. And I have two first ascents from that period. But this is a long time ago [laugh].
Raju: Hey, man. See, this is what—listeners, just keep in mind, you’ve heard the stories now, and now you know why I get demoralized and I eat a bucket of KFC.
Will: Yeah, well—
Raju: This is exactly why.
Will: I like a bucket of KFC, too.
Raju: Okay, sure.
Will: Yeah, I mean, I was lucky. Sports were sort of part of my life, particularly once I got to college. I rode for a long time, competitively. And I think, you know, the nature of our business has always given me, I think, permission to be interested and fascinated by health and wellness technology. When I was training in college in the early-’90s at Stanford, we were one of the first rowing programs to start doing blood lactate analysis in our training, so actually looking at lactate levels in endurance and performance.
And I took it for granted that everyone was doing this. And I learned later that we were kind of an outlier. And I’ve always tracked heart rate and other biomarkers, just as part of my training. But, you know, that’s not that uncommon.
Raju: It’s amazing. It’s amazing. I love it. I love it. I have been—you know, a lot of lessons from Will here that I’ve taken. And, you know, just so you guys know, I mean, I wasn’t, sort of like, crazy, like, you know, marshmallow. I’ve been focused on athletics most of my life as well, mostly in the form of karate. I was Taekwondo and a couple of different art forms. But then I had four kids and got out of shape, and you know, last three years.
Will: And a few pretty massive jobs in there, too [laugh].
Raju: Yeah, lots of things in there. But now, you know, last three years, I’ve been really, really dedicated on it. So, I figured this podcast, we can focus on this area of technology. Because I think there’s some interesting tech trends going on here, and opportunities. And just so listeners know, I mean, we’ve made numerous investments in this category. So, I’ll list out a few of them.
You know what they are, like Noom, which is, sort of like, weight management application that’s kind of prevalent everywhere; Spring Health, which is a mental health application and platform; Care/of, which is sort of like a customized vitamin distribution, you know, direct to consumer application. And then we’ve got two new ones that we’ve just made in this fund, which listeners may or may not be aware of. We’ve got one called Elmntri, which is really trying to shift people’s mentality from, you know, sort of a pharmaceutical approach to dealing with health to one that actually looks at a bunch of biomarkers and uses a set of supplements, and diet, and lifestyle changes to address issues that you might have, you know, in terms of metabolic issues or just, you know, sort of optimizing you. And then most recently, we have a company called Getlabs that we just invested in, which is a phlebotomist to your home—
Will: [laugh]. I love this.
Raju: Which—yeah. I mean, it’s a fantastic story and you’re going to hear a lot more about this company over the next few years. But getting bloodwork done, as Will pointed out, you know, doing that bloodwork as a, sort of like, a semi-professional, professional rower gives you data that allows you to optimize your performance. And I think the same thing is true for just people who don’t have—they’re not professional athletes, but they want to optimize themselves, getting that bloodwork done and analyzed is important, but, you know, we always don’t have time to wait, you know, at a clinic to get that blood drawn. So, that was an application. So anyway, those are investments that we’ve made. So, I’m going to talk about three categories of exercise and wellness tech, and then we’ll go through some dialog around them.
Will: Yeah, great.
Raju: So, you know, in my mind, there’s three classes. There’s sort of exercise equipment. That’s like the Pelotons, the Tonals, the Mirrors, you know, Catalysts, Hydrows of the world. Second is fitness apps, and you can think of that like Strava, MyFitnessPal, even Calm, which helps you meditate, and then measurement tools, you know, like Withings, and CGMs, and Apple Watches and whatnot.
Will: Mm-hm.
Raju: Let’s dive into these just for a second. And I’d love your opinion—and I’ve got my own opinion on some of these—but let’s focus on exercise equipment for a while.
Will: Sure.
Raju: Do you own exercise equipment in your home, Will?
Will: So, I own a Peloton, and then I have sort of a variety of weights and equipment for a lot of calisthenics, and floor exercises, and a pull-up bar, things like that. And we also have a Mirror, which we love, actually. We felt that was like an incredibly good integrated product, in terms of bringing great classroom experiences into the home.
Raju: Interesting. Interesting. So, I’ll talk about myself. I mean, I’ve got—bigger home. I, you know, I’ve got a home in Florida where I can keep a lot of equipment in one room, so I’ve got sort of the treadmill, I’ve got a semi recumbent bike that puts less stress on your back. I’ve got a Bowflex Max, which is like a—you know, it’s an elliptical, but it’s like a real grindy kind of elliptical.
Will: Wow.
Raju: Yeah, it gives you a bunch of different factors. And then I’ve got free weights, and a bench, and a few other pieces of equipment. Tell me about your equipment. Let’s talk about the technical ones, the ones that are technology-driven. And what makes you love your Mirror and/or Peloton, Will? Like what kind of drives you to use those? And what do you think they got right in those?
Will: Sure. So, you know, starting with Mirror, actually, which is a product that I really love. And it’s a company that I think really struck a chord with users by bringing the class, the workout class experience into the home in a really rich format. So, you could see yourself, you could feel as if you were in a class, a group fitness class, like, a barre class, or a high intensity exercise class, or yoga class, and they brought really good instructors, kind of, right into your home. And they essentially ate the lunch of a lot of workout studio businesses when they did that.
And from a product experience, you don’t really feel like you’re looking at a screen because the person appears to be, kind of, relatively life size when they’re with you. So, they really created a transformational experience that abstracted away from the technology. The Peloton, I think, did an absolutely brilliant job of creating a sense of community around being on the bike. [laugh]. There are times when I’m doing a Peloton workout and I sit back and I think about the fact all I’m doing is pushing watts on a bike by myself in the basement, right?
Raju: [laugh]. Yeah, you are.
Will: That’s all I’m doing. But they overlaid this, you know, peppy energetic instructor, the sense that you’re doing this with other people, scoreboards, and leaderboards, and high fives and all these other points of social interaction to make you feel connected. And there again, they ate the lunch of these in-person class experiences.
Raju: So, you think that, like, because exercise equipment, either you don’t have anything yet, and so it gives you a net-new or it replaces something.
Will: Right.
Raju: And so, you think in this case, for you, Peloton and Mirror kind of replaced going to the studios?
Will: I know for a fact they did. And you know, Peloton opened up, kind of, the ability to stay fit on the bike all through the winter. You know, it was five degrees here in New York this morning, and I don’t think there are too many people riding in the park. And it also introduced spinning, which is a lot harder than riding a stationary bike to people because you can’t coast. It’s a watt bike, so you’re basically striving for a certain level of power output.
So, I think they accomplished a lot, but they are still very siloed. And I think a big theme of this conversation today is going to be about how we have all these incredible data silos. And we’re paying subscriptions for both the experience and the data we’re accumulating in them, and no one’s been able to figure out, kind of, the app of apps to federate a lot of this data.
Raju: Yeah. I mean, they’re starting to. And you know, the thing is—and I totally [gel 00:12:14]. I don’t have—I mean, listen, I work out probably twice a day for 30 minutes. It’s not crazy, you know? A little bit 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the evening, and I do some weights and I do some cardio or HIIT.
So, it’s either cardio or HIIT, and then weights. I don’t have any of those, I guess because I wasn’t really a member of a studio. It didn’t replace anything for me, so I didn’t feel the need to. But you know what I ta—and I talked to a bunch of people who have stopped using them, and most of them are single because these gyms are places to meet other people. And the Peloton and the Mirror might give you that studio experience, but you’re not going to get a date through a Mirror.
Will: [laugh]
Raju: So, you know.
Will: You may want to date your instructor—
Raju: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well—
Will: —but that’s about it.
Raju: —they do good marketing, so their instructors always look, you know, relatively good. But yeah, so I don’t think you’ll replace that for sort of that, you know, community, the real community. It’s a simulation of community. And so, I get it, I get it. So, to me, my equipment isn’t sort of this—I have digital equipment, in the sense I have a semi-recommend bike that, you know, works through power, and treadmill that works through power, and a Bowflex Max that runs through power, and they’ve got little screens on them or everything like that.
But I think, like, if we’re looking at investments in this space, one of the criteria I look at from an equipment standpoint is a handful of things—and I’d love to hear your take as well—but mine are, sort of, form factor, like, can I easily put this somewhere in my house, right? Because you got the New York apartments, which are tiny. You got the big houses, which have gym rooms. And so, you know, I either got to replace something else. And, you know, the Mirror was interesting because it’s a Mirror, and it also gives you sort of this exercise equipment. So, you can do that. So, form factor is, you know, really important.
The second is what I call stickiness. And that fits in a couple of different angles, right? Like one is, do you have a sense of community, like Mirror and Peloton offer that kind of keeps you going and gets you excited to get back on there, but just as much as that, there needs to be sort of an easy mode and an expert mode. And I think a lot of products fail to do that. They’re either designed for the expert or they’re designed for the, you know, novice.
And you have to do both because, you know, otherwise, people just kind of fall away and don’t use it. And the third is, like, you know, pricing and margin. Like, what’s the cost-of-goods thing of this product, and how much you’re selling it for. And everybody wants to tack on a subscription, and is it worth it?
Will: That to me, I think is the biggest question is how they continue to deliver value to justify that subscription, right? Because at a certain point, the hardware is paid for, it’s sitting there, and you know, to make it light up, you’ve got to be a subscriber, to bring that person into your home [laugh]. I did the math over the holidays on all the subscriptions I have between the devices in our home—just fitness-related—the devices in our home, Strava, the sport—you know, my heart rate monitor platform, like, all of that stuff. And it’s not insignificant. And there’s not, you know, if I’m going to add something, I’ve got to drop something.
Raju: Yeah. I love that. And I think a lot of people think that way. And so, you know, if you’re out there, listeners, and you’re building something like this, you got to think about some of these facets of what you do. Because hardware is hard, and… especially consumer hardware is super hard, I think, because you got to get people to buy something, and not lose too much money on it, you know? And is a subscription enough that you can really kind of turn the corner from red to black in terms of your layout on it. So, interesting. So, let’s talk a little bit about—anything other thoughts on equipment, Will, or should we move to the app section?
Will: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s hard to be out of connected fitness if you’re in the equipment business now. I mean, I know, for instance, people who are in the strength-training market who have built the data portion and the subscription to it. And I think everybody’s fighting for a very fixed pie in terms of the consumer subscription piece. So.
Raju: Absolutely. And, you know, there is something to be said for the subscription element of this giving you a nudge, or kind of showing you that, hey, you know, it’s okay to take one step back and two steps forward. That’s a natural rhythm with these kinds of journeys that we have. So, yeah, I think the subscription [unintelligible 00:17:04] is interesting. It’s just hard to justify because I think people are getting subscription overload.
You know, you look at what’s happening with the movie industry or television industry, whatever you want to call it, you know, streaming industry, I mean, we have everything in our household. And I kind of looked at it, and I was like, do I need Hulu, and Disney, and Peacock, and Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and Apple TV, and all of these different, you know, Paramount is out there, like, so many. And each of them is, like, got some hook, right? Like, hey, some content you can’t get unless you subscribe. And we’ll talk about that in a second, but also, you know, you could get it for cheap, but then you got to watch commercials, and you know, I’m just so not into that.
But like, this live television thing like Netflix had, you know, the Tyson fight on there, and now football is—if you want to watch, like, Monday Night, Sunday Night, Thursday Night Football, you got to get all of these different platforms. And it’s kind of wonky. I think exercise equipment is going to go down this rat hole, too, and so you’ve got to justify why you can be the handful that can withstand the churn from users.
Will: That’s exactly right. And increasingly, it’s that subscription and churn question which is going to drive valuation for, I think, all of these businesses, right? You know, hardware companies that are contribution margin-positive on first sale after their cost of acquisition, it’s all just the beginning of a subscription relationship [laugh]. How long will you hold the customer?
Raju: Exactly. Exactly. All right, let’s jump to apps, which is sort of the second category, you know, kind of things like Strava. You said you had MyFitnessPal, Calm. In my mind, actually, for listeners that are looking to build applications in the exercise and wellness track, I would encourage you to go back and listen to Tricia Han’s episode.
Will: Yes.
Raju: Trisha was an EIR with us. She’s now at another business… which is fascinating. It’s in the gaming space. But she was the CEO of MyFitnessPal, and Daily Burn, and a bunch of others, for years and years and years. And she gave all of our listeners, I think, like, a handbook, and a checklist, and a secret guide to success in consumer applications that you all should listen to.
But like, you know, I’ll just think about my topics. I mean, like, kind of the same. One is stickiness, you know, just how do you create stickiness? Because a lot of people can try an app, but how do you get there? And then distribution, right? Like distribution is really, really tough in the consumer app space. But there’s a lot of other nuances that she talks about that you should listen to. You have a handful of apps. Which apps do you have?
Will: I think there’s a private and a public side to this app thing. So, I wear a Polar watch, which tracks all my heart rate data, and sleep data, and workout data. So, that gathers kind of most of the data that I care about. And then out of that, I can publish workouts to Strava. And Strava is basically a public-facing piece of community, I think, is the best way to think about it.
You may not share everything you’re doing there, and yes, I think there is a certain amount of, like, is it [laugh] for bragging rights on Strava? Like, why are you doing it? But I do think for athletes who train mostly on their own, Strava provides that extra nudge of motivation. You see what other people are doing. You feel a little bit competitive. Like, they’ve kind of mastered that community dynamic. And I know from a prior chapter in your career, Raju, at Sigma, you got to see the early growth of Strava, where you guys were investors. And so, they’ve tapped into something really, really powerful there.
Another app that I find really useful that a lot of people don’t put in this category is AllTrails. AllTrails is a hiking app that is also used by a lot of runners. So like, when I’m in another city, if I want to go for a trail run or something like that, that’s a community that has runs, like, posted for you. Kind of the way you see on things like MyFitnessPal and others. So, I think that what the apps do well is bring the community to you as a user as much as you do or do not want to be a participant.
Raju: Yeah, I kind of agree with that. It’s all about the community side of things as a driving function. I don’t use a lot of these apps, I got to be honest with you. I use Apple Fitness, you know, because it’s very personalized, it sets goals for me in terms of how much—I like to vary my workouts. I don’t do a lot of the same thing.
Like, you know, it’s not a cross-training kind of model, but I feel like your joints and your muscles need distribution, and not concentration of exercises, so you know, I try to vary every day the cardio, and I definitely vary the, sort of, lifting side of things every day. And I go through cycles, and it might be a three day cycle, or a one week cycle, or something like that, but you get surround muscles, you get different muscles. And Apple Fitness gives me the ability to sort of do all of that without concentrating on a particular type of application, strictly for biking or strictly for running or something like that.
Will: You know, I think you have mastered something that I’ve always been curious about, which is the ability to understand, to really strongly associate certain exercise with a certain muscle group. And our former partner, Jim Robinson, who is no longer with us, was actually a bodybuilder in his early days. He was quite a fit guy his whole career—
Raju: Incredible, actually. Oh, my God.
Will: And he used to talk to me about that. You have taken up where Jim left off. That’s a great way to train. But I wouldn’t know how to do it. Like, you’ve clearly found the tools to help you understand how to do it.
Raju: Yeah, I just listened to your body a little bit. I think mostly it’s that, I got to be honest with you. And also it’s just in my brain. When I take on something, I get granular [laugh]. It’s just in my nature.
It’s actually helpful—and you do the same thing, Will, right? Like as a VC, we are hyper-curious individuals. And so, we walk into—you know, somebody who gives us pitch and we kind of want to understand, oh my God, I’ve never understood this before. Like, this is cool. Like, this is, you know, robotic vacuum cleaner or whatever it might be, and so let me understand the guts around it. Why does it work? How does it work? Why is it better?
And I do the same thing with, sort of, exercise and wellness. And we’ll talk a little bit more about it in the measurement devices and the measurement section because I think it’s really important. But I listen to my body pretty aggressively, you know, after I do a particular exercise and I can see where the strain exists. And the other trick I’ve learned, by the way, is for weight training—not so much for cardio, but definitely for weight training—if you do the exercise really slowly with a lighter weight, you can really feel exactly where the stress is occurring.
Will: Hmm. Wow.
Raju: And that helps you, sort of, get much more granular in terms of, like, okay, this is a little bit different. It’s a tricep exercise, but it’s a little bit different than the prior type tricep exercise because it’s working a different part of the muscle. And you can feel it. So, that’s one of the tips and tools that I’ve used. But yeah, okay.
So, distribution apps, distribution stickiness, you talked about that community is really important for those apps. You know, for me, I guess I’m a little bit more peculiar. I don’t really use community as a motivation tool for me, and I vary my workouts so aggressively that something more diverse. Like, the Apple fitness app is better for me.
But let’s move to measurement devices because I think this is super interesting, and I think this is the area where I see the greatest amount of innovation happening. Categorically, let’s talk about it. Like, so you have weight measurement and body comp measurements, like, Withings has a scale that gives you, sort of, your visceral fat, your body fat, you know, your muscles per zone in your body. Like it actually runs a current through, you know, your arms, legs, and it kind of tells you your left arm has got this much body fat versus. And so, you can actually get real data about not just your overall body fat, but by part of body, which is quite interesting.
Will: That’s remarkable.
Raju: Yeah, there’s, you know, CGM, Continuous Glucose Monitoring, which tells you, like, what you’re eating, if your glucose spikes. And actually those, you know, spikes and kind of what’s happening to your body as you eat or don’t eat can affect your workouts in really profound ways. You know, obviously we have the Apple Watch, which is giving you oxygen, it’s giving you a simulation of VO2 max, and a few other datas. You’ve got the, you know, WHOOP, which, you know, I think people have used before, or the Oura Ring, which is relatively similar in terms of biometrics. I actually have a Sleep Number bed, which tells you kind of sleeping data.
Although I’ll tell you a crazy story about this Sleep Number bed because I have one. And I’m away a lot and, you know, I get this—because, you know, you and I travel a bunch for work—and I get this alert on my phone, it’s like, oh, you had a great night’s sleep. And I’m thinking to myself, oh, like, maybe I should have this hard conversation with my wife, you know? Like, she definitely sleeps on the other side. I’m like, what the hell just happened? And it’s like the next night, you know, not a great night, but your heart rate is at, like, 112 or something like that. I’m like—and it turns out my German Shepherd sleeps on my side of the bed.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: I could not rely—
Will: That’s hysterical.
Raju: It’s crazy. Well—
Will: You’ve got a proxy sleeper.
Raju: I’ve got a proxy sleeper.
Will: [unintelligible 00:27:15] canine.
Raju: I’m like, my wife’s cheating on me, and with somebody who’s got a really heavy heart rate [laugh], you know? And no, that’s not happening. It’s my German Shepherd. He’s like, “He’s not there.” And he’s like 80, 90 pounds, so the Sleep Number bed is like, “Yes, it’s you.” [laugh].
Will: You wish you could sleep as well as he does [laugh].
Raju: I know. He sleeps soundly.
Will: That’s great.
Raju: Yeah, it’s so funny.
Will: Yeah.
Raju: And so, now I can’t rely on that data at all. I can’t rely on it at all. Because every day, there’s somebody in my bed; it’s just not me all the time [laugh]. And so, I bought the Oura Ring, you know because it gives me sleep data, but you know, I’m hoping to God my German shepherd doesn’t figure out how to put it on—
Will: That’s too funny.
Raju: And be like, oh.
Will: He’s stealing your data streams back. He’s corrupting it.
Raju: Yeah, he’s corrupting my data stream. So, there’s all sorts of tools, you know, and at CES I mentioned there’s a tool now to, you know, measure your urine. And by the way, I do get blood work done, you know, every six months.
Will: I know you do. I think that’s so cool.
Raju: Yeah. So, to see, you know, how the impact of all of this happens. What measurement—you talked a little bit—I’ll talk about a little bit myself. I have the Oura Ring. I’ve got the Sleep Number bed—which I discard all that data—I definitely have the Apple Watch, which is gathering a bunch of data.
I just got it because it’s now available without a prescription, a CGM, which is made by Dexcom, I think. It’s, you know, available to consumers now. I think a few of them, I think Libra is also available. So, I want to get that data. And obviously I’ve got the Withing scale that, you know, does a bunch of body comp and stuff. So, those are the tools that I use, plus a bunch of blood work that I get done with my doctor every six months. What do you use, Will?
Will: So, I come at this from sort of a funny position. So, for more than 30 years, I’ve been using heart-rate monitor products made by a Finnish company called Polar. And Polar was really a pioneer in heart-rate monitor measurement. When I was a cyclist and athlete, we all used to wear these straps around the chest that would sense, kind of, heart rate. And then the strap was on your arm, and today it’s all in a watch.
And the Polar watches give you integrated heart rate data, but they also capture sleep data and strain data, and they have a series of accessories, and so you can integrate a scale with BMI, and those sort of things. So, I’m a little bit in a walled garden because inside that walled garden, I have basically 30 years of heart rate data related to workouts. And obviously I wasn’t wearing it every day. I think the most important thing that’s happened over the last few years in this area is sleep data, and the introduction of sleep, and the understanding of the recovery cycle post-workout. We’ve done a great job of instrumenting what happens during a workout, whether it’s a run, or a ride, or a weight session.
Like, we’re getting better and better at that, but understanding how your body recovers from it and the role that sleep plays, the role that nutrition plays, the role that other things play, I think we’re going to see really interesting progress in this. And this is where I really want to see blood work become integrated. It’s fascinating to me how we’re only just now starting to move out of the use of blood work for purely medical diagnosis, right? And historically, we’ve viewed that big blood panel that would come back from a lab as kind of a binary thing. You’re either in range and things are normal, or you’re out of range and something must be seriously wrong. And instead it’s actually a dashboard, it’s a series of tachometers for things that are going on inside your body.
Raju: Yeah, I’m going to take that a step further. I don’t think it’s just blood work, but I agree with you. I think that we have a burgeoning space. And I say burgeoning because I feel like there’s a lot more to be done here, in terms of metrics about the body. I’ve been saying this all along, I mean, we got functional medicine coming, so you’re going to get blood work, you’re going to get urine analysis, you’re going to get gut bacteria analysis, you’re going to get genetic analysis, you’re going to get tissue samples, you’re going to get, sort of, your fluctuation in glucose through continuous glucose monitoring, you’re going to get your sleep activity, you’re going to get your stress levels being measured, you’re going to get other pieces of data. And I don’t think that we’re, sort of like, done with it.
I think there’s more to be captured so that an individual can kind of see the impact of diet, exercise, sleep on their performance to be the best you. And I’m not saying everybody’s going to be a world-class athlete here, but I think we’re going to have the tools to make ourselves incrementally better by getting this data. And I’m super excited about this, not just in terms of exercise and wellness, but also in terms of functional medicine, where we’re going to be able to address illnesses or issues that we have in ways that aren’t necessarily pharmaceutical or biopharma-driven. And so, I think this is quite interesting. I have been just, sort of, at the last, sort of, I guess a year experimenting with a lot of these tools, but I’m getting up to speed pretty quickly just because I feel like the data helps me, personally, to do two things. One is, figure out what’s helping and what’s hurting, but then also motivating myself. Because I’m a technical—I’m a geek. I love sort of optimizing anything that I get into, whether it’s conditioning, or it’s eating, or it’s like playing Magic the Gathering, you know? I love optimizing stuff. I just get off on it, so like—
Will: Yeah, we’re alike in that. But I love that you’ve gone so deep on all of this data, beyond blood, other biomarkers. I think this is a wide open area still, as far as I’m concerned. And it’s as much about the measurement and the baselining of these markers for yourself as an individual as it is about going and getting the data, right? It’s only so good as you have history of. I have 30 years of heart rate data. It’s not very interesting [laugh], but I have it. I wish I had 30 years of biomarker data. I wish I had a better understanding of how certain organ systems are functioning today relative to the way they were functioning 10 or 12 years ago.
Raju: I don’t know man. I know an actuary that would love that data [laugh]. He’d be like, oh, look at this data about Will’s heart [laugh].
Will: We’re not going to underwrite this guy.
Raju: No, don’t underwrite him. Okay, anything else you want to talk about before we move to Gatling Gun or—
Will: No, no.
Raju: Okay, fantastic. I love talking about this topic. I’m just, like, really deeply into it right now. Just thought I’d share that with listeners, and kind of, you know, if everybody has viewpoints on this, feel free to ping us on Spotify, iTunes, anyplace, or directly. Let’s move to the Gatling Gun. I love this section. So, if you had to pick one exercise equipment that you want, what’s your favorite that you would want just, like, forever?
Will: [laugh]. So, that’s a hard question to ask a rower because we live a certain amount of our life in this sport on land, on the rowing ergometer. And there is a piece of equipment that has come out over the last few years that makes it much, much more like you’re actually on the water, and a lot of it continues to advance in that area. So, there’s a concept to erg that I am, sort of like, this close to buying, but I really don’t need another piece of equipment in my home.
Raju: Okay. Okay. Okay, but pick one that you have. What’s your favorite?
Will: So, I think on balance, it is actually still the Mirror because of the diversity of classes that it brings into my home. Like, I can do a yoga workout, and a yoga session very hard, and then I can do a strength, like, a high intensity strength session, totally different instructors. It’s like, that to me is—and it’s just really well designed. So, that’s my favorite.
Raju: Okay. Mine, I’m going to just say is dumbbells. I’ll be honest with you. I know it sounds so primitive. They’re just, like, five pounds, ten pounds, fifteen pounds.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: You know, go all the way up to something astronomical, but like, I love the dumbbells. I feel like the dumbbells allow me a huge variety of exercises that I can do, and they never need to get charged.
Will: [laugh]. Yeah, you appreciate that.
Raju: They work when the power is out [laugh].
Will: Now, I know what to get you for your birthday. I’m going to get you a dumbbell in an unusual weight.
Raju: Okay [laugh].
Will: 47-and-a-half pounds.
Raju: Oh, I love that.
Will: A 47-and-a-half pound dumbbell.
Raju: It’s going to be, like, a Harry Potter.
Will: I’m going to give you one, yeah.
Raju: Platform nine-and-three-quarters.
Will: Yeah, the nine-and-a-three-quarter pound dumbbell that makes you feel really strong.
Raju: Oh, my goodness. Okay. All right, what exercise equipment that you’ve purchased is gathering dust?
Will: [laugh]. You know, there’s all this stuff I have for stretching that I don’t use. There is a really cool product that came out a couple years ago called the CastleFlexx for helping stretch your hamstrings. It basically takes the place of the old towel you would put over your toes, and, like, put the leg over your head.
Raju: [laugh]. Okay, so you bought something that replaces a towel [laugh]?
Will: So, I bought something that replaces a towel, and I don’t use either one, and that’s—I have really tight hamstrings [laugh].
Raju: Okay, fine. I have this thing… do you remember the Basu ball?
Will: Yes [laugh].
Raju: Oh, I have a Basu ball.
Will: Very nice.
Raju: I loved that thing for, like, I don’t know, a couple of days. Maybe a few months, I loved it. It was like, oh, you can do pushups on it, you can stand on it, it gives you, like, you know, like, weird balancing, it helps your core.
Will: Oh yeah.
Raju: And man, that thing is like sitting in the corner and it’s like two-thirds inflated. And my kids sometimes will drag it into the living room so they can use it as a pillow [laugh].
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Because the head just sinks perfectly into the—
Will: Oh dear.
Raju: —Basu ball.
Will: [laugh].
Raju: Yeah. So, I would say Basu ball. There’s lots of other ways to get balanced training. Favorite measurement device?
Will: Yeah, that’s easy for me. This Polar heart rate watch. I kind of live by it.
Raju: Yeah, I’m going to go with my Apple Watch. I think I mentioned it already. What’s that—have you ever heard that comedy show—I can’t remember—I don’t know the name of it, but it was like somebody had a watch and they had this app that would tell them to exercise. And they had to, like, every three minutes, it would tell them, like, “Pushups,” and you’d do, like—you would be in the meeting, and you do, like, ten pushups. And then you wait. Like, and then, “Sit-ups.” And you had to get on the floor, and do sit-ups for, like, three—I can’t remember the show, but it was hilarious. I could just see the Apple Watch going there, you know? I’m like—[laugh].
Will: Yeah, the kind of drill sergeant app. That would be—I’m not sure I need that in my life.
Raju: What measurement device do you want that you don’t have? Measurement tool?
Will: Yeah, I want something to bring all that blood work into my other platform. I want to see correlations between heart rate, and recovery, and sleep, and things that are going on in the blood and biomarker set. That I don’t have. And I don’t know when I’m going to get it.
Raju: I don’t know when you’re going to get it either, but I would like that too if they had it. I just want an accurate body comp. I talked about the Withings. It’s basically—it’s kind of cool. You pull on—like, think of it as a stick that’s sitting on top of the scale, and you pull it up and it’s got, like, a little string across it, and it sends a current through your hands, and down to your feet, and back up to your hands and feet, and it measures all of your comp.
It’s just not that accurate, and so what I have to use it as is sort of like a weekly or a monthly trend. Like, I can get, like, 2% fluctuation in my body comp on a daily basis. There’s no way I’ve lost 2% fat and gained 2% muscle in one day. Zero chance that’s happened. So like, it oscillates, and then finally you see the trend data.
I would love to get a tool for the home—I mean, I know this exists, like, the very, very high expensive tools that maybe doctors have, wellness physicians have—I’d like something that’s actually accurate, that says, like, listen, you had a hard workout, you didn’t eat enough protein, you probably didn’t get the value out of that. That would be really valuable for me. So, I’d like to see that happen. And I don’t think that’s too hard. Just got to put some… sort of, brain power behind that. Exercise app or just equipment that you really want? Not a measurement, but just an exercise application or equipment that you really want?
Will: I want something to make the nutrition part of all of this more understandable. And what I mean by that is, we’re still basically—on the food side of things, we’re still basically calorie counting. We’re looking up the calorie count of a typical sandwich or a meal that we’re having, or that 800-calorie piece of lasagna and we’re logging it. But we’re not doing anything to basically think about the constituent nutritional benefits, and to tie that in some way to, not just—like, calories is a really blunt measurement of what you’re getting when you start to break down nutrition. And I think that this opens the door to a whole ‘nother question, which we don’t have time for today, which it’s the question of supplements, and what you’re actually trying to introduce into your body to achieve certain results. And whether it’s integrating more protein into your diet or things to help you recover faster from a hard workout, nutrition is ultimately the lens that we have to look at those things through.
Raju: Yeah, that’s interesting. I would like an audio tool that adjusts my playlist automatically based on my effort.
Will: [laugh]. That is excellent.
Raju: Oh, I’m telling you, man, I use—like, that is my go-to. I play music every single time I work out. Every single time. My wife watches television, you know, cause she likes to walk.
Will: But are you just playing “Staying Alive” on repeat? Like, [singing] staying alive, staying alive—[laugh].
Raju: Oh, I got the OG, like, AC/DC, dude—
Will: Exactly.
Raju: You know, like, Thunderstruck.
Will: No, that’s my point.
Raju: Thunderstruck needs to play when I’m, like, really kind of grinding.
Will: Thunderstruck, yeah. You can’t play Thunderstruck all the time.
Raju: No. Can I play—
Will: Sometimes you need, you know, a cool down with Enya.
Raju: Yeah. A little Enya. Or maybe, like, you know, the Boston Philharmonic throwing something in there. A little Michael Buble.
Will: Buble at the end of your workout.
Raju: Yeah, no, but, like, it should—like, I have a playlist. It definitely has a variety of different, sort of, motivating tracks in it. I would love an audio tool that would sit there and say, like, your heart rate, whatever, your body biomarkers are fluctuating. You’re obviously putting in more effort here, and it puts in Thunderstruck, you know? Like, let's rock.
Will: I think that’s a great one.
Raju: Okay. Last two questions. Best fitness movie, your favorite fitness movie?
Will: This is weird. So, back in the ’80s, there was a film called American Flyers which was about competitive cycling in the US. It’s a cult film. Everybody remembers Breaking Away. Almost nobody remembers American Flyers.
It was an early hit for Kevin Costner. Ray Don Chong was in it for those of us who remember her. It’s a great story about these amateur cyclists, and it has all this information about physiological testing in it. The guy goes in for a VO2 max test, and I’d never seen anything like that when I saw that movie in the ’80s. It’s hugely inspirational for me.
Raju: Yeah. I was OG Rocky.
Will: Of course.
Raju: And I know this wasn’t in OG Rocky, but, “Eye of the Tiger.” Come on, man. That’s, like, so classic. But that was in Rocky II. That was Rocky II.
Will: It’s the most motivating.
Raju: But OG Rocky was amazingly motivating. Okay, last question. What is your favorite, or best, or the tool you use to motivate yourself to get out and go?
Will: This is weird. The calendar. The calendar is what I use because the calendar every day is an empty space, and I have to fill it with a workout. And I am pretty good at saying to myself, you got to keep the streak alive, and using that to create motivation every morning. And I do enough different things. I run some days, I do a lot of body circuits, I do some time on the bike that I can mix it up in the variety, plus just looking at the calendar, and saying, “I’ve got to fill this,” gives me the motivation I need.
Raju: Yeah. Mine is a photograph of Will Porteous.
Will: [laugh]. That will not motivate—
Raju: [laugh]. No, no, no—
Will: —that will not motivate anything.
Raju: Okay, fine. It’s not a picture of you. But you know what’s true? Not the Mirror that you have, but an ordinary mirror is phenomenal motivation for me, just because it’s like, yeah, you can see a lot of stuff on there [laugh].
Will: A lot of things that need work.
Raju: Yeah, it’s like, “Okay, get up and go, my friend. Get up and go.”
Will: You’ve done an amazing job of building fitness into your life over the last couple of years. It’s been a pleasure to watch you do that, and I know it’s been a great source of happiness for you.
Raju: Oh, my God, so happiness.
Will: I think it’s a great lesson for everyone that you can continue to fine-tune your life with fitness as you get older, and start and try new things.
Raju: Absolutely.
Will: So, thank you listeners for joining us for this health and wellness episode of RRE POV. We look forward to having you back with us again soon.
Thank you for listening to RRE POV. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at @RRE on X or rre.com, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We’ll see you next time.