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The Mexico coach must balance his players' health with the urgency of preparing for World Cup qualifiers followed by the Confederations Cup.

This summer is so busy for the Mexico national team it's hard to keep everything straight. Saturday begins a whirlwind of a minimum of a dozen matches between now and the end of July, with that number likely to increase by at least two or three should El Tri progress in the Confederations Cup and/or the Gold Cup (which they will).

Ahead of the opening friendly in Los Angelesagainst Croatia, Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio has plenty of decisions to make, none of which is more important than what exactly to do about his players' fitness.

El Tri's dependency on Marquez an issue

There's little doubt the coach has a plan, and plenty of doubt about what exactly that plan is. Osorio isa coach so concerned about how the body responds to various factors that in March, he moved training for a home World Cup qualifier to Cuernavacanearly two hours away from Mexico City to ease his majorityEurope-based squad into the high-altitude situation. The team is stopping over in Denver to train after Saturday's friendly in L.A.on the way to the New York City area for the second friendly ahead of June's World Cup qualification matches.

"The physical demands have been exacting since Monday, we've talked about it with some of the guys," Osorio said. "They've been feeling it, but everyone understands that at the end we're going to benefit from it and we believe that we'll have a good match with the preparation in the altitude."

Osorio also claimed the team is still looking to get a result against Croatia, saying he's going to put out a group that gives Mexico"every chance to win."That always is Osorio's first stated goal to win games. To be fair to the coach, he's done pretty well in achieving that goal, with a 15-1-3 record since taking the helm. But it will be as easy to forget about a loss to Croatia in Saturday's friendly as it's been difficult to forget about last summer's defeat to Chile. What will matter is how the team comes out of these friendly matches.

it's not even as simple as the old, "Well, you want everyone to come out of this friendly without an injury." Sure, that's true, but exactly how Mexico achieves that will be tough.

Osorio has a group of Europe-based players in a range of situations. Some, like Hector Moreno, Andres Guardado and Carlos Vela are coming off long campaigns with lots of minutes. Others, like Carlos Salcedo, Diego Reyes and even Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez saw their time limited with their clubs.

Then there are the domestic-based players, some of whom played as recently as last week and others who have been in the offseason for weeks. Some are still with their clubs, with Chivas and Tigres playing the second leg of the final Sunday and LA Galaxy forward Giovani dos Santos continuing the regular season.

Meet the man getting the Estadio Chivas field ready for the final

"As has always been our practice during our time here, we're going to take advantage of these two preparation matches to give an opportunity to the players who are on the way to strengtheningthemselves in the national team," Osorio said. "We're basically going to mix (the groups) together in the best way, keeping in mind that the two games are ahead of two qualifiers, which for us continue to be the most important."

The Colombian coach could use this first match to rest some of his European playersand give opportunities to players like Pachuca midfieldersJorge "Burrito" Hernandez and Erick Gutierrez, who have yet to see regular time with the national team. His words hint at that, but even so with only 22 players available he's going to have to use some players who have just arrived from Europe.

Finding the right balance and making sure neither fatigue nor the sapping effects of altitude will be a high-wire act for Osorio and his staff during the next two weeks. It would be very easy to get it wrong and have players suffer injuries or simply be out of gas when they need to have a full tank in the qualifier against the United States or in the Confederations Cup matches in Russia. The first step comes Saturday, and the coach will be watching closely to make sure his players are at their best when it really matters later this summer.

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Mexico national team: Osorio facing key fitness decisions in friendly ... - Goal.com

At 6 foot, 1 inch, with a chiseled physique and Popeye arms sculpted by heavily stacked barbells, youd think Bryce Mitchell was preordained to be a personal trainer. Not so. About 10 years ago, he was muscular but rail thin from a running obsession.

He ditched his running shoes for weightlifting, changed his diet and soon his body became the perfect advertising mechanism for a boutique fitness business he didnt have ... or want.

After a year working what he calls a dead-end job at RadioShack, he decided to get a personal training certificate, because it was a constant topic of conversation with strangers.

People would talk to me about working out all the time. All. The. Time. Id be out eating somewhere and have to put the fork down to talk, said Mitchell, now 33. At the time, he laughed it off. He was flattered but politely refused all requests to train others. He couldnt imagine he could make a living doing it and hadnt even heard the term boutique gym until recently.

Like the boutique hotel market, boutique gyms are smaller and more exclusive than regular gyms. They tend to focus on specialized training, but the cachet of membership comes with being part of a tribe, and being in the know about a best-kept secret or stellar new workout.

Participation in boutiques doubled from 21 percent in 2013 to 42 percent in 2014, according to research from the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association.

And boutique chains added new studios at a rate of 450 percent per year between 2010 and 2014, according to the fitness-focused investment firm Piper Jaffray. That makes them the fastest-growing part of the annual $22 billion U.S. health club industry, according to the investment bank.

The boutique experience is meant to be intimate, trendy and intense a blast of training that releases enough endorphins to carry people through the rest of their day with a sense of accomplishment. Mitchell offers thunderous claps and cheers to spur on a group class during his Manic Monday class (a class that some takers have dubbed Murder Mondays). As he laughs, they groan. Its almost over. Come on now. You got this! he tells them.

Mitchells small fitness studio is self-funded, and he jokes that for the price of the studio maybe he should set up a bed in the back. But nationally, private equity money has been pouring into boutique fitness businesses as workouts are branded and a large population of fitness enthusiasts sustain a $3.4 trillion global wellness market, according to the Global Wellness Institute in Miami.

In a nation where two out of three people are classified as overweight or obese, its easy to scoff at the viability of a fitness craze.

But Mary Ellen Bryan of Central Studio in the Central West End explains that people arent just looking to attain a beach body. Many are looking for an energetic outlet for stress, injury prevention or recovery, and perhaps staving off the need for medicinal health interventions.

Her four-year-old studio includes about five multipurpose rooms and a roster of 50 Pilates, dance and fitness classes a week, many branded as Central exclusives. She said there is no trick to maintaining a boutique fitness business, you just have to care about your students, physically, mentally and spiritually. She estimates that there are about 150 new and returning students each month, but her database includes at least 3,000.

Although national boutique fitness growth comes from strong neighborhood support, both Bryan and Mitchell say that they have clients who drive past a handful, if not dozens, of gyms and fitness offerings to work out at their studios.

In the area of Brentwood and Highway 40 (Interstate 64), there are more than a dozen fitness offerings within a short jog of each other Shred415, Core3, The Refinery, Studio Element Personal Training, CrossFit St. Louis, St. Louis Spinning, Iron Tribe Fitness, CrossFit 26, Club Fitness, Bar Method St. Louis, Complete Fitness Results, Club Pilates, ATT Evolution, Stone Strength Systems and the Mid-County Family YMCA.

It benefits from being a highly trafficked crossroads region, but each facility fills a niche from surfboard workouts to ballet barre fitness.

Roxanne Borger, director of client education for MindBody Inc., a company based in San Luis Obispo, Calif., that provides business management software for the wellness services industry, says most business resources say ignore the competition but keep them in your periphery.

You need to be aware of what your competition is doing and how people will be comparing you, she said. The biggest priority is finding what you do that is uniquely excellent in your community, although that might not be apparent up front.

Small studios dont need to fear huge chains, but they have to pay attention, she said.

Private equity firm TPG Growth, known for investing in Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc., took a stake in Club Pilates, the biggest chain of Pilates studios in the U.S., with 179 active studios, including one in Chesterfield and the location in Brentwood. More than 300 other cities have been identified as locations opening in the very near future, according to the Club Pilates website.

In March, the first local CycleBar, 1657 Clarkson Road, opened in Chesterfield and soon after a Creve Coeur franchise opened at 11625 Olive Boulevard. Founded in 2004, the Cincinnati-based CycleBar began franchising two years ago and now has 122 open studios but boasts that more than 200 new locations are in the pipeline nationwide. About 100 have or are opening this year, according to Jordin Cooper, CycleBar director of marketing in an interview with the Post-Dispatch earlier this year. Locally, two other locations are in the works.

And though boutique fitness runs the gamut from international to nascent, the common thread includes creating a niche and providing a thrilling experience.

Mitchell said he wasnt sure he was up to the challenge of joining the fitness industry, but now he understands it. At first, he said, I didnt want to (train others). I thought Id get burned out. But he says that training others gives him a rush of adrenaline he never expected.

One day, he said, it just clicked that I could do this as a business, soon after he found that owning a gym was viable. One of his first clients owns the space that he leases for New Era Fitness at 3165 Morganford Road. The two initially struck up a conversation while walking down the street together, his future landlord started confessing his health goals and desire to drop some weight. At the time, Mitchell had just begun to train people out of his Spartan garage setup.

By the time he was ready to open New Era Fitness last year, he had built up a solid clientele, including his landlord and his wife.

Its a common boutique fitness trajectory.

People are always looking for something to inspire them, said Victoria Lyon, who teaches a class called Pound at Central Studio. The lower-cost class starts at $5 compared to private Pilates sessions at the studio that can cost as much as $65.

For Pound, participants get weighted drumsticks that they use to rhythmically strike the floor and click together in the air as they squat, lunge and bounce to the beat of pop rock music.

Lyon, who is also a Zumba instructor, said, I call the drumsticks weapons of mass distraction because it gives people this liberty. Its permission to get loud that adults dont usually get. I think people come back for that and the sweat.

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Installer Mike Hamilton puts one of the machines together. He also tests new equipment for his company, Life Fitness Cybex.(Photo: Submitted)

In the early days of cardio equipment, repetition and fixed resistance was pretty much the standard for workouts.

Today, these machines bristle with technical innovations that can emulate hill climbs, downslopes, various posture choices and even transport users via screens to American and overseas roads in very realistic virtual reality fashion.

This past week, The Greater Marco Family YMCA took possession of a truckload of brand-new workout machines, and perhaps nobody was more excited than the Ys healthy living director, Deborah Passero.

Theyre biomechanically engineered, Passero said of two new Life Fitness ellipticals, which were joined in the Ys big L-shaped fitness room by a new upright bike, four recumbent bikes and five treadmills.

Y member Keely Stiner tests out one of the new treadmills earlier this week at the Y.(Photo: Submitted)

They have a true ellipse, egg-like shape that can be easier on joints at whatever level and resistance, said Drew Lamontagna of the supplying company, Life Fitness and Cybex out of Orlando. And the recumbent bikes have embedded TVs as well as handrails, he said. Its the same basic system as the ones the Y (replaced with new-lease machines), except that the technology has improved.

Working out on one of the new treadmills early this week, Y member Keely Stiner said they were indeed similar to the older models, but that she liked the smoothness that comes with new ones.

Ill be watching Law & Order on Saturday mornings here, Stiner said.

Earlier, while putting together the new machines after delivery, installer Mike Hamilton of Life Fitness Cybex said he enjoys his job because he also has to test the very latest equipment that comes onto the market.

Thats obvious from his excellent physical shape, which is an endorsement for the equipment itself.

Unloading takes place outside the Ys workout gym.(Photo: Submitted)

The Ys Passero said the assorted video riding courses available to elliptical users will likely be a boon.

They can go to Utah or Italy. They can choose mountainous courses and wonder whats going to be around the bend. The nice thing is that nobody will get bored, she said.

Passero added that the treadmills were also chosen with safety in mind. They are lower to the ground, providing ease of mounting to less agile people still keen to work out.

For information on what the workout room has to offer, plus the assorted Y programs and activities for youth and adults, call 394-3144 or visit marcoymca.org.

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Work(out) & play: Marco Y brings in truckload of new fitness machines - Marconews

In recent years, the travel industry has witnessed a rise of fitness-related themed trips that take adventurous travelers to a multitude of destinations around the world. Ketanga Fitness is one such small business that has ridden the trend and has taken that concept one step further by adding exceptional food and drink offerings into the mix.

The fitness-travel company was founded by Stacy Schwartz, a born-and-raised Manhattanite with a passion for wellness and travel, and it all began when she was looking for an all-inclusive vacation that incorporated fitness. I have always had a love for seeing the world and keeping active while doing it, but I never imagined I would end up making a career out of it, Schwartz told The Daily Meal.

While Ketanga is still in its infancy, it is rolling out a slew of fitness-related travel events and/or retreats. Next on the docket for summer is a Pilates & Pinot themed event in the North Fork of Long Island on July 28-30. The weekend-long trip will include a series of exercise classes ranging from Pilates to yoga to hiking, with many of the classes taking place in the breathtaking vineyards of the North Fork's wine country.

A few of the area's best vineyards like Palmer and Martha Clara will be on the agenda and will serve as the beautiful backdrop for several different Pilates classes. Fitness coach Jenna Muller will be leading the retreat and the headquarters will be the the Duncan Inn. The program also includes more social activities like a biking excursion to Shelter Island.

The retreats participants will also be provided with delicious and healthy dining options in the North Fork as a way of sampling the local cuisine and supporting small businesses, including featured dinners at Alure, Main Road Biscuit Co., and Jedidiah Hawkins Inn.

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Ketanga Fitness: Where Travel and Wine Meet Fitness - The Daily Meal

New Age Fitness owner Matt Odin said he is installing The Blade, a $150,000 hockey skating treadmill that is used for conditioning and skills training at his health club.

The skaters lace up actual skates, Odin said. Its a synthetic ice.

New Age Fitness is the first gym in Jamestown to offer The Blade, he said. Until now hockey players had to travel to Bismarck or Fargo to use this equipment.

There are around 200 or more hockey players of all ages in Jamestown and the surrounding area, Odin said. Younger players are learning skating fundamentals, while high school and college athletes work on conditioning, strength and endurance, he said.

Odin said he and Shane Moran, a personal trainer at New Age Fitness with a background in hockey, developed the program with consultation from coaches at the University of North Dakota.

My feeling is they (UND) have one of the best programs in the nation and so who better to take advice from, Odin said.

Skaters will be hooked onto a harness to protect themselves from falling on the treadmill, he said. Trainers observe the skaters in motion to help them later with specific conditioning tips, he said.

My interest comes from a personal training background, Odin said. If we notice a lack of balance or stability then we can work on that with the dryland training and make them stronger.

The goal is to create players who skate as strong at the end of the third period as they did in the first and second periods, he said. Endurance training, conditioning and perfecting skating technique can do that, he said.

Endurance is a huge thing, he said.

The treadmill will be available to use all year. During hockey season Odin said he hopes to conduct team training with Jamestown High School and the University of Jamestown. The 50 square feet of gliding surface makes it possible to use a stick and even shoot a puck toward a net from the treadmill, he said.

The Blade will be in operation by early June. For more information, call New Age Fitness at 952-7700 or visit the gym at 607 13th St NE No. 2.

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New Age Fitness adds ice skating treadmill - Jamestown Sun

Brie Bellagave birth to her beautiful baby girl Birdie Joe Danielson a little more than two weeks ago and she's documenting her journey with motherhood every step of the way on social media.

In a recent selfie, the Total Divas star posted a photo of herself proudly showing off her body next to gym equipment.

"17 days since I've given birth and I have zero shame in my postpartum belly!!"

The new mama added, "Graced with some stretch marks and 20 more pounds to lose, I'm finally able to start a little cardio. Join me on my journey to getting back my pre-pregnancy body. It's gonna be a long road but I'm ready."

Brie has been posting about her new life with her little bundle of joy on Instagram for the world to see and last week was no exception.

She shared a selfie after breastfeeding her firstborn and wrote, "Breastfeedingliterally my most favorite thing ever but wow it's exhausting. I wouldn't change it for the world."

And after celebrating her very first Mother's Day, she opened up about how much becoming a mom to Birdie has changed her perspective on, well, just about everything.

"I still can't stop staring at her. Truly the greatest gift you could ever receive. I thank the Lord so much for this precious little angel."

After giving birth on May 9, E! News exclusively revealed that Birdie weighed in at 8 pounds, 10 ounces and measured 21 inches long.

"There is no better feeling in the world than meeting your daughter. I can't even express the overwhelming joy and love that Bryan and I are feeling," Brie told us in a statement shortly after welcoming her first child. "Now we know what parents mean about the love you feel when you first meet your child. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers on the safety of Birdie coming into this world."

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Brie Bella Talks About Fitness Journey After Giving Birth: ''I Have ... - E! Online

SHERMAN, Texas (KXII) -- A Sherman gym closed their doors after the landlord claims they haven't paid rent in two years and owe nearly $30,000.

Sherman Anytime Fitness members said the landlord's attorney came to the gym Thursday, told everyone to leave, posted notices and changed the locks. The gym is now shut down, but members said all of this came without any warning.

"I'm in shock just total shock, didn't see this coming at all," Sherman Anytime Fitness member Nan Walsh said.

"I had no idea that anything was that serious," Sherman Anytime Fitness member Romy Andrews said.

The signs the attorney placed on the door state the gym hadn't paid rent since May 2015 and owes $29,884.

"The fact they owe all that money is really kind of a shame," Michael West said.

MMA trainer Michael West coaches at Anytime Fitness every day and said he was not aware of the gym's debt.

"It's not a direct reflection of the trainers and the coaches, it's more about the owners and the business," West said.

An Anytime Fitness in this same location off Highway 75 was shut down eight years ago under similar circumstances.

Even though the doors are locked, trainer Anthony Boling didn't let that stop him and coached his clients in the parking lot Friday.

"I'm disappointed but nothing's gonna stop me from getting into better shape," Andrews said, who trains with Boling.

An email from headquarters states members have two weeks to transfer their membership to Denison or Anna, or they can cancel if paid in-full by calling the owner, Jay Rajpal.

The trainers and members said they haven't been able to get a hold of Rajpal. News 12 also called him numerous times and has not heard back.

"We're in the people business, and if you're not taking care of your people, that's a big problem and that's where Jay has left everybody kind of high and dry with stuff," West said.

"Upset, hurt, angry, felt bad for Michael, felt bad for all the people that rely on him and depend on him," Walsh said, who trains with West.

Trainers West and Boling said the gym closing is a new beginning for them.

They are already talking with the landlord and hope to reopen under a new name and with a full-scale MMA facility in the next few weeks.

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Sherman fitness center shuttered over rent flap - KXII-TV

Alexa Renee, KXTV 6:36 PM. PDT May 26, 2017

If you rely on your fitness tracker to help you decide whether to eat that extra slice of pizza or not, you may want to find a different way to count your calories.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicinepublished a study in theJournal of Personalized Medicine this week, which looked at the accuracy of seven fitness devices.

The team found six of the seven fitness trackers measured heart rate within five percent. However, none of the fitness trackers accurately tracked the amount of calories burned.

The team evaluated fitness tracker accuracy by having a diverse group of 60 volunteers test the Apple Watch, Basis Peak, Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, Mio Alpha 2, PulseOn and the Samsung Gear S2. The study found some devices to be more accurate than others, and that factors such as skin color and body mass index affected measurements.

The researchers found even the most accurate device was still off by 27 percent when measuring calories, while the most inaccurate tracker was off by 93 percent.

People are basing life decisions on the data provided by these devices, said Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of cardiovascular medicine, of genetics and of biomedical data science, in a news release.

The issue is, consumer fitness devices aren't held to the same standard as medical-grade devices.

Non-medical fitness trackers should still stay within the 10 percent error margin to be considered accurate, according to the study.

The heart rate measurements performed far better than we expected, said Ashley. but the energy expenditure measures were way off the mark. The magnitude of just how bad they were surprised me.

Researchers don't know why the calorie count was so off on all of the devices but it's possible, since each tracker uses its own algorithm for calculating energy expenditure, that the algorithm isn't reading people well. Calorie measurements are based on people's height, weight, fitness level and other unique factors, which an algorithm tries to guess.

In contrast, heart rate is measured directly.

The research team is working on the next phase of the study where they will evaluate volunteers on their day-to-day activities instead of in the lab on treadmills.

2017 KXTV-TV

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Study: Fitness trackers don't accurately count calories - ABC10

Researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine have found that popular fitness trackers such as Fitbit generally record accurate heart rates, but the accuracy with which they measure calories burned is significantly worse.

In addition to a paper recently published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine, the team has created a website to make the data more accessible and included an option for laypeople to upload their own devices data.

Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Genetics and Biomedical Data Science Euan Ashleys team of 60 volunteers tested seven different devices: Apple Watch, Basis Peak, Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, Mio Alpha 2, PulseOn and the Samsung Gear S2. Other paper authors included graduate student Anna Shcherbina, visiting assistant professor Mikael Mattsson and senior research scientist Daryl Waggott.

Although six out of seven devices recorded heart rate with an error margin of less than 5 percent, the devices had a wide range of accuracies for recording energy expenditure, with the most accurate device off by an average of 27 percent and the least accurate device off by 93 percent.

The results lead one to question the usefulness of the devices data for users seeking to make informed decisions, Ashley said. Although manufacturers may test devices, consumers often do not know how the testing process occurred or how to interpret companies claims.

The 31 women and 29 men participating in the study wore the seven trackers while using a stationary bike or treadmill. To accurately test heart and metabolic rates, the researchers used medical-grade electrocardiographs and an instrument that measures oxygen and carbon dioxide in breath, which accurately portrays energy expenditure.

The heart rate measurements performed far better than we expected,but the energy expenditure measures were way off the mark, Ashley told Stanford Medicine.The magnitude of just how bad they were surprised me.

Ashleys team did not reach conclusions as to why the devices were so bad at measuring calories burned, but Shcherbina noted that each device has a particular algorithm for relating movement to energy expenditure. The devices measure heart rates directly, but the energy expenditure algorithms seem to have a wide margin for improvement, researchers said.

My take on this is that its very hard to train an algorithm that would be accurate across a wide variety of people because energy expenditure is variable based on someones fitness level, height [and] weight, Shcherbina said.

Researchers plan to implement the study in a day-to-day context in which participants wear their devices during normal activity and exercise outside the lab. The same medical-grade instruments will be used to record participants heart rate and energy expenditure data, but researchers hope the results will illuminate the devices capabilities and limitations in a broader variety of settings.

Contact Fiona Kelliher at fionak at stanford.edu.

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Fitness trackers vary widely in accuracy, researchers find - The Stanford Daily

Singer Taylor Swift is seen coming out of a gym in Soho on September 7, 2016 in New York City. Raymond HallGC Images/Getty Images

For nearly six years, Selina Tobaccowala, the president and chief technology officer at online survey startup SurveyMonkey, never exercised. A mother of two, she was overwhelmed with the demands of her job and her family, and a 20 mile commute from San Francisco.

Then tragedy happened in 2015. Her friend, boss and mentor, Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, suddenly died from a heart problem while on vacation in Mexico.

Tobaccowala realized she had to start paying more attention to her health and exercising more. But the demands from her professional and personal life were still the same. Tobaccowala, who co-founded online invite pioneer Evite with Al Lieb in 1998, and later sold it to media conglomerate IAC, also began getting the startup bug again. She teamed with Lieb, who had recently lost 30 pounds using a new exercise and diet routine, to brainstorming ideas about encouraging people exercise.

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Their brainchild is Gixo, a personalized fitness app that features live audio and video classes to its paying users, who are subscribed to the app. It essentially turns phones into virtual gyms, according to Tobaccowala.

The company, which debuted to the public on Thursday, has raised $3.7 million in funding from Greylock Partners, with Cowboy Ventures and xSeed Capital.

For Tobaccowala and Lieb, the goal was to create an easy way for people to exercise in at home, in their backyards, or in parks without breaking the bank. "We thought about how to use technology to create a new way for people to exercise and is accessible to a larger demographic," she said in an interview with Fortune.

The app provides more than 20 exercise classes daily, from 15 minutes to 40-minutes long, in a range of intensities. They all use a mix of walking or running and strength training using the participants' own body weight as resistance. Gixo starts at $24 monthly, or $19 monthly for people who pay for an entire year of unlimited classes. By comparison, high-end gym memberships can cost up to $250 per month excluding initiation fees. SoulCycle, a chain of popular spinning studios, costs at least $30 per class, not including rental fees for cycling shoes.

Gixo's classes are primarily done via audio, so all users need are headphones and mobile phones. Because all classes are live, coaches can give users personalized feedback after the workouts, by seeing data like steps burned, which is tracked through the phone. Tobaccowala says that users can report their reps and integrate heart rate monitors with the app, and coaches will give feedback based on this data. Gixo even hired a DJ to create custom music compilations for their classes.

LinkedIn founder and Greylock investor Reid Hoffman, who has backed the likes of Facebook, sits on the company's board and was immediately impressed by Lieb and Tobaccowala's drive to make exercise accessible and cost-friendly to the masses.

"It's about how do we get health to hundreds of millions of people," Hoffman said. "This product can make a difference in the scale of human life."

Fitness is a massive industry. In the U.S. alone, people spend $30 billion annually on health and fitness clubs, according to research firm IBISworld. Because of the huge amount of money, there's a tremendous amount of competition. Not only will Gixo compete with gym chains Crunch Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness, but it will also go up against many of the technology upstarts that are tackling the same market including Aaptiv and MoveWith. Beach Body offers a line of video workouts that can be watched over the internet. There's also Peloton, which brings spinning classes to users' homes via an internet connected bike.

Tobaccowala acknowledged that there is plenty of competition, but she believes her startup's lower prices and personalized attention will help it compete.

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Fitness app Gixo takes on Equinox and Crunch | Fortune.com - Fortune

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