USING MUSCLE OXYGEN WITH PELOTON

Since Humon’s inception, we’ve taken the habit of staying very close to our users. A few months ago, we realized that a lot of them were using the Hex purely as a Peloton accessory to help them get the most out of their workout. As a result, we spent a month reaching out to them to learn more about their use case, what they liked, what they did not like and how we could make the experience even better. We also tried it for ourselves and were truly impressed by how complementary these two products are. This short article acts as a summary of our learnings and illustrates what the “Humon for Peloton” experience could look like in the future. If you’re too lazy busy to read this, make sure to watch the short prototype video at the end and share your thoughts!

Three clear use cases came out from our interviews with Humon users. (Here’s a quick reminder of what the Humon zones stand for and what muscle oxygen is for those who need it)

I. Using Muscle Oxygen to Warm Up

We’ve already written about the benefits of warming up with muscle oxygen and that’s something that resonates with Peloton users very well. Most of the ones we interviewed reported watching their muscle oxygen values rise and plateau at the start of the workout, before starting the HIIT work. This provides an easy to understand visual representation of the body warming up and can act as a confirmation that the instructor is prescribing a long enough warm-up. We think that’s a popular use case because it prevents users from underestimating their warm up times, which is a very common mistake.

II. Using the Humon Colored Zones to Optimize Interval Training

This is the most popular use case and the most useful in our opinion! Most users interviewed explain that they’ll follow the Humon zones to guide their intervals rather than the Peloton instructor. They’ll push until they hit a red zone and wait until they exit the blue recovery zone before starting the next interval. It is impossible for the Peloton instructors to provide a personalized workout to hundreds or thousands of users streaming a class at the same time, each with varying fitness levels. The Hex complements the instructor by allowing any user to easily personalize the workout to their own body and “reach maximum efficacy” as a user reports. Using this approach, any user can re-do the same recorded workout an unlimited amount of times and get a tailored protocol every-time. It also gamifies the experience even more which makes working out even easier.

III. Using our Assessment to Plan Tomorrow’s Workout

This is the most surprising, yet very popular way that users combine both products today. After every workout with the Hex, our app provides users with a textual analysis of the workout. These few sentences will give you an indication of how optimized the training was versus your body’s capabilities that day. Several users use these recommendations to decide which Peloton class to take the next day. For example one of the users we interviewed explains: “I’ll complete a slow endurance ride if the Humon app indicates that I pushed hard and did not recovery well the day before.” We easily can see these kind of personalized analytics and recommendations be part of the Peloton experience one day.

Overall, at Humon, we strongly believe that the Hex and the data Humon provides strongly complements existing connected home fitness devices (Peloton, Hydrow, Mirror, Tonal etc…) because muscle oxygen is the only metric that can provide a personalized workout to thousands of users streaming the exact same class in real time.

In the future, rather than telling you to “push as hard as you can” your Peloton instructor might tell you to “push up to YOUR red zone” and, as a result, offer a completely personalized workout every time you train. Companies like Peloton, Hydrow or Tonal offer a cutting edge hardware product with a premium experience led by the most experienced instructors but are missing a key part of the equation: the response of the customer’s body. In our opinion, this is the missing link to provide a truly virtuous training circle to all users out there.

Here’s a quick preview of what a very straight forward “Humon for Peloton” integration could look like (listen with sound on!)

We’d love to hear your thoughts so please reach out to support@humon.io with feedback and leave your email here if you’d like to see this product come to life!

Thanks for reading.
– Humon team.

Before some of you ask, here is why heart rate could not be used to achieve the same results.