Adam Torres and James Richey discuss the Las Vegas Investor Conference.
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Show Notes:
Listen to the Las Vegas Investor Conference coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and James Richey, Founder of JouleFit, explore JouleFit and the Las Vegas Investor Conference event.
About James Richey
James Richey, the founding member of JouleFit, is a mechanical engineer and a visionary in the integration of technology and fitness. His diverse background includes roles as CFO and COO in a SaaS startup, expertise in robotic engineering, and a reputation as a turnaround specialist with a knack for efficient accounting system structuring. Richey’s passion for biohacking and wellness is evident in his experimentation with over 30 biometric devices, advocating a holistic approach to health that includes nutrition and various therapies.
About JouleFit
JouleFit is a destination gym powered by force-matching robotics and AI that simplifies and maximizes fitness.
In 15 minutes, work out on our proprietary fitness circuit. JouleFit dynamically matches your effort in a series of push/pull exercises that take your muscles to failure. Get the results of your best workout in a fraction of the time
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and today I am in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m at JouleFit and the guest on my show today is James Ritchie. He’s the founder of JouleFit. So quick story, James and I met originally at A4M. We also met at the Las Vegas Investor Conference and he told me about this gym.
He said, Adam, you got to come in. It’s amazing. You’re going to learn something. You’re going to, we’re going to take over the, the industry. And I’m like, what’s this guy talking about? All right, let’s go. Let’s find out. I just did a workout. I had to take a little rest, a little pause, but I’m back. And man, this was an outstanding workout and we’re going to get into what I went through today.
And first off, James, welcome to the show, man. Good to finally be here and see the digs. Thank you. Great to have you guys. So first off, how did you come up with this concept? Like, and, and, and explain a little bit more about dual fit and how it works, because I just went through the workout and man, I’m, I’m hurting in a good way, in a good way.
My background is engineering. So I built assembly lines much more complicated than this for like 25 years. I was always interested in fitness and at some point I wanted to work on the interaction between a human and a robotic arm. When you go into a gym, gyms really haven’t changed that much in a hundred years.
So, when I had these robotic actuator arms that you see behind you, I was using these already. And now I wanted to interact with a human. So, why not replace the weight stacks in a gym? So, what we’re doing is, we’ve got a five machine automated circuit. You go through low row, chest press, pull down, shoulder press, and leg press.
In 15 minutes, It’s actually ten and a half. I take your entire body to failure. And the secret is we’re matching your force in real time over the range of motion. So I can do more in one ninety second set than you can do in five to ten sets at a gym. So we’re giving you a very effective maximal dose.
Yeah. One of the things I liked too, when I was going through it, so each different exercises, you didn’t have to lift any weights off. You weren’t dealing with any bars, even pulling a pin, putting an opinion, like nothing like that. Like it was just. It was seamless. Like I went through it and it was a legit 10 and a half minutes.
And by the end of that, from starting to finish, I was spent. I’m like on that last rep on the leg press, I’m like, man, I’m done with this. So now I’m also thinking about how you were thinking about this. So you weren’t thinking about how to. Create a contraption to torture humans, right? I’m thinking of this engineer, like how can I like robotic arms?
Like in all sincerity, like you really maximized what people could get out of a workout in the smallest amount of time. Like I would expect an engineer mind to come up with that. Like go further like in the testing. I see where we’re at today. But how did it start? Well, where was the some of the first machines that you created to like now?
We built two prototypes originally, as all startups should go, this started in a garage. We built two prototypes first. If you go into a gym, we took a look at gyms, and I’ve always been involved in fitness, the people who are successful in a gym either have a lot of knowledge, they’re trainers or some professional athletes or college athletes, and the only other people who have really good success Have that personal trainer.
Yeah. So it’s a knowledge or a trainer. So what we wanted to do is create a system where you don’t have to know anything. The machine automatically adjusts to your range of motion. The seat adapts. It’s gamified. Yeah. You’re competing against your best workout in real time. for motivation. So it’s as simple as push or pull.
That is all you have to know to be successful and to become muscularly fit. And you mentioned something about like not being able to really hurt yourself like because of the push and pull and because of the like talk about that a little bit like how somebody maybe with free weights can potentially overdo it or something happen versus this and like kind of just the inner inner like safety that’s built into it.
Yeah, there’s a couple pieces here. When you go into a gym, you can always drop a weight on your foot. Of course, of course. You also have momentum. When you start moving a weight and try to stop it, now you’ve got, you could have joint issues. So what we’ve done is the machine Matches you exactly, you have to be pushing it to actuate it.
So if you’re not putting any force on it, it doesn’t move. It just stood still. And I noticed that when I was doing one of the exercises, you’re like, Adam, you have to keep on. I’m like, Oh, I thought that was the like contract. No, you keep pushing Adam. And I’m like, Oh, okay. Well, I didn’t know. Come on. So by doing that, we can allow you to safely fail.
When that weight’s coming back at you on the eccentric or the negative, you can go to failure. And as soon as you fail, the machine stops, you’re not going to drop a weight on you. You don’t have to have a spotter, although we will have a professional trainer encouraging you. So we’ve got the safety built in and the good thing is it doesn’t matter if you’re a professional athlete.
Yeah. Or you’re a 95 year old senior, you can still do this workout and you can do it safely now for everybody that’s watching this. You’re not, you probably can’t see him in the frame, but another person was here doing the workout too. And speaking of needing a professional trainer, so Colton Anderson was here doing it.
He pushed, he went hard. I like to think I helped him in his workout when I was encouraging him with my banter on, you know, pushing and pulling and not giving up on those last reps. How do you feel about that? No, that’s the reason we will have a professional trainer, that human interaction. We still want that part of the professional trainer, of course, even though the machines, the knowledge, the counting, that’s all done for you.
But that human interaction, you have, and speaking of professionals, you have professional bodybuilders, you have elite forces like talk, talk about some of the people that have been on these machines. Cause it’s insane. Yeah. We’re, we’re targeting people who don’t have time. Those are professionals who don’t have the time.
to spend eight hours in the gym a week. So we’re replacing that with two 15 minute sessions. But in testing this, we’ve had professional trainers, professional boxers, UFC fighters, NFL players. So it doesn’t matter whether you can give it 10 pounds or you can give it. 1200 pounds. We’ve got equipment that matches you and matches you where you’re at.
And there’s a component of this that’s like, well, with anything that’s mental, right? And so like not giving up and pushing through, like, talk about what you’ve seen, as you’ve seen on these machines. Who wins? No one’s beat the machines yet. And that’s an ongoing joke. But what this does is there, there is a neurological component.
Whenever you’re When you have a weight coming back at you or the machine, there’s a negative where you’re, you have to fire muscles to slow that weight down. And by doing that, like the first time that your friend worked out on that negative, he’s probably working muscle fibers that he’s never worked in his entire life.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re an elite athlete, you’re going to get those fibers. And when you’re working fibers you’ve never worked before, neurologically, you’ve got to fire those motor units. So we’re also adding additional muscle fibers to your repertoire when you’re working out. And then if you notice, there’s, there’s a pain tolerance when you’re pushing it to the wall, it’s a little bit painful over time, your pain tolerance increases.
So what you saw today, you won’t always see that. And you talked about, and you mentioned the gamification component of it. Maybe talk about where we’re at today and like just some of the things you have planned in the future for the gamifying part of it. Sure. Currently, every time you work out on a gamified monitor in front of you, you compete against your personal best.
So you always know what that level you need to get to is. Over time, we’re taking that one step further with the data. We’re going to allow you with everyone in any demographic, whether it’s your age group, whether it’s your weight class. And then we’re also going to allow you to handicap your maximum scores based on the last three workouts.
That means you can come in with anyone that’s stronger or weaker and have competitions that, that day. So we’re doing as much as we can to keep you interested. We’re gamifying the workout. And then when we open in a, When we open the gyms, we’re actually going to be working out against a video wall. And on this video wall, you’re going to be working out on the beach.
You can be working out on the mountains in real time streamed video. Wow, so if you think about it, it’s kind of almost like a hybrid of the normal gym, Peloton, and maybe some of these other concepts, in terms of gamifying, I mean, to where there’s going to be communities built around it. You can see each other’s numbers.
Am I off on that, like some of the visions? No, that’s, that’s exactly, we’re developing a community, and eventually this community will have. Not only the competition and the interaction, but you’ll be able to vote on where, if you want to work out on the beach, you want to work out in the mountains and based on the number of votes, that’s where you’re going to work out that day.
Yeah. And in terms of, you mentioned there’d be like kind of rankings and different things, maybe weight classes or other things. Yeah, we are going to have world championship belts on each piece of equipment based on UFC weight classes. And there’s probably an obvious undertone there, but we want to give, for those who want to compete, we want to give you the ability.
To see where you rank in your local town, in the United States, and eventually the world. And there’s going to be a pod, we’re going to, we’re going to have to get, speaking of gamifying, um, I’m going to put in my hat in the ring for the top podcaster that, on a machine, that went to Michigan State, that is named Adam, that whatever I got to do to get to number one, we’re going to create a niche of one, but I’m getting to number one because I want my own belt too.
I’m going for the championship, okay? Very good. All right, James. Well, first off, Matt, thank you for welcoming us into your gym. Thank you for the workouts. I’m going to be coming back here whenever I go to Las Vegas. Like this thing was so easy. And the fact that I got it done in 10 minutes, it’s right, not too far from the strip.
It was quick in out. I mean, obviously we’re doing the interview now, but it really was a solid 12 minutes. It was amazing. How do people that are at home right now that want to kind of follow the journey, maybe they want to get on the machine. They want to work out. Like, how do people follow up? How do they learn more?
Right now you can go to joulefit. ai and there’s a contact page there and you can reach out to me. Fantastic. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the link, head right on over and check it out. And I know there’s a forum on there and some other things you can fill out.
Just tell them Mission Matters sent you and James, man, this has been a lot of fun for everybody at home. Hit that subscribe, hit that follow button. By the way, there’s going to be some more stuff planned for, for jewel fit in this collaboration. I’m thinking about maybe coming here. I might have to compete with some of these bodybuilders and not just joking, but we’re going to have some fun with this and we’re going to start creating some more content around this.
James, thank you for welcoming me. I appreciate it. Thank you. My pleasure.