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Jay Blahnik wants to help you stay healthy and energetic. This may not be particularly surprising considering he is Apple’s vice president of fitness technology. But what may be a little more unexpected is that he doesn’t really care how you do things.
He doesn’t care whether he works out in a class or on his own. If you want to join people virtually, you can use Apple’s Fitness+, but if you don’t, you can still track your workouts on your Apple Watch. He doesn’t mind you working out at home or in the gym. The Fitness+ streaming service includes classes available for both. He won’t necessarily care if he finds out you’re ready to move on to another fitness service. He just wants you to exercise.
That spirit of positivity and inclusion probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen Blahnik at work, such as when he appeared on stage at Apple events to introduce new fitness techniques. And for anyone who’s used his Fitness+, the streaming service that Blahnik helped build and was built to be as comfortable as possible from the start, this won’t be new.
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“The launch of Fitness+ over three years ago was rooted entirely in one simple idea. Its north star was: “Can we create the most welcoming and inclusive fitness service on the planet?” ?”Everything we do is built around that idea,” he says independent person.
As well as Fitness+, Blahnik’s team is also responsible for the Activity app on the iPhone and the Workout app on the Apple Watch, as well as other fitness technologies built into both of these products. One guiding principle in building these is to “build great features that satisfy people where they are and inspire them to build healthy habits.” It’s about “making sure everything we do is welcoming and inspiring,” he says. “In the health and fitness field, that can be very scary for people.
It starts with encouraging people to be a little more active than they are now. Move goals on Apple Watch measure everything, including brisk walking, so you can encourage people to move around a little more. A few years ago, Apple launched the Watch Ultra, which was a complete reversal of its predecessors. It’s made for “ocean explorers and people who really want to push the limits even further” and features the biggest workout redesign ever. Since its release, the app has also aimed to highlight exercises that push you beyond your limits.
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The spectrum may not be as clear-cut as it seems. When we think of beginners, we associate people who are trying to be active, but it also includes people who want to start doing something else. For example, a runner who wants to take up yoga or a hardcore spin fan who wants to take care of themselves. Their mental health also improves through mindfulness.
Of course, there are dangers in spreading too much. If you offer something to everyone, you run the risk of offering nothing to anyone. Blahnik says Fitness+ is now the world’s largest library of ultra-high-resolution health and fitness content. That means you have a very easy choice. With so much choice, how does Apple ensure consistency and coherence in its services?
“We’ve always said we need easy access to where we need to go,” he points out, for example, to filtering systems that can quickly reduce the number of options. You can choose length, tempo, instructor, and more, and instantly delete anything you don’t need. “Filters make it easy to reduce your library if you know a little bit about what you need.”
“But for those who are new, we are constantly working with the service’s editors to ensure that what is most interesting at that moment appears on the appropriate shelves,” he says. “Give us more of what you do. It gives us an opportunity to try new things that are commensurate with what we’ve done before.” Apple tries to highlight hot moments that it finds particularly interesting. There is. He points to a recent walk with Martin Luther King’s daughter Bernice King that was launched to coincide with Black History Month, and Apple also released a new video with Joe Wicks.
“We are always adding both a human and digital flavor,” he says. And you can see that the big theme for us is to make sure that the service remains personalized even as it grows even larger. That way, you can easily open it, feel like you’re inside the service, and do the following: Find what you need. ”
Fitness+ launched in December 2020 when people were both working and working out from home. The timing seemed perfect, but it was more luck than choice. “It takes him over 10 months to build something like that. We’ve been working on it for years,” Blahnik says. Apple was already trying to ensure that Fitness+ is useful for anytime, anywhere, not just at-home workouts.
“We really wanted to push our at-home fitness even further. We felt strongly that there was a need for a service that complemented our gym and on-the-go activities. One-third of the workouts use equipment that most people don’t have at home, such as a treadmill, rowing machine, or bicycle.
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It also meant that the service was ready to “complement you where you are right now” when the world emerges from the pandemic, Blahnik says. “If you’re a beginner, you might be scared to go to the gym, for example, and do the whole experience at home. But often when you graduate then you suddenly feel stronger and healthier. And they might actually decide to join a gym, and we want to be on that journey with them.”
What if you want to take that journey a little further? For example, what if you started using Fitness+ but now you want something a little more structured, like graphs and numbers for a more specialized cycling app? Huh? Blahnik isn’t going to hold you back.
“It’s clear that we continue to push our capabilities forward in both the watch and Fitness+,” he says. “But if someone is ready to graduate to something more motivating, we’re really happy to be a part of that journey.”
He points to the variety of fitness and mindfulness experiences available on the App Store, for example. And while he just announced that Apple is working with Joe Wicks to film new content for his Fitness+, he will continue to run his own app and appear on YouTube. I pointed out that it continues.
“I think we just want people to know that there is hardware, software, and services that can help them stay healthy,” he says. “And we’re certainly building experiences that we think can really enhance people’s experience. But we’re not really focused on whether they’re going to choose something else. .We feel that’s great because it raises the tide for everyone.
If people move to other services, “we all benefit,” he says. “So from that perspective, we don’t spend too much time on it. Even with Fitness+, we’re incredibly welcoming, but it might not be for everyone. “There may be people who are really, really excited about a different experience that they use, so we’re working hard to make sure our hardware is compatible,” he said. said, pointing to the fact that Apple’s GymKit platform means the Apple Watch can utilize fitness equipment to exchange data.
“Very early on, we were focused on building these activity experiences, workout experiences, and mindfulness experiences. But when we added it, we always said: Let’s make the Watch feel like a device where everything you do is valued, no matter where you go.
“We know we can’t be everything to everyone, but we’ll try hard to invite as many people as possible. If you have any other preferences, that will be enhanced. We just want to be there.”
Lately, Apple has been focusing on mental health as well as physical health. This includes mental health features such as a journal app and the option to track your mood. But it also means bringing similar options to his Fitness+, such as guided meditation in various forms.
But more often than not, people will use at least some of those mindful moments to take a break from their devices. Is there a danger in trying to escape stress using the same tools that brought it on in the first place?
Blahnik points out that it offers features like Screen Time, which makes it easy to track how much time you spend on your device, as well as ways to improve your habits. Others may not be so obvious. For example, the Apple Watch will alert him every hour if the owner does not wake up. This provides a useful opportunity to take a mental and physical break.
We’re talking just before the launch of Apple’s new headset, the Vision Pro. It’s a technology so personal that you can literally wear it on your face. Is this also fitness technology?
Blahnik begins by expressing his gratitude for this product. It says the product is “incredibly immersive” and features “the most advanced technology ever introduced in a hardware product.” But his team has also been specifically working on mindfulness apps built into hardware.
This was part of a demo Apple showed to the press last year. In it, the familiar spreading petals from the Apple Watch’s Mindfulness app take over the screen, allowing users to experience a guided meditation led by her Fitness+ trainers Jessica and Christian. (When Good Morning America host Robin Roberts tried this last summer, she was visibly impressed. “I made a discovery,” she said.
“What I love so much about the immersive nature of spatial computing at its best is that for many people, the difficult part of meditation or mindfulness is just taking a moment to be undistracted. And , what you see in that experience is how it comes together and really gives you something to focus on.”
Is this the end of the Vision Pro’s fitness uses? For example, it’s easy to imagine working out in a virtual space, but the weight of the headset might make it a bit difficult.
“What I’m saying is, we’re really excited to see what’s going to happen next, because there’s going to be a lot of opportunities for great health experiences and maybe even fitness experiences. And we always do what we think makes sense for the products we’re designing.”