Product Development Focus: Portable Trainer

Fit-In Fitness portable trainer

R2FACT innovates the most versatile portable trainer on the market.

Here are some insights into how innovation transforms an idea into a finished product.

What is it?

Fit In Fitness Portable Trainer™ is a compact 3-in-1 fitness product: a rocker board that converts to a stepper platform and stand-alone wobble board for advanced balance training. The three parts support hundreds of full body exercises.

The benefit? Your body activates more muscles when trying to stabilize, particularly the core muscles (abdominals, obliques, lower back).  The product lets you combine balance training (rocker, 360-degree rotational wobble) with bodyweight, strength, and/or resistance training. You are able to train selected parts of the body while engaging and strengthening your core muscles simultaneously and burning more calories overall.

 In what form did the idea come to R2FACT?

Jason Richard is a University of Kansas graduate in Exercise Science with emphasis in Sport & Fitness Management and experience as a fitness trainer.  He came to R2FACT with a crude prototype of a rocker/wobble board and sketches showing the aerobic step.  Feedback from the fitness industry had made him realize he needed more functions for the product to stand apart in the marketplace.

How did the product get shaped in the process?

A goal was to minimize the number of parts and keep hardware (nuts, bolts) out of the equation.  The R2FACT team decided on a molding process that opened up ways to make it quick and easy to switch between the parts.  They designed and engineered the rocker/stepper base and refined the wobble using computer modeling.  The geometry and physics let the rocker board (an unstable object) also function as an aerobic step (a stable object) by turning the rocker part upside down and using the wobble as the top to both.  R2FACT made all the parts fit together.

How do user-supplied resistance bands function with the product?

During product development features were added that allow effective integration of resistance bands.  Instead of using them in the typical way, standing on the ground and sliding them out to get the right amount of resistance, a T-Track cut-out feature in the wobble allows simulation of sliding to adjust band tension while eliminating wear and tear by shoes.

The product was designed to match today’s most popular training methods of circuit training and high-intensity interval training. Strategically placed cut-outs allow placement of several resistance bands at the same time.   By having multiple bands in place simultaneously, you are able to move to the band that corresponds with a certain exercise with little transition time between exercises.

 Product Status:

Jason Richard says, “R2FACT has been absolutely essential in getting this product to the level of professionalism it is at now: prototyped, tested, and ready to begin mass production.  Before I had a poorly designed prototype. R2FACT added their expertise and wealth of knowledge in design, manufacturing, sourcing – all crucial to the Fit-In Fitness Portable Trainer’s™ development process.  There has been a sense of ‘it’s in the professionals hands’ since I hired R2FACT.”

Coming soon: Crowd Funding

R2FACT’s website will soon feature a Store.  Crowd funding of products will demonstrate demand before the huge expenses of manufacturing are risked.  Each campaign that reaches its goal through product “pre-purchases” will be funded for production.  Pre-orders of the Fit in Fitness Portable Trainer™ will help it launch.  Check out the new site coming soon or go to the Store directly at www.r2factStore.com.

Posted in: American Innovation