Why Khalil Zahar Built The First Interactive Home Boxing Gym FightCamp - 20 Minute Fitness Episode #086

This week on the 20 Minute Fitness podcast we have Khalil Zahar, the Founder & CEO of the very first interactive at-home boxing gym, FightCamp. Khalil is an engineer by profession and became personally invested in boxing during his studies in Toronto. He had the chance to train with some of Canada's best boxing coaches, which made him fall in love with the sport.
Listen on to hear all about the ins and outs of FightCamp that will teach you how to master your punches with real-time feedback on every move you make!
Three Things You Will Learn
1) What's In The FightCamp Box
So how should you imagine an at-home boxing gym? Just a pair of gloves and that's it? Nope. With the FightCamp gym, you really get everything that you need to become a pro boxer.
You'll receive the best quality punching bag, a heavy workout mat, quick wraps, premium boxing gloves, and the "secret sauce", motion trackers. Once you put the motion trackers in your wraps, they will track your hands 1,000 times/second. By tracking your punches, the FightCamp algorithms will build your output profile based on the type and speed of every punch you make. On top of all these, FightCamp also comes with an app through which you can tune in to live classes or access any workout from their on-demand library. Pretty much like Peloton for boxing.
Press play to learn about the specific programs FightCamp provides for pro boxers vs those who're just about to throw their first jab at the punching bag!

2) Moving From The Pro Athletes ToA Mainstream Market
FightCamp has an older brother, Hykso, that was born back in 2015. This was around the time when Khalil was living in Canada and had already started to immerse in boxing. After he'd learnt that the only way to measure incremental progress was to look at how long you were able to go in the ring, he wanted to find a solution. 
So he started to focus on the technology piece and built a motion tracker, Hykso. Hykso was first picked up by those who had been craving the boxing data the most, professional athletes. Namely, the first client of Hykso was the Canadian Olympic team and their coach.
After a number of product iterations, these professional boxers started to use their trackers with their private clients or during group workouts that they were teaching. By hacking the device, which was originally created for athletes, they gamified the more fitness-oriented boxing experience of everyday people. Listen to this week's episode to hear how Khalil and his team have built the FightCamp that we know today!

3) The Future Of At-Home Fitness & FightCamp
We've already seen an amazing evolution of at-home fitness. We had moved away from fake and overpromising products to authentic companies with innovative hardware and software and great business models. Today, at-home fitness is really for a health-conscious audience, who have busy lives and hence struggle to find time to go to a physical gym.
One aspect that people still tend to criticize about at-home workouts is the lack of social experience. However, if we think about it, the real beneficial social gain that we get from an in-person gym experience is the social pressure to push harder. Which is something that can be replicated in a virtual setting with performance data. Hence, Khalil believes that at-home fitness will only see increased popularity and growth in the future.
Looking at FightCamp in particular, Khalil shared some secret features that we can expect to pop-up soon. These involve everything from further gamification to getting the users to immerse in the history of boxing. Tune in to learn more about the sneak peeks now!