Xcel your workouts

Posted on 24 August, 2016

Having a workout buddy can make all the difference to your fitness, whether you need someone to spot you, motivate you, distract you or hold your sweaty hand (metaphorically or literally) as you bravely try a new activity.

The problem is that many of us don’t have friends that are into the same kinds of things that we are, don’t have the same schedules or are flakier than a fresh hot croissant… mmm croissants.

What if there was some magic solution that could make the perfect workout buddy appear magically before your eyes? Well, friends – there’s an app for that!

FitXcel is the brainchild of two native Canberrans, Ellen MacKinnon and Scott Desmond.

Ellen loves fitness, but found herself in a situation many can relate to.

“I have heaps of friends who are into fitness but don’t necessarily like doing what I like doing,” she explains. “I’d love to get together and do a gym session but they’re either not at the same level as me, or not interested at all. I thought it would be a great way to find fitness communities out there.”

It’s not just the ladies, guys feel it too. Scott says “I’m a personal trainer but even when I go to a new gym I have the exact same experience everyone else does: I walk in and feel like an outcast – I don’t know what the equipment is, where things are…”

While it has a strong fitness component, FitXcel is at its core a social app. It’s based off your interests, so if you love weight training, running, boxing or whatever tickles your fancy, you can enter that and the app will recommend people who are near you so you can swipe through profiles and find someone you like the look of. You can further refine your results to suit by classifications like gender and age.

FitXcel can also connect you to fitness and health professionals in your area. Scott says “it’s not just limited to personal trainers, we’ve got over 70 categories of occupations. You can search through by their specialties, see their qualifications and if they have a special deal then they can put that up there. It takes the whole idea of fitness and health and makes it more accessible.”

It’s a fabulous idea, but it’s taken a lot of work to make the app come to fruition.

“Neither of us are tech,” says Ellen. “We don’t do development or code – as much as we wish we did. We might not be tech savvy like that but we’re all about the ideas. Scott has always wanted to run his own business and I’m really creative so we complement each other, but in terms of development we’ve outsourced to [developers] Binary in Sydney.”

Before getting to the development stage, Ellen and Scott worked with their mentor Tim O’Connor who guided the duo through the process.

“He’s a classic entrepreneur, his energy just radiates and knocks you off your feet, he was so happy to help us. He had us write up the original idea on A5 pieces of paper for each screen. We took them and showed a refined version to Binary and they took the idea gave us something that wasn’t exactly what we’d said, but was even better,” says Scott.

Scott and Ellen have balanced work, study and life throughout the process, hustling to bring their dream to life.

“Yes, it has been challenging” explains Ellen, “but in saying that, coming home after work and working on the app doesn’t feel like hard work. It might extend the hours in the day, but it’s not difficult to do because it’s fun.”

So what’s next for the FitXcel duo?

Well, as winners of the TechLauncher competition from the ANU, Scott and Ellen are working on an Android version of the app so that it’s accessible to more people, as well as functionality to be able to search for and join groups.

While there are FitXcel users in most Australian capital cities, Scott and Ellen want to perfect their product for Canberra users before they focus on national uptake. With their passion, determination and creativity, I’ve no doubt they’ll succeed in taking Australia by storm.