It’s the beginning of February and by now many of you may have already given up on your New Year’s resolution to get into better shape. You had good intentions, you signed up for the gym. You even managed to find/convince a friend to be your workout buddy because we all need a little extra motivation to go to the gym on the regular. But somehow those good intentions have gone to the way side, sure you can blame the colder weather or the friend who seems to bail far too often. Maybe it was the whole plan to begin with, which was doomed to fail? Maybe the chosen workout activity wasn’t right for you? Maybe the friend wasn’t that reliable? Maybe you weren’t that motivated? Don’t worry; there is a way to get back on track.
Your plan to have a workout partner to stay accountable was a good place to start but where do you find the right person to join you on your fitness journey? How do you find someone who even wants to do the same physical activities as you? Enter the latest app called WHISTLE. The app was designed specifically to bring (and keep) local fitness enthusiasts together.
WHISTLE, which is available now, allows users to connect to others within their general vicinity who are interested in similar fitness activities. The gender-neutral fitness platform uses the popular ‘swipe left/swipe right’ model of other successful social mediums to help anyone from novice to pro find the perfect workout partner.
“There are immense benefits to being consistently active, but most people lack the motivation to keep to a regular regiment,” says Laura Davidson, President of WHISTLE Inc. “WHISTLE makes it easy to find people in your area who are interested in similar forms of fitness, who also share similar schedules. And we’ve found that our users are much less likely to cancel on a new partner than they would be with a friend or family member.”
By now you are probably thinking that you should have invented this app but Davidson got there first. And she launched the app due to the exact same issue we all face – flaky friends. It was the lack of consistency among her own friends-cum-workout partners that gave Davidson the idea for WHISTLE. After deciding to ramp up her fitness routine, she reached out to a group of friends who agreed to help motivate one another. But within a few days the inevitable outcome began to surface – every one of them began cancelling without much notice. Davidson turned to existing social media platforms to try and find like-minded people but it was very difficult to find people who had the same goals or the same preferred workout routines. This is where WHISTLE was born.
So how does it work? Users can create profile by choosing which activities they are interested in, their preferred location and time of day/week. Users can then search for other users by simply swiping left to pass on them, or swiping right to match with them (sounds familiar, right?). If both users have shown mutual interest, there is a match, and a conversation can begin. From here, the user can schedule a meetup directly into their calendar, which sends them a reminder prior to their workout.
WHISTLE is now available for free in the Canadian App Store and supports iOS 7+. For more information visit whistleapp.io.
