Remember that scene in There’s Something About Mary when the dude is telling Ben Stiller about his great idea for a workout video, called 7-minute abs? Well, what if I told you that you could get in shape with just five minutes of working out, thanks to a new mobile fitness app?
This new app, called Hot5, is just the latest in a trend of apps moving its users toward high-intensity interval training. That is, rather than doing a bunch of slow exercises over a long period of time, condensing exercises into short bursts with little recovery time in-between. In the case of Hot5, that means a daily regimen of five exercises, each lasting just a minute. These exercises are guided through a series of videos with real-life trainers showing users how to do them.
The app, in short, is aimed at appealing to today’s modern lifestyle in which people have little time to set aside and workout every day. But with each workout being just five minutes long, there aren’t a whole lot of excuses you can use to avoid it.
Hot5’s trainers with a wide variety of workouts to appeal to different types of users. At launch, there are eight trainers available, each with a different specialty. They range from “Fitness Basics” to “Crossfit and Strength” to “Yoga and Pilates.” Each trainer has a series of five videos available to work through, with more coming as time goes on.
In addition to the video workouts available, Hot5 also employs a bit of gamification to keep users coming back and exercising every day. When you first open the app, you have 500 credits, which can be used to unlock different exercises. Once you’re completed a workout, you get more credits to unlock other exercise videos. The idea is that, as long as you’re exercising daily, you should never run out of credits.
The company was founded by CEO Vlad Margulis, who most recently worked as a product designer at Airbnb, along with director of content Jayme Boyle, who is a certified personal trainer herself. Advisors include Sam Shank, Sami Inkinen, Buddy Arnheim, and Adam Sliverthorne, and the company has raised $100,000 in funding to get started.