Getting the motivation to get up and hit the gym can be difficult for some, while others aren’t motivated enough to even work out at home. There are several resources to assist in exercising such as gyms, personal trainers, tutorials, and even fitness apps for your mobile phone.
The technology emerging within the last couple of years provides a great way to exercise from home with fitness apps, but none of them can replicate precisely how it is to be in a class with an instructor. Mirror, however, aims to do what Peloton did with the cycling class: bring a live instructor into your home providing a class vibe all from a full-size mirror.
Peloton is an indoor cycling company that first revolutionized the at-home workout, according to Forbes, by bringing the studio quality along with an exercise bike to an at-home gym. The company provides a mix of live and on-demand classes, a ride and effort statistics tracking and online cycling community within the bike. Peloton plans on expanding into treadmills as well with similar technology.
Surpassing Peloton, Mirror offers the same workout studio experience, but with different types of group classes and a whole new experience to virtual personal training. Mirror is just like imagining a tall body mirror you would hang on the wall or put on your door. When turned off, the device is a thin black panel about the size of a three-quarter full-length wall mirror. When the Mirror is on, the sleek mirror turns into a responsive display featuring an LCD flat panel with stereo speakers, and camera, microphone, and the obvious, a mirror.
The mirror feature is not to look pretty but to really understand each position and maintain the proper form. What makes the system unique is the ability to see both the video instructor and yourself at the same time.
Although you will need space to freely do the workouts with Mirror, nobody will know it’s there due to its regular-looking mirror appearance. Thanks to the Mirror, figuring out how to fit every machine into your home gym is no longer an issue.
Mirror live streams 50 classes per week which are then added to its vast collection of on-demand classes in its library. The classes incorporate several categories including, cardio, strength, yoga, Pilates, barre, boxing and stretch, all with four effort levels, ranging from beginner to expert.
During each session, the trainer offers instruction as if you were standing in an actual studio. In the future, Mirror plans to add one-on-one training sessions, where the instructor will be able to access the user’s camera and see them while working out.
If that isn’t intriguing enough, Mirror also offers a competition mode. Users with heart rate monitors via Bluetooth or through an Apple Watch or Fitbit can track their ability to achieve, maintain and recover from target heart rate zones. The Mirror is capable of playing music either through the users own personal selections or through its own playlists. Another cool little feature is the ability your instructors have to give personal shout-outs to users during the live-streamed classes.
The Mirror hardware currently runs for $1,495 and the subscription cost is $39 a month. Engadget asked Putnam if there were plans to sell a different version that didn’t require the hardware, but currently there none. Mirror is making its public debut today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, or you can simply order from Mirror’s website.