The Restart! app launching today sets sights on underserved population in fitness app landscape.
[Atlanta, GA, 3 July 2024] — Co-founded by two men in their 60s, friends in fitness and business Jeff White and Tom Pecht, Reclaim Lifestyles is an Atlanta, GA-based innovative wellness software development company with goals to shift the direction of health outcomes for aging adults based on their own middle-aged health realizations. Reclaim Lifestyles' first product, the Restart! exercise app, launches in app stores this July.
Jeff White's inspiration for what would become Reclaim Lifestyles and the Restart! app came initially when he and his wife Patti welcomed their later-in-life "miracle baby" Lydia just eight years ago, when Jeff was 53. "I realized I better keep myself in really good shape so I could be here for her for as long as possible," Jeff explains. "That was how Project 100 started."
Project 100 was the first iteration of what would become Restart!, and was a fitness app concept centered around Jeff's goal of living to 100 years old. The app and the mission soon shifted, though, as Jeff, Tom, and their backend developer partner Nick Gartmann realized the need for an app built for less active people who want help incorporating more activity in their lives.
Like Jeff, Tom Pecht is driven by a desire to stay fit well beyond retirement. As someone who is admittedly "an anomaly" when it comes to discipline, Tom has enjoyed a consistently active lifestyle for as long as he can remember. "I don't feel good unless I do some kind of exercise or activity every day." Thanks to that lifelong commitment to his fitness, Tom both knows firsthand how beneficial regular activity is for mental and physical health, and has witnessed the revolving door of people who struggle to start a fitness habit later in life.
"We wanted to create something that would lower the barrier to entry to zero, no matter where someone is starting from," says Tom. "We want people to realize that being active doesn't have to be a whole production. If you start with what you can do and take baby steps forward, you're far more likely to keep it up over time." And if there's any fitness metric Jeff and Tom want their target audience tracking, it's consistency.
To create an ultimately accessible app that can meet users where they are and help them establish a consistent habit, they've assembled a dedicated team of talent driven by passion for the Reclaim Lifestyles mission of helping people live more active lives. Heading up the team building the Restart! app, Nick Gartmann brought with him a support network of exercise and tech experts who were eager to come on board.
"Whenever someone hears about what we've been working on, the response is almost always, 'I know someone who needs that,' or 'I need that,' or 'How can I help?'" Jeff continues, "So many people connect to what we're trying to do because we all have some kind of experience with watching loved ones struggle or struggling ourselves with health problems later in life that could have been prevented or helped by leading a more active lifestyle."
Of course, there has been the rare naysayer: "We've had one person ask us, 'Why would you go after those people? They're just lazy!'" Jeff recalls. "And we know that that's just not the truth, and that attitude is not doing anything to help people. The fitness apps out there today assume some pre-existing level of physical ability and that assumption can be enough to intimidate or discourage someone who may be motivated, but is dealing with real limitations for a variety of reasons—could be a chronic illness, an old injury, or just inexperience because no one has reached out to them before." And a lack of accessible wellness tools for the population of less active adults certainly isn't helping a growing public health crisis in America.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that more than one in every five adults in nearly every state are physically inactive, with some states showing inactivity rates exceeding 30%. There are numerous reports and studies highlighting the severe implications of widespread physical inactivity on public health, as physical inactivity is correlated with and contributes to various chronic health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.
The Restart! app aims to reverse the downward trend of physical activity levels in the U.S. by meeting users where they are and making it easier than ever for the people behind those statistics to change the trajectory of their health futures. With a combination of A.I.-enabled workout personalization with a proprietary machine learning algorithm and curation by exercise and health experts, the app gives users daily workouts that can be done at home with no extra equipment required in 35 minutes or less.
The exercise library is the work of former pro track athlete and current co-owner of fitness studio Studio Melt in Madison, WI, Ben Dreyer, who has carved out a niche working with people who are trying to become more active but are dealing with physical limitations. Based on in-app feedback on each exercise, the app dynamically adjusts the next workout in the same way Ben would adjust a workout for a client. Don't like a particular exercise? No problem. The app makes it simple to indicate when something isn't working for you and will provide alternatives instead.
Future planned iterations of the app will include a more robust onboarding process, in which users can indicate any problem areas or chronic conditions they're dealing with and swipe through exercises to indicate which ones they feel like they can or cannot do, similarly to the way one swipes on a dating app. The exercise library database developed for the backend of the app also holds tremendous potential for meeting specific health challenges, such as Parkinson's, or partnering with organizations in the health industry, such as physical rehabilitation centers.
For all the blue-sky goals for the future of Restart!, the app is launching with a conservative set of capabilities with planned phases for future feature additions. "The last thing we want to do is hurt anybody exercising, so we're building out features methodically and with an eye on safety rather than putting something out hastily," explains Jeff. "Everyone on the team is set on safety first and I have a great group who are not afraid to pull us back to make sure we do things right."
Jeff, Tom, and the rest of the Reclaim Lifestyles team have been eagerly anticipating the app launch, especially considering the overwhelmingly positive responses they've received during the beta testing phase. "Even just the way that people have reached out to join the beta, sharing what they're dealing with and what their goals and challenges are, tells me that our message is already working and having the intended effect of making people feel like this is the tool they've been looking for and that it's built and run by real people who care about their success," says Jeff.
"I get emotional talking about Reclaim," Jeff adds. "And I think you should when you're trying to help people. If you don't, you're not in the right business."
Learn more about Reclaim Lifestyles at their website https://www.reclaimforlife.com/ and search for Restart! on the Apple and Google app stores to download the app. Restart! is a paid app and pricing starts at $99 per year or $25 per quarter.
About Reclaim Lifestyles:
Founded in 2023, Reclaim Lifestyles is a software development company in the health and wellness sector, committed to helping people live more active lifestyles and enjoy the benefits of physical and mental health well beyond retirement. With a focus on meeting people where they are, the company has developed an accessible exercise app called Restart! that aims to reverse the downward trajectory of physical activity trends in the United States and beyond.
Contact Information:
For media inquiries, please contact:
Jeff White
Email: Jeff.w@reclaimforlife.com