Launch HN: Quell (YC S20) – Immersive gaming and combat workout

Thank you!

Les Mills on Demand. I did the Les Mills classes at the gym I was a member of, before the plague hit, and liked the fact that they change up the workout and music every couple of months. The instructors at the gym unofficially redid the workouts, using old individual tracks/workout-sets so I never got bored.

With streaming, they have (literally) dozens of workout routines, at various time lengths, in eight or ten categories of work out types (straight weights, cross-training, a few kinds of aerobics, yoga fusion, barre, dance, more I can't remember :-). So when I get bored with a particular routine, I can easily switch to another.

On the iPad, you can download the routine so you don't need to worry about stream buffering (which has never been an issue on other devices, but I have fairly fast internet service).

It's ~$11/month (buying three months at a time) subscription, and I spent about $180 or so in equipment, so it's similar to the outlay for your service.

Again, congratulations on the launch, quite interested to see what you do in the future!

> High Impact Exercise

I think you're using the wrong words there. "High Impact" workouts in the fitness world mean they are harder on your joints and tendons (think crossfit/hiit vs low impact like spin cycles).

Since you aren't punching anything and you're not jerking your body around, I'd imagine this is more mid-impact?

https://www.humana.com/prevention-and-care/healthy-living-an...

Do you have any plans to allow 3rd party development for the hardware? From my experience with VR, this looks like it could be really fun but get old quickly without some variety.

Also, how are you doing the tracking? I don't see any external sensors mentioned, is it just IMU based? Because anything less than perfect sub millimeter motion tracking has become unacceptable these days.

I've enjoyed Ring Fit Adventure but it has some downsides I've noticed. Just so you have another fitness-game-user's perspective:

- Gamification does sometimes interfere with the workouts and/or workout enjoyability. The tasks that were gameplay-optimal were often either tediously easy or exhaustingly targeting the same muscles repeatedly.

- Not enough cardio opportunities in the game, IMO. You get interrupted from the jogging sections repeatedly. Only a couple of the skill moves targeted cardio at all really.

- Lots of downtime and fiddling with menus and only semi-skippable instructions/tutorial videos of things you've done before. Enemy animations even for non-actions. Squeezing one's smoothies while dorky music plays. A half-hour workout took more like 50 minutes.

- Difficulty of exercises not reflected in their impact. Partly due to the fact that each person finds different exercises difficult and the game had no way of accounting for that.

- Sweat! I sweat a lot during any workout and I felt gross wearing the leg-strap repeatedly and the non-washable ring grips. I can guarantee I'd make the Quell gear stink in a few months max and would need a cheap way to wash them and replace padding that wears out.

The rhythm game section they added in a more recent update is super fun, though. I wish it were incorporated into the main game. Overall, I like RFA and have benefited from adding it sporadically into my exercise routines. I could definitely be in the market for Quell.