Case study

Differentiating with video in the next generation of fitness apps

SweatWorks is a fitness-focused digital agency that has worked with some of the biggest brands in the industry including Nike, Virgin Sport, Spartan, Strava, Bose and recently launched Myx Fitness. They provide product, engineering, design, and creative services to help their clients create immersive fitness experiences.

The rise of at-home fitness demands high-quality video

Although it seems like there’s been a recent surge of at-home fitness products, SweatWorks recognized the opportunity and trend early. They saw that the digital experience was becoming more relevant, not just as a digital product over the web, but to bring a brand’s studio or event experience into people’s homes.

According to Mohammed Iqbal, CEO of SweatWorks, this raised two challenges:

1. How do they effectively deliver a live broadcast or streaming video for an event across a variety of platforms and locations?
2. How do they build a great streaming experience that matches high expectations, but with a team that must focus on what makes their apps unique?

SweatWorks built out its own video pipeline using legacy online video platforms and typical cloud services but they quickly learned there were a lot of nuances and optimizations that they would have to manually manage.

“We reached a critical point when we started delivering to different devices and the real estate went from the web to an iPad or phone, plus managing streaming over different WiFi networks. It took a lot of work to optimize all of it well,” said Mohammed.

The video API that auto-optimizes delivery

Once SweatWorks learned that Mux Video could be a solution that automatically handled all the optimization of every video, he still needed to make sure it hit all their requirements. Mux Video checked all the boxes by:

• Supporting both on-demand and live streaming
• APIs for automatic GIFs and thumbnails
• Supporting HLS
• Working across various devices, i.e. web and mobile
• Future-proof the video library for new devices, screen sizes, and form factors in the future

“A fitness product is incredibly sophisticated to make. Out of all the technologies we use, Mux was the easiest for us to implement. We actually over-budgeted our resources for it. And because we delivered the Mux integration ahead of schedule, it enabled us to deliver on future functionality earlier,” said Mohammed.

SweatWorks has implemented Mux Video with its client MYX Fitness, a complete home studio and program, to deliver all of Myx’s on-demand fitness content. MYX Fitness delivers content through a custom designed tablet experience; soon to be launched streaming on their mobile app.

Myx Fitness Dashboard

Mux is also being used to power the live streaming of Crossing for Cure. This is an annual event where people paddleboard 80 miles across the Gulf Stream from the Bahamas to the Florida mainland to raise money and awareness for Cystic Fibrosis. For the first time this year, they will be live streaming the event into their mobile app.

“We work on more boutique fitness experiences than any other agency worldwide. Video and music are two of the most underestimated areas of digital experience. People think you can just plug it in and it’ll play but it’s not that simple. A client doesn’t want to hear that we might need 6 months dedicated to building out video, they just expect it (streaming) to work. It’s hard to explain and we’d have to justify those hours we’re billing. But now with Mux, video takes 6-8 weeks and we can get back to focusing on implementing brand specific features that provide the engagement and retention experiences their consumers expect,” said Mohammed.