With a new age of technology, and people constantly moving from one thing to the next in their busy schedule, having the luxury of working out in short bursts, activating the entire body whenever and wherever you like is incredibly appealing. Sonam did her research, and her decade of experience paid off when her new app 7 Daily Moves – Exercise GIF went viral.

Today she’s sharing the questions she asked herself to make a million-shares app possible.Exactly 10 years back, I started my fitness career with my first client, an 18-year-old boy who wanted bigger biceps. He already had huge biceps. I tried to convince him that he needs to focus on legs and building core strength. With great reluctance he agreed to follow my workout plan. I remember that session so clearly, as if it were only yesterday. The training session was at 3 pm on a Thursday. At that time I was super skinny and looked like I would not be able to lift more than 2kgs!

Well the training worked, and he himself got motivated to do a fitness certification and train people in his spare time.

My next client was a 50-year-old lady, slightly plump who had never entered a gym. Her goal was to run a half marathon. She had knee issues but still wanted to give it a try. We worked on her training for six months. She ran and finished the 21.1 kilometers with a smile and no knee pain!

Over the years I’ve had lots of opportunities to train all kinds of clients, teenagers, women and men with health issues, super fit people, people who hated exercising, people with hectic travel jobs, and I discovered that my job was not to teach them how to squat or do to a push up. It was to make them fall in love with exercising.

People need to be delighted and look forward to their exercise session.

Most people are not motivated enough to work out regularly. Many spend hours doing ineffective workouts or don’t know what to do. Even if they have trainers, many go to the gym and end up doing the same exercises they are comfortable with or get on the treadmill. Some land up doing a “social” workout where they spend more time chit chatting vs. actually working out. Not seeing the body change leads to further demotivation and eventually they drop out of the exercise routine.

This bothered me a lot and I kept thinking how I could motivate and get more people interested in exercising on a larger scale. I needed to create a product that was appealing (not intimidating) for people who don’t like to exercise, but at the same time loved by people who are into hardcore workouts.

The product needed to address the common challenges people face:

No time.

The workouts needed to be time efficient.

As people age they become prone to injury.

The workouts needed to build muscle mass, strengthen the body and increase mobility to avoid injuries.

The most common goal for people is to lose fat.

The workouts needed to be effective in shedding fat.

People are motivated only when they see change in their body.

The workouts should also result in change in body composition.

Is it guiding you in the gym without a trainer?

The workouts needed to have guided instructions so the user could exercise without the help of a trainer.

Is there variety to keep you engaged?

Variety is the key to avoid boredom and constantly challenge the body.

Can the user workout while travelling?

The workouts must be able to be done at home, during travel, without equipment, in the gym, in the park, anywhere, anytime.

The workouts also needed to be easy to understand while not intimidating beginners. But also feel not too tough or not tough enough, discouraging the user from giving it a try.

Keeping all this in mind I came up with an app idea with 5 distinct features:

• A simple concept of doing 7 moves daily based on the human movements. This takes away the stress from where to start and what to do.
• An animated character, which will appeal to the masses. Having a character that is not bulked up to work out with makes you feel you can do it.
• Audio instructions for each exercise which feels like a trainer is with you.
• Customized Timer to ensure you can work out according to the time you have (7 – 30 minutes). Timer also eliminates any time wastage and helps a higher fat burn due to less rest period.
• Most effective compound exercises which show results faster.

It has taken nine months to bring 7 Daily Moves to life! I worked very closely with my tech partner Prakash Donga from India for app development, and motion graphic designer Martin Kundby Nielsen from Denmark.

This App can be used by an absolute beginner or by an elite athlete!

The human body is designed to perform 7 basic moves:

1. SQUAT
2. PUSH
3. PULL
4. LUNGE/STEP
5. BEND
6. TWIST/ROTATE
7. WALK/RUN/JUMP

If your workouts don’t include these 7 moves, your training is incomplete.

The exercise GIF with animations from the app was uploaded a couple of weeks back on Dribble. It went viral only hours later.

We were shocked at the rapid spread of the GIF across all media. It has gone viral on Facebook, featured on Pinterest, LifeHack, 9Gag, imgur, and several other websites.

Fitness trainers, crossfitters, bootcamp groups, gyms, marathon groups, cycling groups, sports groups, tech groups, fitness enthusiasts, and others have liked and shared the animated exercises. This has created a lot of excitement, and more than a million people across the world are talking about it.

Here are some comments about the exercise GIF:

“Complete workout in just one frame”
“Got my own personal trainer! Just going to follow this little guy.”
“Exercises that will compliment and help your running.”
“Pick a row and do a few rounds! #7dailymoves”
“Here’s a great circuit session!”
“Love this! How many of these do you do in your workout?”
“The winter season is here! Time for strength training to develop a strong base for racing next year!”
“This graphic sums up ALL BODY WORKOUT!”
“The best gif till now!”
“Get off the couch”
“Learn to gym in one gif”
“48 ways for good health”
“How awesome are these little workout memes! They know how to get it done! How many exercises can you recognize?”
“I like GIFs and I like to train. This made my day.”
“Stuck for a workout? So many ideas and options.”

Feel free to share the 7 Daily Moves GIF and spread the fun of working out. Hopefully it can inspire people to exercise and live a healthy life!

Let’s get fit together!

Sonam Mehra
Founder, Small Spoon Pte. Ltd.
Creator of the 7 Daily Moves App.

We would love you to be part of the CW community!
Join now to share, connect, work and learn – it’s free.

JOIN NOW