I created this side project for my partner, who is constantly complaining about how stiff his body is. Hopefully it’ll help other tech workers stretch out and feel better!
(PS: this is my first project launch so any feedback would be greatly appreciated).
Just wanted to say congratulations on launching your first project! This is quite well done.
One piece of feedback: I'm sure your partner trusts you and has asked you how you came up with this routine, but we random internet users can't do that and the site currently doesn't do anything to convince us that we should follow this routine. One way you could build trust with your users is by including a link to the source for the routine, or a short explanation of why you've chosen these stretches, in this order. Another way you could approach the problem of building trust is by making the routine adjustable or editable, or allowing the user to pick between different routines or exercises. I think it will be hard to get someone to commit to doing 15 minutes of stretching, every day, without doing some kind of education or somehow building this trust.
Again, great launch / v1, and congratulations! No need to try to make it anything more than this if your target demographic (your partner) is already happy :)
You've done a great job. Well done. I went through about 10 minutes. Some of the stretches I couldn't do at my desk - they require too much room.
Make sure you've giving people time to see what the exercise is, to learn it, before starting the count down.
Also, if you could show a hint of sorts of the next, up coming exercise, a user might be able to get ready for it and continuously flow between stretches once some experience with them has been gained.
And maybe see if you can provide an option that allows one to stretch actually at their desk, with little to no getting up from the chair... I know, not ideal, but a 3-5 minutes routine in the chair is better than the nothing most of us do now.
Is the intention to have tech workers do this during a short break or before, after work?
Seeing the iconography of women in yoga clothes invokes “workout” which means “I do this before/after work” and “I need to change out of my work clothes.”
This is excellent! I just followed along the routine and 2 small feedbacks:
1. Please show the instructions before the stretch begins. Right now it says get ready for the next stretch. It would be useful to be able to read instructions before the stretch starts.
2. Beeps can be slightly shorter. In long term, I can see it getting a little annoying.
Other than that, excellent work and great illustrations. Thank you!
Makes sense, thank you! I initially thought having the 'get ready for the next exercise' would help people understand that it's a break but given the feedback I definitely need the descriptions there too. Any idea on how to still make it clear that it's a break?
Re: the beeps, couldn't agree more. While building it I also found them annoying but I deprioritised that for the first launch.
> Any idea on how to still make it clear that it's a break?
Not a UX designer, but you could consider having a de-emphasised (smaller font, subdued colour, no illustration) "Next:" underneath every instruction that describes what's upcoming. For regular exercises, that could just say "Break", whereas during the breaks, it could show the next exercise. That way, it's always clear what's the current task and what's up next.
Please make this keyboard accessible, going back to the desk and having the find the little ">" is annoying, I'd rather just press the right key, or the spacebar.
Not a designer, but for me it would help if breaks were distinguished visually from exercises–both types of screens look the same.
A different background color, font, or something visual in addition to text clues would go a long way for me. I definitely paid more attention to the timer & beeps on break screens than the text.
Another one I see is pushbacks. This one is less clear to me. You can treat it as uncountable like feedback, but you can also say there was a pushback, which maybe makes pushbacks okay? Although no one says it, pushes back seems to me a reasonable option as well.
Pushbacks are countable in the context of a debate with both parties present. It’s fine to say “I have two pushbacks on this proposal” because those are specific, countable, contained arguments.
There’s also the nebulous “pushback”, which is used to describe general resistance to an idea or plan in an uncountable way. “The general’s proposal was met with pushback from the oversight committee”.
It certainly tends to be perceived that way by the person corrected. It's also debatable whether nitpicking on someone's grammar is "correcting their language", linguists tend to think it's not: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I’m a non-native English speaker and I always appreciate corrections. Same is true for most non-native speakers I know personally. Most commonly I see this concern for possible offence at being corrected for bad English come from native English speakers, which is peculiar. (I don’t know if it’s true in this instance.)
I'm a native speaker and I always appreciate corrections.
Getting upset about being corrected means you've got so much hubris as to think that you think you couldn't possibly be making any mistakes, or so much ego as to think you are above being corrected... or both.
To NOT correct people because we might "offend" them leads to a world of clueless idiots thinking they're infallible geniuses.... Crap. We're too late.
The only time I'm annoyed by corrections is when it's halting the conversation and stopping others from progressing towards the goal.
Since this forum has threaded conversations, someone can correct grammar at the same time that someone else is progressing the discussion, so I wouldn't have a problem with it here.
Well, okay, there's another time: If they're obviously being mean about it. But I think most people would dislike that, regardless of context.
Anecdotally I have seen the same. It's easy for a native speaker to be offended when corrected because it's their first (and often only) language... they should be good at it. Language-learners tend to be quite open to correction in any language.
I suspect part of this is that there's prescriptivist nitpicking and non-prescriptivist, uh, non-nitpicking.
Pointing out that "feedback" in uncountable is giving information on how to better match actual usage. A prescriptivist will agree with it, but so would a descriptivist.
Contrast this with "lion's share": traditionally, it meant "all", but nowadays is usually used to mean "most, but not all". If I convince someone that they should use it to mean "all", they'll be further from matching actual usage. I think that's what qualifies it as nitpicky and rude vs. just helpful.
I don't agree with this - it really depends on how it's done. I think the way it was done in this thread was non-accusatory, and generally I find that these suggestions are very helpful. Once you get to a certain level in a second language, your communication tends to be good enough that no-one corrects you any more, which makes it really hard to progress. I really like it when people correct me, FWIW.
That's not my experience when interacting with people communicating in a second language. They generally appreciate the opportunity to learn and improve their (in most cases) English. They also usually love to be taught idioms so that they don't stick out like a sore thumb!
+1. I too had trouble understanding how to get started until I realized there were "get ready" prompts in-between the exercises. That could use more clarity. The illustrations looked great and were on-par with what is shown at our local gym.
Stretching is great. If you're older and having chronic back pain, consider the advice of Dr. Stuart McGill and avoid stretching your back. It probably feels good for you in the short-term, but you could be weakening the tissue surrounding your discs, setting yourself up for herniation, and causing other joint issues.
I've had chronic back issues since I was 19 and they ended in my late 40s when I stopped stretching my back and focused on static strength exercises(McGill "big 3" plus lots of lat & trap strength training).
A lot of back pain actually comes from tight hip flexors, quads, and glutes. Everything is connected and if you have a desk job, these things can get tight. This leads, counter-intuitively, to pain experienced in the lower back.
I had chronic lower back pain that a chiropractor, after 8 visits, couldn't fix. Did a yoga class and afterward asked the instructor if she could suggest any stretches. She surmised that stretching the psoas by grabbing my ankle and pulling my foot/leg behind me would help. Miracle cure.
Looks awesome. If you can swing it with a proper manifest.json to let it add to iOS home screen without throwing it into Safari (https://johan.im/writings/ios-homescreen-web-app/) that'd also be amazing.
A small improvement in my life I made was to always use the disabled toilet at work and spend a few seconds stretching and sometimes even doing 10 squats or push ups.
I don't have the confidence to do something like that in front of other people.
But now I do it 5 or so times a day everytime I pee.
Perhaps I could add these stretches although 15 minutes is too long, perhaps in 5 lots of 3 or 2 minutes once an hour or something.
I see your point but an office disabled toilet with staff cleaning it daily, and little use, could be cleaner than most people home. And you can wash your hands right after :)
Stretching is one of those things that you ignore when you are 20 but becomes vital when you are 50+.
The main reason why we lose strength, flexibilty, balance, and endurance when we get old is because we let that happen. We stop exercising those attributes so they atrophy.
Or if a mono font is too limiting - any font that supports the CSS rule `font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums` can be made to behave like a fixed-width font in this situation.
I have a (malfunctioning) beep but it doesn't work on mobile right now, I have to look into it. If you tried on desktop and it didn't work for you could you share what browser you used?
I'm reading that now as well. One of the interesting things so far is the author asserts that stretching does nothing for you, which I find controversial and doesn't align with my experience but I also don't have any evidence or reason per-se to contradict that claim either.
I do know that a 15-minute "stretch routine" should either substitute or incorporate push-ups, squats, and other, similar basic movements in the routine. Stretching on its own is quite pointless if it's also coupled with continued sitting the entire day and not much other physical activity (walking, weight lifting, running, swimming, sports, w/e).
>the author asserts that stretching does nothing for you
I'm struggling to find a response to this. My personal results from daily stretching are so profound but could be written off as "anecdotal". I'd find it very hard to take this person seriously unless there was some caveat or qualifying information.
I could see "it does nothing for you" for some set of things, but it cannot possibly be absolutely true. For one thing, stretching has been very successful in increasing my range of motion. It may be, however, that it e.g. doesn't do much for reducing, say, back pain or improving overall health outcomes
It clearly does something, but it's possible that in the context of the claim it does indeed do "nothing" (nothing, or so close to nothing that it might as well be nothing, to affect the specific things in question)
That was my response as well, though I'd say that if you find that to be troublesome you can just ignore that from the book and just look at the rest of the, in my opinion from reading so far, good material. I was honestly very surprised to see that. I guess, I don't discount everything that someone says if I think they're wrong about a specific thing, and in sports science there seems to be a lot that is continuing to be discovered and argued about. It's a fluid field.
I will say throughout my life I have heard a lot of conflicting advice on stretching. "Don't stretch before working out", "Don't stretch after working out", etc. and I personally just do dedicated yoga sessions with deep/long poses for my stretching and that's it. I'm not sure "the science is settled" there so to speak, but my own personal results suggest that stretching is beneficial and helps prevent injury.
The author is Kelly Starrett, a legend in the physical therapy/movement world. I've read a lot of his work.
I don't think his message is that stretching "does nothing". It's more that, research has shown that combining stretching with strength (using the range of motion) is the way to create lasting change.
I may be misremembering but I thought his wife and him (since they are co-authors) explicitly said something along the lines of don't even bother wasting time stretching. It's near or at the beginning of the first chapter. "Do it if it makes you feel good but it's a waste of time" or something. Please correct me if I'm misremembering or outright incorrect. I don't have the book nearby to check.
Historically his perspective was that it wasn't necessary. If you're getting full range of motion exercise, you don't need to stretch, because the exercise itself is doing what needs to be done.
> If you're getting full range of motion exercise, you don't need to stretch, because the exercise itself is doing what needs to be done.
I dropped powerlifting when gyms closed in 2020. I picked it back up recently. With a garage gym it's now so easy to lift without so much dang ceremony, just warm up through the exercises themselves. Sessions all under an hour, PRed all three lifts at my meet, and never got a red light on squats when I used to get one for depth on one side all the time. Stretching is all time fake in my book.
Right. Personally I've observed my squat form and ROM are much better if I stretch my hamstrings first. So I stretch first to get more benefit from the exercise.
I bet it changes based on a few factors including age, prior mobility, etc. I do a few things at my current age:
I wear Vibram "toe-shoes" so that my heel isn't lifted off the ground when I squat or do other movements and unless I'm lifting very heavy I go below parallel
I warm up by doing either some prescribed warm-ups or by getting on the air bike/rowing for a few minutes + other warm-up activities
I do the exact exercise movement I'm going to be doing if it's a movement like a snatch, clean and jerk, deadlift, squat, etc. to warm-up
I don't do any stretching before or after. It's absolutely fascinating that so many different things work for so many people.
You say stretching as if it's simple. But there's plenty of components it affects that are anything but. Hell, the importance fascia is only just really getting unravelled.
Plenty of opportunity to further humanity's knowledge on a subject there.
Being more active in general (walking or running) should alleviate some back pain. Stretching alone wouldn't and shouldn't be expected to because the problem isn't "my muscles need to stretch" it's "my muscles need to be in use" and they need to be in use in a full-body context, not in isolation.
Glad to see you've found something that has helped with your back pain. I've been taking more walks now that my life has gotten a little less chaotic and the weather is warmer and what do you know? There goes the back pain. Standing desk helps too but it's mostly the walking.
Thanks for building this! Next step is hooking up a Slackbot with daily reminders and selling it to businesses as an employee wellness program. I think the 40+ person I work at would sign up for it
Kudos! Desk workers are going to love this. You have kept the duration short and gamified it as well in the form of streaks. It should go viral.
A piece of feedback for the transition between two exercises. You may want to stop the bottom watch altogether during transition and - somewhere on top right -start a simple circular time animation 5..4..3
In the current form the transition looks bit confusing.
Yep I definitely need to work on that transition (I'm the type of person that spaces out easily and would lose track of whether I'm in a break or exercise). I'll play around with a couple of ideas and hopefully resolve it tomorrow
Great idea thanks! That's what I'll be working on next, creating fixed routines besides the daily one for people to do in various situations/with different objectives.
15 min is too much for me to stay motivated, especially with all the other things I have to deal with, but I have been using that 5min routine in the morning to wake up my body https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6LwAaB3_E
It worked well. I have done it for the past 6 months.
If I accidentally click out, there's no way to recover my place. A forward arrow or option to start at any pose by clicking in the preview would fix that.
Some training poses would be helpful for those of us who can't touch the floor in triangle pose or can't maintain an upright torso in garland pose
Slightly non-sequitur. The best thing that I ever did for my body wrt/ having a desk job is making sure that wherever I am my monitor is at eye level and at least 2ft away from my face. I always found that at the end of the work day I had so much tightness in my neck and temples, but once I started using a portable laptop stand [1] that all went away.
Great timing with this! My workplace does a charity pushup challenge every year, and I usually create a team for people looking for alternative exercises. I was considering yoga for this year and was just looking for resources to help provide daily customised sessions. 1 minute of yoga/stretching = 3 pushups or something like that.
This will really help fill the gaps, and I'll probably recommend it to people doing the regular pushup challenge for warmups and healthier workouts.
Thanks for sharing! Super helpful and easy to follow.
One suggestion: Audio queues would be great. I heard a beep when it was first starting but not after that (iOS). And maybe a gong or chime sound would be more relaxing.
So happy to hear that! Yep, another person commented the same thing so I do need to sort that out. Any ideas on how to make it clear that it's a break if I add the description to that screen? I don't really have much more space to play with sadly (for mobile at least).
Faaaaar tooooo maaaaany bits in that routine, I can't even bother counting beyond ten. How about just six and repeat then two or three times? I won't need it myself as I have a standing desk with a bar stool if I need some rest and go to the gym during winter and roadbike in summer, but at the gym I have a muscle routine (turns out cyclists only have muscles in their legs) that is just eight stations with the classic 3x10-15 repeats.
Standing desk doesn’t do squat for your flexibility.
You should be able using both hands to reach every spot on your back or there about.
You should be able to sit down on the floor with your hips bent at 90 degrees whilst both your legs are straight and your knees pointing upwards and unbent.
You should be able to sit at 90 degrees to the floor straight on your ass whilst having your legs inter locked (“Indian sitting”)
You should be able to sit down on your shins by bending your knees the top of the foot should be in line with your shins and your ass should be comfortably sitting on your ankles. (Japanese sitting)
You should be able to touch your toes without bending your knees and preferably without flexing your back especially the lower and mid back.
If you can’t do all 6 you need a routine to work on at least your weak spots.
I agree, but looking at the routine it doesn't seem to do much for ham/mobility except the deep squat hold. What part is supposed to help with what you mention, assuming I'm missing something
It wasn’t a comment about this specific routine but more a reply to the GP.
One of the reasons why I don’t like this specific routine is that it doesn’t stretch under load, to actually improve mobility your stretches need to be accompanied with a dynamic load such as body weight, balancing, free weight or a resistive band or cable.
I also do not think that a routine that does not have a test to identify which muscles are too weak and which are overused and one which does not allow you to set specific mobility goals is going to be productive either.
I guess I agree and disagree with that sentiment. If you do at least this routine frequently, it'll probably be a good thing, but you won't necessarily progress anything in any measurable way.
Whenever I know someone who wants to become a bit stronger or feel better, but hates the routine or gym or doesn't feel like they have time, I always recommend just showing up to a gym as frequently as you can, but 3 times a week is a good number. You can't optimize what you aren't already doing, so it's not really necessary to tell someone to fet into any particular exercise until they're there and feel comfortable with that.
To that effect, this routine doesn't seem like it's for someone who already has literally any existing training experience, it's for someone who sits all day and doesn't really have anything in movement.
As for my comment, I just mistook you for OP, it was early.
I personally love pullups, bench etc.. and that changes over time, but I'm usually chatting with people at the gym and making connections, which inspires me to try what they're doing and keep the habit strong. If I wanted to apply more rigor to it, I'd probably note my progress in some meaningful way, try to ingest more protein, pay attention to more detailed nutrition elements, but that's like a tertiary optimization that doesn't interest me too much.
What you "should" be able to do when it comes to flexibility is highly subjective and relative to each person and their needs.
Lack of flexibility is touted as this bogeyman that needs to be fixed. Saying people "should" be able to touch their toes without bending their knees has no basis in science and unless your job or daily life requires that kind of flexibility, you don't need it.
If anything, strength training should be what a person spends their times doing to increase quality of life.
I'm afraid quite a few of those have become a no-can't-do since they've put a few plates and screws around one of my hips... result of a cycling mishap, of course.
One thing the standing desk allows me as a music fan is to sway or even dance a little when I listen to music during my workday. A sitting desk is simply more restraining and will (in my case) often lead to that bad habit of placing my legs on the corner of the table. The curse of freelancing my my own office.
For this first version I followed the recommended guidelines of holding stretches for 30s (and if they are different for left and right then it would should as 2 exercises but in reality it's one if that makes sense). Having said that, still working on the best formula so thanks for the feedback!
Yes, make one out of the two, people pick up the mirroring instantly. Assuming a five-day work-week it's okay not to stretch every part every day, is it like with muscle exercises where you actually need a rest day to give the muscles some time to grow?
Really good job, really good idea. My feedbacks are the same other told you.
I would say it would be better if you suggest exercises one can do at the desk in an office. Some of the exercise simply cannot be performed in an office with other people!
I think you are on a good way to a great side business project!
It's truly an awesome project! The design is simple, yet beautiful and the illustrations are easy to understand.
I kinda like the way it looks the same on desktop and mobile. Nowadays we don't often see solutions like this, but the UX is great on both devices!
I've been trying to get into a routine where every time I take a bathroom break, I do like 10 pushups or something. Even a very small activity like that does wonders in getting the blood pumping, and actually helps me with my typical afternoon drowsiness.
1. East seated twist left and right have their icons switched. The twist left states to put your left hand on your right knee, but it shows the person with their left hand on the back of the chair.
2. When you first start and are on the 5 second count down page, you can scroll through exercises.
3. Once that 5 second page moves on, if you're on the first exercise and click back, it takes you to the last exercise in the routine. I found this unintuitive since I was actually trying to see what the 5 second page was telling me and didn't realize it was just a "get ready" countdown.
If I have to use my left hand, the figure should use its right hand. This way I can mirror the figure so from my perspective both hands move to the left.
Great start! I suggest a voice over as well so people don’t have to look at the screen while they are doing the exercise. You can record your voice, or you can use nowadays a plethora of AI voices, for example ElevenLabs.
Thanks! FYI, on 2016 iPhone SE Safari, the pause button/counter/progress bar cover the text and make it unreadable. Will likely be using your app daily, though. The images clearly show what to do.
Thanks for letting me know (and so happy that you'll be back)! I'll do more responsiveness fixes tomorrow as I based my media queries based on responsive testing in the chrome console and it definitely needs some work
Very nice! Maybe would be nice to have some different options, like a 5, 10 and 15 minute course and maybe some variance with different courses on different days of the week.
I literally got back from a doctor today after having back pain and he prescribed me to do stretching exercises. These will come in handy, right on time. Thanks!
Thanks! I had a couple of things implemented to avoid this but they haven't worked in mobile (in desktop it behaves as expected AFAIK, not turning off the screen while in the routine). Do you mind sharing your OS and browser?
I'd like the main focus of the app to continue to be the daily routine as I think it's a nice nudge to a create a simple habit with great health benefits.
Having said that, I have a couple of routines lined up that target specific body parts for those days when you want to really go for the stiffest areas (ETA: these would just live permanently in the page).
