The Apple iPhone has become one of the most popular technology items for consumers.
And hundreds of thousands of applications have been developed to enhance the iPhone experience. One of those applications, iWorkout Muse, was developed by Milwaukee-based Workout Muse, a fitness music and media production company, and has been on Apple’s iTunes application store “What’s Hot” list for the past few weeks.
B.J. Gaddour co-creator and fitness director for the company, formed Workout Muse LLC in 2008.
The company works with a team of sound designers to develop customized workout tracks, complete with audio start, stop, and rest instructions, which guide the user through the workout.
“We were becoming really popular among fitness professionals around the world,” Gaddour said. “We experienced a lot of success with professionals who needed custom tracks for their classes, but when the recession hit we needed to take it a step further.”
According to Gaddour, his customer base wanted to mix it up and listen to their personal music during a workout. That’s when he and his partner, Topher Farrell, co-creator and media director, came up with developing the iPhone application iWorkout Muse.
The two contracted out the development of the application, but were involved in every step of the process and released the first version of iWorkout Muse in September.
“The application allows users to create their own workout mix on a series of intervals,” Gaddour said.
Right now users decide how long the workout will be, and how long they want to rest on an interval basis, Gaddour said.
“What we have done is create an application for the iPhone and iPod touch where you can build your own interval workout and then seamlessly mix it with your very own workout music playlists,” he said.
Users can also choose to play the music at a constant volume the whole time, high volume during work periods and low volume on the rest or not play music during the rest periods at all.
“It is completely customizable to the user,” Gaddour said.
The application is available for the iPhone and the iPod-Touch for $1.99, and according to Gaddour, updates for iWorkout Muse and variations of the product that will allow more customization will be available soon.
“The sales on this thing have really been incredible, we really wanted to satisfy our customer needs,” he said. “Right now we are just focused on making this product the best it can be.”
The iWorkout Muse application has been featured on the “What’s Hot” Apple application list for more than three weeks, and has also been in the top ten health and fitness applications list, It has also been selected to appear in an AT&T iPhone commercial. “High-Intensity Interval Training where you alternate between periods of maximum effort and active recovery is scientifically proven to burn nine times more body fat than ordinary exercise and remains the hottest trend in fitness and will for years to come,” Gaddour said. “The problem we’ve run into in the past is that people don’t like watching the clock. We’ve made interval workouts so much easier with our blended audio instructions. Now people can do it on their own with their iPhone application.”
