Technology Keeps Exercisers On Track, Motivated

When it comes to exercise, sometimes people just need a little nudge every now and then to help them stick to a routine or even a diet.

Thanks to ECFit, software created by local entrepreneur Jesse Hercules, that little nudge can come through a minute-long phone call.

“I’m calling for June Tillda,” the computerized voice says in a demonstration on Extracon Science LLC’s Web site, www.extracon.com. “Is this June?”

When the woman responds with a “Yes,” the computerized voice asks if June completed a scheduled workout. June responds with a “No,” and the virtual fitness coach encourages her to follow through with her next planned workout to get back on track.

Third-party motivator

The software was first developed by Hercules a couple of years ago as a way to motivate himself to stick to a workout routine.

“I realized that what was needed was to have some kind of third-party accountability,” Hercules said. “But I didn’t want to hire a personal trainer or go down that road of trying to find another person to be my third-person accountability. I realized I could create some kind of software to do that and it could call me on the phone and ask me, you know, for example, did I do my workout?”

After receiving good results for himself, and hearing from other people who thought it would be a good tool to market, Hercules went to work developing a software application that could be offered to the public.

The result is the ECFit system, a virtual fitness coach designed to help people keep their fitness goals.

Home in Memphis

Once Hercules decided he wanted to market the software, he started looking at places such as Huntsville, Ala., Nashville and even Chicago to launch the business. But, he said, it was the business incubator at EmergeMemphis that helped him decide to open Extracon Science in Memphis.

“I thought the EmergeMemphis incubator was a really special concept, a good place to be, very supportive of new technology ventures, lots of good advice that you can get from Gwin Scott who runs the place, and lots of good events,” Hercules said. “So I chose Memphis because of EmergeMemphis.”

Extracon offers a free trial of the system through its Web site so potential users can understand how the system works. The cost of ECFit for an individual user is $7 per month.

The original system required Hercules to enter all the information and the virtual fitness coach sounded more mechanical than human, he said.

But this spring, when the company unveiled the system to the public, it came with what Hercules called “a system with a robust scalable dot-net framework.”

The new system allows users to go to the Web site to sign up, create a workout schedule with target goals and, through the site and scheduled phone calls, keep up with their progress.

“Now we’re scalable to the point where if we wanted to sign up a big customer like First Tennessee, we can do that now,” Hercules said. “Whereas the one that I built, it worked but there was no way we could’ve signed up big companies or anything like that.”

Not during dinner time

The system only calls when the user asks to receive calls, so there are no unwanted phone calls.

Through a simple four-step process, users are able to meet their workout goals.

The user, of course, first signs up online and sets up a schedule of workouts. The second step is the workout reminders. The next step is the workout, followed by the final step: the follow-up phone calls and feedback.

Extracon also has partnered with several fitness centers to offer ECFit to their customers.

Currently, Fitness Plus at Nonconnah near Memphis International Airport and Healthy Habits in East Memphis offer the service to their customers. Orion Fitness in Oxford, Miss., where Hercules was when he came up with the idea, offers it as well.

The program will be introduced this week at Harbor of Health in Harbor Town.

Hercules points to the results of a recent study that was published recently in Health Psychology to demonstrate the effectiveness of such a system when compared to having a real fitness coach make the phone calls.

“What they found was that the automated calls were similarly effective,” he said. “That is, they couldn’t see a difference in effectiveness between having people calling and the automated calling system.”

Extracon Science LLC
Address: 516 Tennessee St.
Owner: Jesse Hercules
Founded: 2007
Phone: 405-1914
Web site: www.extracon.com