January 13, 2014
Keep your resolutions with Waterloo grads smart wear
Fitness trend for 2014: Waterloo engineering startup creates workout gear that tracks your heart rate, muscle activity and breathing
Two recent Waterloo graduates have put their own spin on the adage about clothes saying something about the wearer.
Dhananja (DJ) Jayalath and Christopher Wiebe will ship the first orders this summer for fitness apparel — form-fitting tops and bottoms — that measure such key performance indicators as muscle activity, heart rate and breathing.
They’ll do it out of Athos, the California company they co-founded with another Waterloo grad, venture-capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, whose Social+Capital Partnership invested $3.5 million US in the concept.
It all started while still engineering undergrads
Wiebe and Jayalath started collaborating as second-year students in Waterloo’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“We used to go to the gym together,” Jayalath says via Skype. “While we were working out, there was the constant question: Are we doing this right? Is our form correct?
"That was the precipice for creation.”
At the same time, Wiebe adds, they plunged into electromyography, the analysis of electrical activity in muscular movement.
“We really thought this was something cool, and we could connect what we like to do outside the classroom — working out — with a lot of the theory that we had learned,” Wiebe says.
Elite athletes have support teams and expensive machinery to monitor how they move and how far they can push themselves.
Simple, affordable - and washable
Jayalath and Wiebe wanted something simpler, far more affordable — and washable.
The product ready for sale is a giant leap from the solder-studded prototype the two friends created as their final-year engineering project two years ago.
Athos' “Base Series” looks much like conventional compression fitness wear, except for a small pocket that holds The Core. The palm-sized Core processes information from sensors tailored into the apparel, and sends it via Bluetooth to the wearer’s phone or tablet.
An app converts the data into a display of analytics. Users can fully outfit themselves for about $300 US.
Gives guidance like a good gym buddy
For performance-minded fitness buffs, the kit provides information and “guidance, like a good gym buddy would,” Wiebe says. It also has potential as an ergonomic and therapeutic tool.
Palihapitiya heard the two students pitch the prototype as he toured an annual symposium at the Davis Centre in March 2012. As the ink on their final exams dried, Wiebe and Jayalath flew to Palo Alto to develop the concept at Palihapitiya’s Social+Capital Partnership.
Athos now has its own space and employs 17. It was recently featured in Outside Online as a top fitness trend for 2014.
Despite the entrepreneurial stresses of converging tasks and deadlines, Wiebe and Jayalath say they love living the start-up dream.
“I pinch myself every morning,” Jayalath says.
