I was standing with a group of 10 or so other athletes when the idea for WodBoard first hit me. It was the ritual start of any class where the coach was explaining the programming for the day. This process is repeated around the world thousands of times every day without note. Except today the coach was having a problem. The online system we were using wasn't loading so he couldn't explain the session.

Frustratingly this had happened several times over the last year so, as somebody who worked in technology, I got curious and started looking into it. There was no announcement of the problem by the company, no ownership of a resolution or no email out to customers. In fact the only thing I could find was a group of users venting their frustration on social media.

As I thought about my previous experiences, I realised just how bad things were. I remembered walking up to the screen in class to lookup my Squat history a few weeks previous and it was showing me data from several years ago. There was also no way to see my progression of lifting/fitness over time. And why did it take me over a minute to book into a class every time (which I did most days)? These seemed like real basics to me.

Talking to the gym owner the situation was even worse. They were unable to get fundamental metrics on the number of new members they were adding, having to do complex calculations factoring out dropins and merging upgrades. The time it was taking to enter programming each week was running into hours (what a monumental waste of coaching time). And the onboarding experience for new customers was horrible. The list went on and on. It was clear something had to be done.

As I saw it the gyms needed a few things. Firstly they needed something they could rely on. In a digital age where businesses get built around software, the product needed to be reliable and it needed to work. It should also take away much of the day-to-day admin from the gym staff.

It needed to work for the Coaches too. They shouldn't be spending their time sorting paper waivers or working out percentage calculations for athletes. They should be coaching. And finally it needed to work for the Athletes. In the last six months I'd noticed I'd barely logged any performance data. Why? Because it was so slow to do and, once entered, I couldn't get any value out of it. Any system needed to sort this but could also use it for so much more - to motivate, encourage and inspire the Athletes. And if nothing else speed up the booking process (my pet bug bear there!)

In short the software needed to help gyms run their business so they could focus on helping Athletes achieve their goals.

That last paragraph wasn't a summary - it's actually our mission statement. We know what it's like running a business. We've got the cuts and bruises too. Let's be honest - you didn't start a gym to deal with staff rotas, balancing payments against receipts or spending 30 minutes wrestling with software to signup a new customer. You probably started it because you love the sport, you like coaching others or you want to pass on something that has meant a lot to you.

And that's where WodBoard comes in. Our mission is to help you with that. We believe we have already built have the hands-down best solution out there, but the software is by no means complete. We're at the very start of a vision, the first slab in the road of where we're heading. The future is looking very exciting indeed. Come join us.