My Fitness Journey Part 2

Yesterday I talked about my experiences transforming my body and my overall health through physical fitness. I recommended personal…

Yesterday I talked about my experiences transforming my body and my overall health through physical fitness. I recommended personal training in that article, which was the focus of my regimen when I first went through this in my 30s.

There are several undesirable aspects to going to a gym:

1. Global pandemic. Risk of infection.

2. Interaction with general public. Risk of bad behavior in the gym. Everybody please do better!

3. Traveling to a place to do a thing. Like commuting to work or going to a mall to shop…can you even?

For me, I love working out in a huge expensive gleaming gym filled with interesting people. But #1 and #3 are dealbreakers for me.

Of course, this was right at the time that virtually everybody on the planet has already discovered the Peloton. But I hate riding a stationary bike and you should not base your fitness plan on doing exercise that you hate.

I understand that one can watch other kinds of classes on the Peloton screen. But why? I’m not going to buy a stationary bike with a screen in order to watch strength training videos on that screen. That is putting tacos in a pizza box.

The Mirror is exactly like the Peloton but all screen, and no bike. And it is a really excellent execution of this idea. Here’s how it works.

It is a wardrobe-size mirror that you lean against or hang on a wall. You plug into an outlet. Except for the cord, you would never know it’s anything other than a wardrobe mirror.

Now here’s the whole point of this thing: Video is going to play on the mirror-like screen in such a way that you can see both the instructor in the video and see yourself in the reflection. You can see that they have a hard time capturing this on their website. It actually works perfectly — much better than they make it look.

Once it’s set up, you use the app to set up your profile and select a class. The classes are in about 16 categories (cardio, yoga, barre, pilates, strength, etc.), different lengths (15–60 minutes,) and skill levels. Each class is led by a delightful, engaging instructor who appears on the screen and leads you through the exercises.

There are thousands of on-demand classes and a schedule of live classes you can join in real-time, where you can (optionally) see your classmates and they can see you (there’s a camera in the Mirror which has a built-in hardware privacy shield.) There’s also 1:1 personal training where you can work out with a trainer privately.

For me, there are a few things about the way all of this is executed that have made it game-changing. I have mostly been focused on cardio and strength training, so these comments are mainly relevant to them. A lot of people do the Yoga and Meditation classes and enjoy them as well.

First, the structure of the workouts. Generally the workouts consist of a series of exercises that you’re doing for a certain amount of time. Let’s say you’re doing a “Cardio Bootcamp” program. Sounds scary, but is not. It might start with the trainer saying “Okay we’re going to do jumping jacks for 30 seconds.”

A timer appears and starts counting down from 30, and you and the trainer are doing jacks until it gets to zero. Then she says “Ok, we’re going to rest for 10 seconds.” and the timer counts that down. And then it’s time for sit-ups, and you’re on to the next thing.

Maybe you’ll do a circuit of six exercises, then repeat them twice. Or maybe you’ll do different exercises that don’t repeat at all. Maybe for a part of the program you’ll do a TABATA or HIIT thing. Maybe the trainer will throw in some challenge where you count the number of reps you can do at the 10-minute mark and try to beat it at the 20-minute mark. Before you know it, you’ve done 30 minutes of cardio and The Great British Baking Show has yet to be watched.

For me, the nonstop pace of the workouts is awesome. There is no need to make decisions, there’s no time to check your phone, there’s no time to think! You’re just doing what the nice person on the screen says to do. They are not screaming at you. It’s an upbeat, optimistic, but relentless pace. You will get the 60 or 90 seconds that you need to rest when you need it. But your time is going to be used very effectively.

Also crucial is the endless variety. In over a year and 300 workouts on the Mirror, I’ve never done the same one twice. It is so much easier for me to get into the gym knowing that I am going to be facing something interesting and unexpected every time.

A few other interesting product notes:

1. The app integrates with Apple Health. So even if you’re not wearing a Watch, your rings get closed and your stats get updated with your workouts. This is such a smart move that when I realized it was working I closed my eyes and let out a long, slow exhale. Thank you.

2. If you are wearing a watch or a compatible heartrate monitor, it’s integrated as you’d expect. You see BPM onscreen, and the app tracks your performance over the workout. This also enables 1:1 competitive challenges between you and other users during certain workouts.

3. It’s great that the interface for classes has the criteria I mentioned earlier, along with the equipment you own (dumbbells, resistance bands, etc.) and your functional limitations. My favorite filter is “Not Taken By Me” because I never want to repeat a class.

A few areas for improvement:

1. There’s a Mirror Firmware Update that pops up sometimes when I start the app that wants to download and install new software on the mirror, which it says will take 30–40 minutes. The only time I open this app is when I am heading down to the gym to work out. A better time to ask me to do this installation would be when I’m finished with a workout.

2. Integration with Apple Watch is hit or miss. At best it seems like I need to remember to re-select my watch as a HRM every time I start the app. From the community I gather that not everybody has this problem.

3. All the functionality for searching classes is there, but the interface itself needs work. There’s no reason I should have to scroll horizontally to find interface elements. Also, I am manually entering the same criteria here 5 times a week, it would be great to save the search.

All told it has been an extraordinarily smooth journey for me with The Mirror. I’m happy to recommend it to anybody. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you want the referral code — there is usually some discount available.