Labelled the “Mr & Mrs Smith Hotels” of the fitness industry, RIG is fast becoming the go-to app to book your boutique fitness classes with a tap of a button. If you haven’t already heard of RIG, then we’re about to bring you up to speed! We sat down with founder Sam Harney to talk about the gap he is filling in the fitness industry, life in a startup, having £200 to his name and how he hopes RIG will change the way we sweat.

What’s the RIG mission?
Our mission is to offer a simple class + event booking platform for the health and fitness industry, that only works with the best of the best not just on a price tag and epic location but on the
overall experience and quality of the session. We want to make booking the best workouts in London effortless.

Why would someone download RIG?
RIG acts as your trusted ‘one-stop’ shop for workouts across London. We help remove the need to browse endlessly across the web or wait to get recommended a workout by a mate, we do all the hard work for you. We aggregate the best deals in the city and showcase nearby workouts at a time, price and style to suit you. We remove the lengthy booking process and the nagging pressure of a subscription. We’re all about flexibility, a free download that allows you to tap in when you want, keeping you up to date with the best classes, events and offers going on in the city.

Where was the gap in the market? Why did you decide to start RIG?
One scroll through Instagram and you’re inundated with personal trainers, celebrities and gyms raving about the latest equipment, high-intensity workouts and protein shakes you need to get fit. It was becoming impossible to decipher where’s best to get fit. You’d spend hours traipsing through social media or Google trying to find studios close by and then get a gauge as to what’s the best spin or boxing studio based on a picture or how dynamic the website was… We wanted to do the hard work for you. We’ve spent a lot of time curating a database of studios that really offer the whole package for every level of fitness and we’ve invested a lot of money into making sure the app works just as good as it looks.

What are some of the studios on RIG already?
We’ve got the likes of BXR, F45, Terra Hale, My Manor, Method Movement, Gym Class, 639…We know we are new and it’s going to take
a bit of time for the word to get around and our studio list to get more extensive… but every day more of these crafted classes and events are being added to our platform.

How does RIG differ to say ClassPass or MINDBODY or some of the smaller new players to the market?
MINDBODY is just a huge collation of all the studios in the UK, I’d say it’s more a business software for the studios than a user-friendly booking service. Our app offers a more curated list of studios that we know deliver results. Apps like ClassPass lock you into subscriptions and dictate when and how many times you can train at a certain studio. We wanted to give people complete workout freedom to book into a trusted network of studios on a pay-as-you-train basis. Events mustn’t be forgotten either, we run events that are different, events that’ll get people talking. As an app, we’re continuously tweaking and adapting to the needs of our users and in July we’re adding a couple of features that have ‘taken off’ in other industries. We think it’s going to really change the game, not just for the users but for the studios as well.

So what’s so good about these classes?
From the moment you enter to the moment you leave you, classes offer this incomparable energy. It’s unbelievably contagious. We think classes bridge the gap between one-on-one training and the all-too-often faceless anonymity of corporate gyms. You can dip in and try different training disciplines and get coached and mentored by highly experienced instructors. Think of it as group personal training without the cost.

How has the fitness industry changed? Why are more people taking classes and going to fitness events?
I think people are getting bored of just being a member of a gym, fitness is now a social scene and people are treating exercise not just as a routine but as an experience. There are so many amazing advancements in the fitness industry each year, even each month, offering stimulating experiences. It’s so hard for gym chains to stay on top of the changing trends and new technologies forever entering the market.

Studios give people the flexibility to fit their fitness around their busy lives, rather than trying to work their lives around the location of their gym. These classes really can change people’s perception of exercise, every workout’s different, they’re created and led by the best and they’re built to get results, and be fun! We just need to get even more people experiencing these sessions as once they dip in they won’t stop.

How do you monitor quality?
Every studio is assessed by our team before they get accepted into the collection. We look at reviews, aesthetics, points of difference and most importantly, the workout quality. I’d say our team is one of the fittest workforces in London after all the workouts we’ve tried! All of this is done in order to ensure our user’s expectations are always exceeded.

Download RIG here.