A letter from Treino’s founder
We believe that:
1) Everyone in the world should be able to have a personal trainer. Strength exercise is one of the most important levers for global health and longevity, personal trainers are the best form of accountability driving that habit, and cost should not be a limiting factor.
2) The best trainers should get paid well for making us all healthier. Their earnings should not be capped by the language they speak or where they happen to be based.
That’s why we’re building Treino, but it all started for a much simpler reason.
Treino began as one pair: me and Bruno.
When I turned 40, I realized I needed to start working out - consistently, not in bursts. I was a new dad, Function Health flagged increasing cholesterol, and everything I read about health told me that strength training was the most important thing I could do to stay around longer for my kids. I tried all sorts of things to build the routine, but getting sick, traveling, or just life always seemed to get in the way. The one thing I’d never tried was a personal trainer, because of how expensive it is.
But I had a secret weapon. I’d spent ten years in Brazil building a tech company, which meant two things: I knew a lot of people there, and I speak Portuguese. Why not find a great Brazilian trainer who could train me remotely? Given the currency difference, it would cost a fraction of a trainer here.
Enter Bruno - one of the top trainers in Brazil. (I only later learned how insanely seriously Brazil takes training.) Knowing he’d be waiting for me at the hour we’d booked forced the accountability I could never force on myself. Having him watch made me find the extra rep. And because it’s remote, the things that used to break the routine stopped breaking it - I train when I travel for work, I train on vacation. I’ve been training with him for years now, and it’s been completely transformational.
The longer it worked, the more one thought nagged at me: none of this should require a secret weapon. Why shouldn’t my dad, who is crazy cost conscious, be able to have a personal trainer? Why can’t my friends, who frequently travel and don’t speak Portuguese, have one too?
I’ve come to believe everyone should have a personal trainer. Not as a luxury - as basic preventive health. The science is settled that strength is one of the strongest levers we have over how long and how well we live; what’s missing for almost all of us isn’t knowledge, it’s follow-through. GLP-1s changed the psychology of eating for millions of people. For the psychology of showing up and exercising, the best technology is also the oldest one: another human being waiting for you at an agreed hour. Right now the cost of that person, a personal trainer in the city you live, is priced as a luxury, out of reach of almost everyone it would help.
I’ve also come to believe the people who do this work should earn what it’s worth. Brazil is famous for its physical training (just think about its domination of jiu-jitsu) - it’s a licensed profession there, with a university degree and a federal registry behind it. Bruno is the best coach I’ve ever had, and his income is capped not by his skill but by his language: the market for a Portuguese-speaking coach ends where Portuguese does. His hours are dependent on when people in his time zone want to train. And, since he mostly trains in person like most trainers, his income is further limited by who works out at the gyms near him.
The people who most need personal trainers and the coaches who most deserve clients are separated by a wall, and the wall is language and location. AI and remote technology is finally good enough to take that wall down. We use those technologies to leverage the super-power of accountability that personal trainers drive - making sure we show up, making sure we push a little outside of our comfort zone when we do.
I’m excited to see how much longer and better we can all live when we all have a personal trainer, and excited to empower the best trainers in the world to live wherever they want and work whenever they want. Thanks for being a part of this movement with us.
- DanielFounder, Treino