Move Mo App

Introduction

Have you ever gotten to the end of a day and thought, “Damn! I didn’t move at all today. I’m stiff. I’m weak. I’m tired.”

That happened to me a lot during the pandemic and before that on long drives and flights. So I built an app. Take a moment to move more with the Move Mo app. It’s fast. It’s simple. It’s easy. Seriously.

Here’s my favorite beta tester feedback.

Ya know, it’s not like all these fitness apps with long workouts that takes a big commitment. I just sit at my desk all day and don’t have much time. This is perfect for me. I feel better after using it.

Beta Tester Review

What is Move Mo?

Move Mo’s default settings create a random workout most people complete in three to five minutes with no equipment. Don’t spend a lot of time setting up an app. Just download it, install it, and press a single button to get a quick workout using only your body weight.

Move Mo breaks up long periods of inactivity like when sitting at your desk for hours or driving in a car or flying. Don’t worry about sweating or changing your clothes. If you’re at an average fitness level, expect minimal sweating. As long as you don’t have your tight pants on, keep your clothes on. If you’re below-average fitness, speed up your workouts by reducing the max rounds, reps, or exercises to get the same result no sweat.

Increase the max settings if you want a longer, more intense workout. These fast setting changes are great to have in your back pocket when you’re short on time and can’t get to the gym or traveling and can’t do your normal workouts. But that’s not the primary focus of the app, just a bonus.

Remember Move Mo is designed first for moving more, sweating less, and making the most out of our limited time.

How to get Move Mo?

Move Mo and Move Mo Lite are only available for iOS. You can find them on the App Store using the links below.

• Move Mo
• Move Mo Lite

Try Move Mo Lite first to see if you like the app. Move Mo is essentially the same but has over thirty exercises. Move Mo Lite has less than ten. See screenshots with the list of exercises on the App Store.

If any software engineers out there want to use this on Android, contact me. The app is built using React Native so it should run on Android without major effort.

Video Demo and Philosophy

Watch this video to learn why I built Move Mo, who I built it for, more on the higher-low bar concept below, and see a demo of the app. You can even practice throwing punches at the end. It’s a great way to destress during the workday.

Who should use Move Mo?

People who sit for hours at a time. Think desk workers, students, couch potatoes, travelers (planes, trains, and automobiles). Expect bodyweight exercises with a random mix of squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, core, and cardio exercises. An exercise band is nice to have but no equipment is required. The exercises are easy to imitate from the videos.

Move Mo is a random workout generator. Random means no thought, no planning, and no time required to create a workout. But it also means no control. If you want to plan the details of your workout, this is not the app for you. If you want full-body workouts without thinking, this is your app. Amp it up with more rounds, reps, and exercises if you want mo workout. Add resistance with dumbbells, exercise bands, or kettlebells if you want mo intensity.

While you can use the app for high intensity, Move Mo is built to help you establish a “higher low bar” for fitness and movement in your life. When we set new fitness goals, we focus on the high bar: losing massive weight, gaining major muscle mass, etc. And then we quit. Not all of us, all the time. But most often we quit. And then we feel bad. And our fitness gets worse. If you’ve failed and felt bad, aren’t consistent with moving and exercising, or sit for hours at a time, you are the target market for Move Mo.

Why is Move Mo different?

So why use Move Mo? Why not use something else? I can give you all the logic and reasoning in the world and it doesn’t matter. Just try it once and see how you feel afterward. For building habits like this, how you feel matters more than how you think. Because that feeling afterward is your reward. If you don’t feel good after a few sessions stop using it. Habits don’t stick without rewards. If you feel good, enjoy it. Don’t expect to lose weight or hit all your fitness goals. You can amp up the settings and use nutrition more for that. Move Mo will help you establish a “higher low-bar”. Then the rest gets easier.

Now (for you engineering and scientific types like me) here’s the logic. If you’re training for life not competition, just move more. Move consistently. Walk more. Stretch more. Move your body weight more. Use this app or don’t. Most of us are training for life and hopefully live a long, healthy one. Sometimes we forget that when the fit people we follow or teach our classes look like superhumans. Our goals don’t have to be their goals. Aim to be the same or better than yesterday, not better than your peak, not better than that superhuman. Better than yesterday. The same when you need to be nice to yourself.

But we can use that superhuman mindset. The fittest people know: train your mind and your body will follow. Most people don’t act on that advice. They think. And think and think and think. Thinking is good but there are limits. Often all that thinking prevents us from acting. Or we think we must train at a high intensity. We don’t.

Research (Sperlich, B. et al, 2018) shows strength and quality of life benefits from a daily six-minute workout. Move Mo default workouts average two to four minutes and 50-70% peak heart rate on average dependent on existing fitness level and other factors, which is less than the study protocol (six minutes long, 70-75% peak hear rate). The point is that it takes a lot less to improve fitness than most of us think. Read this microworkouts overview written in lamen’s terms for more information on the benefits and other quick options. If you want to get benefits like in the study using Move Mo set a timer for six minutes and complete the exercises faster to increase the intensity (but you might sweat more).

So before you take on those high-intensity, high-effort, high-bar goals like losing all that weight, adding much more muscle, running a marathon, establish a “higher low-bar”. Never go below it. The most precipitous drop in health in our lives will most likely happen when we’re older. We’ll get sick or injured and won’t be able to walk for a month or two. Our strength will plummet and then our fitness goes downhill until we’re dead. You’re more likely to keep this outcome at a distance if you move more, maintain the muscle mass you have, and establish a higher baseline of fitness. Never give it up, even when you fail at a high bar goal. Fall back to the baseline “higher low-bar”.

Move Mo is one tool for your fitness toolbox. It’s best for when you’re limited on time and space. I’ve used it on planes, trains, and automobiles (at a rest stop). Move Mo is different. It’s not designed to crush you. It’s built for you to look forward to moving more.

Why a higher low-bar?

If the “higher low-bar” concept isn’t clear yet, here’s the fitness trajectory of an average person who works at a desk all-day, sits on the couch after work, maybe drives hours in their car, maybe spends a lot of time traveling. When they hit middle age, their fitness drops precipitously until they’re gone like in this image.

Then there’s the average “motivated” person who sets New Year’s resolutions many years, tries to lose ten, twenty, even fifty pounds, or add a mountain of muscle. They’re trying to go from their low low-bar to a high high-bar. They go big for a month or two or twelve. But eventually, it’s too much effort, too hard, and too many of us fail. We yo-yo, bounce back, and eat a pint of ice cream every night. And blame our lack of discipline, willpower, and (insert your favorite superhuman word here). Below is the “motivated” person yo-yo image. A few people maintain an upward trajectory until they could make money off their fitness. But they’re the minority.

(Great, now how do I make fitness easier? How do I establish a “higher low-bar”?) Make things easier. Never be too hard on myself. Move every day. A ten-minute walk. A twenty-minute bike ride. Bodyweight exercises one or two times a day at your desk for just a few minutes. The lifetime fitness of someone who focused on just moving more and establishing a “higher low-bar” looks like this.

This does not mean use this app and you’re fit for life. It’s a gateway drug. Establish your “higher low-bar” and you can add other things. Experiment. Right now I slow lift once a week for fifteen to thirty minutes (laugh at my misery here) and do two long sessions of hot yoga. These activities will change. Moving often will not. Preserve as much fitness as long as possible until the inevitable decline. Maximize the area under the curve across your lifetime. Aim for consistency. The higher you keep the fit-bar, the happier and healthier the life.

Never fall below your new higher baseline. If you go too hard and find yourself yo-yoing, don’t dip below a lifestyle that has you walking, biking, rowing, swimming, or moving ten to thirty minutes per day. Use the app or not. There are many ways to solve this. I made Move Mo for me because it’s easier when you don’t have the time or space for low-intensity exercises like at work or on a plane.

When/where to use it?

When and where could you use a three-minute workout without sweating?

• Every hour when sitting
• Watch prompts you to stand
• Device tells you to move
• Wake up
• Work break
• Lunchtime
• End of workday
• Traveling
• Rest stops on long drives
• Every hour on a plane
• Returning to a hotel

I feel better at the end of a long day if I use it once or twice, most often by my desk at home. But when in the office I find an empty room or go outside (even in the cold, it wakes you up).

I can almost always find a place where it doesn’t feel too awkward to perform bodyweight exercises. But then you realize there’s no place on a plane that doesn’t feel awkward. Use it anyway in that space between sections in coach or back where the flight attendants hang. Sometimes someone might stare at your butt while you do squats. But that’s their problem, not mine. They can close their eyes or watch their movie or eat their cookie. You can feel good about someone checking out your butt which will look better from doing all these squats .

Why go to the trouble of feeling awkward and showing your butt to strangers? Because I feel great when I use it on a long trip. I never felt better after a flight than going from India to Thailand to Germany to Philadelphia using this concept. Over forty hours of flight time I did three-hundred squats, air presses, and air pulldowns in sets of thirty every two hours on the plane. I felt wide awake and full of energy coming off that last flight, unlike anything I’d ever experienced on a long trip. You don’t have to go that far. Just move more when you’re stiff from sitting too much and appreciate that feeling afterward.

Privacy Policy

Application settings and exercise preferences are only stored on your device. Remove this data using the reset buttons on each tab. This application does not collect, store, or share any other data or use any third parties.

Support Information

If you have any issues with the application, try the following steps.

• Quit and reopen the app
• Restart your phone
• Reset to the default settings
  • Tap Settings tab
  • Tap reset settings button
• Reset to the default exercises
  • Tap Exercises tab
  • Tap reset exercises button
• Enable notification permissions
  • If notifications (the “daily reminder” on the Settings tab) aren’t showing up on your device, enable permission for the app under Settings > Notifications > Move Mo
  • The permission request for the app will only show up the first time you attempt to set a daily reminder. If you do not give permission you will have to give it manually using the steps above or the linked article.
• Daily reminders aren’t working
  • Follow the steps above to check you enabled permissions.
  • Cancel and set the time for the daily reminder again after you enable permissions. Notifications aren’t scheduled without permissions so if you set the time before granting permission for the app to create notifications, the daily reminder needs to be set again.

Why is it called Move Mo?

“Move!” and “Mo!” are two of my daughter’s most frequently used words. She’s demanding. Plus “Move More” was taken. I like the dual meaning of moving more and a workout so fast it only takes a moment. When someone asks you for a moment it feels like a lie. Move Mo is honest and pure like a child’s inspiration.

It takes a moment to move more.