Hi, I’m glad you made it here! My name is Alexandra and today I wanted to tell you about how getting locked in the house drove us to an idea that became Jetsnach.
Yes – the idea for Jetsnatch is a product of a lockdown, passion and personal experience.
Mateusz and I have known each other for about six years. He was my and Wiktor’s personal trainer long before covid-19. It was Mateusz – as a kb training coach – who made us passionate about kettlebells. He also taught us his philosophy of training- no slacking off, with understanding for our own body and with the belief that we work on making our body and head stronger, and everything else is a side effect.
For me initially kettlebells were more of a supplement to my weightlifting training. Or a tool that helped me prepare for my travel adventures when needed. Training with kettlebells under the supervision of Mateusz, allowed me to climb my first four-thousander in Morocco without altitude sickness or cross the Papuan jungle without any conditioning problems.
When the first lockdown started, overnight our whole lives moved to apartments. Gyms too. For a person like me, who was training four times a week, it was not a pleasant experience. But for Mateusz, a personal trainer who made his living working directly with his clients at the gym, it was really difficult. Overnight his workplace was closed. Suddenly, we all had to start training at home and cope with the equipment we have in our disposal. The gym-world had to move to the internet. Coaches began to organize zoom training sessions and excel became the best tool for planning training programs and tracking progress.
Exercise equipment – dumbbells and especially kettlebells – immediately disappeared from the stores. During the lockdown, kettlebell weights were the most scarce and sought-after exercise equipment there was. Fun fact – in UK Google search between January and April 2020, the most popular search phrases were: “antibacterial hand gel”, “hand gel”, and “kettlebell 32 kg”. In the U.S., the phenomenon has even become called by The New York Times as “The Great Kettlebell Shortage”: Within a 100-mile radius of New York City, in no store could one buy kettlebell weights, and there were cases of ordered shipments being stolen in the city itself.
“Why kettlebells?” – one may ask. The popularity of kettlebells resulted mainly from the fact that with a relatively small equipment base (2 – 3 weights are enough), an effective full-body training can be performed. It was therefore an ideal training tool for home and garden gyms.
Also, here in Poland kettlebells became hard to find overnight. Mateusz had to borrow his own equipment so that his clients and group members could exercise properly. Mateusz, who conducts personal training and group kettlebell classes on a daily basis, had to move into the online world in order to keep in touch with his clients and for them to be able to train normally. He made his workout videos and plans available for those who trained at home using Messenger/Whatsapp/Facebook Groups and Excel.
So, we started wondering: “What would make our workouts easier? What would help us train better even after the pandemic?”. Maybe an app that would allow us to monitor and parameterize our workouts, create training plans and leading us through exercises, as well as compete against each other and stay in touch with our kettlebell friends? And a sensor that would allow us to verify our training technique and power? As this task occurred to be quite difficult, and the technology that would allow us to achieve what we wanted did not yet exist, we knew that we had to build it all ourselves. That’s how our cooperation with the R&D world started – among others with Krzysztof Brzostowski from the Wrocław University of Technology. We also managed to attract an Investment Fund (Prometeia Innovation Fund) that saw the potential in our project and decided to support us in its implementation. And so, the work on the product took a real shape.
Jetsnatch is a combination of several worlds: the training and gym world represented by Mateusz, the scientific world represented by Krzysztof, and mine and Wiktor’s world – on the one hand, the world of business and investment, but also of adventure, freedom, and working according to our own rules. We want to inspire people with our training philosophy – to show that it’s about much more than just a six pack on the belly. To build a community of people who are driven by the same ideas. And to make a product that will support them in the process.
We’d love it if you’d join our journey;)!
