- Founded in 2021, MAGIC is one of the UK’s first artificial intelligence (AI) personal trainers. MAGIC uses cutting-edge holographic technology to offer an immersive fitness experience.
- Celebrity athletes and sports stars appear as a hologram inside MAGIC’s wall mirror. They coach users via a series of programmes in strength, dance, boxing, yoga, and sports techniques.
- Not only does MAGIC offer a unique workout experience, but some of the best home gym equipment on the market, including an aerobic bench and dumbells.
Website: https://magic.fit/
What is MAGIC?
Inspired by his own personal experiences, Varun Bhanot co-founded MAGIC in 2021. This intelligent home gym and AI personal trainer can help users get fit, all from the comfort of home. MAGIC uses a combination of artificial intelligence and smart weights to create a unique personal training regime.
MAGIC uses cutting-edge holographic technology to offer an immersive fitness experience. Celebrity athletes and sports stars appear as a hologram inside MAGIC’s AI wall mirror to give users a 1:1 personal training experience in anything from strength programmes to dance, to boxing and yoga, to other sports techniques.
These celebrity figures include include well-known faces such as Strictly Come Dancing champion Katya Jones, who teaches her unique dance methodology, former England Cricket Captain and legend Sir Alastair Cook, team GB Olympic record breakers Asha Philip and Desiree Henry who coach their techniques to build lower body strength for sprinting, and England Rugby Star Celia Quansah who reveals her training regime.
The camera uses artificial intelligence to check your form as your train in your MAGIC mirror. The MAGIC mirror can be supplemented with the smart dumbbells and rack in the MAGIC Plus package, and both the smart dumbells, rack and the Folding Incline Bench in the MAGIC Pro package.
Is there a market for an AI personal trainer?
After realising he had “too many kebabs and drank too much whiskey” in his early twenties, Varun Bhanot realised he needed to make a personal change. Whilst on his fitness journey, Bhanot learnt the highs and lows of weight and strength training. But one thing about his personal training experience that troubled him was the problem of accessibility.
For one thing, personal training can be expensive. It can also be difficult to find the necessary time and flexibility. MAGIC is here to solve such problems. It can act in the same way as a personal trainer, using technology accessible from home, it can do all the things you’d pay a trainer to do and get you in the shape you want.
The use of such a system is obvious to most, but it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that Bhanot decided it was time to kickstart this idea into being. Having lost his aunt to Covid, knowing afterwards these health complications could have subsided had she done more exercise, Bhanot felt a tipping point was afoot.
He started working with a personal trainer and lost a quarter of his body fat as a result. Soon after, Bhanot put his mind to starting a company that could help others do the same.
Built with ReflectAI®, MAGIC helps users to get the most out of every step whilst preventing them from injury, with the mirror feature helping the user to see themselves as they follow the athlete’s form. Users can train how they want, when they want, to achieve what they want.
With the groundwork set in 2020, MAGIC launched in late 2021 with a startup loan from Virgin StartUp. After striking a deal with Selfridges, this startup has remained on a steady upwards trajectory. MAGIC has recently announced a €2.3 million investment led by Fasanara Capital, alongside London’s SFC Capital to expand the company’s innovative technology across the UK.
“I went through my own personal health journey losing 25% of my body fat, but in the process realised how old-fashioned and expensive personal training was. I thought there must be a way to automate this experience at scale using AI and data-driven hardware. I faced imposter syndrome and had no clue how to build a hardware company, but I didn’t let that stop me”
“Now, we are democratising personal training, aiming to tackle the UK’s alarming inactivity levels and the £6B/year NHS spending on obesity-related ill-health.”
– Varun Bhanot, CEO and Co-founder
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