Michele’s Journey

Like many busy parents, Michele’s work schedule, household responsibilities, and desire to be the best possible wife, mom, sister, daughter, and friend sidelined most of her exercise goals. She was paying for a gym membership she wasn’t using (like 4 out of 6 Americans do) because she was too busy; yet refused to cancel it because she felt that was admitting failure. She would get on the wagon to get more fit, yet fall off quickly to watch the dust pile up on the treadmill, weights, and bicycle trainer in her basement. She was at her highest weight (brought to light by the below photo a friend placed on Facebook), did not feel healthy, and knew she was on the wrong genetic pathway — with her dad having had two heart attacks and her mom having high blood pressure. Weight piled on and not because she was eating poorly or wasn’t active, but because she was aging and sitting too much at a computer during the day with a very stressful job working with tech startups over the last 20 years. So, she recruited Mike, her uncle, and tapped her life savings to create Excy as a convenient way to get quality cardio and strength training exercise in the midst of a busy life.

In the prototyping phase of creating Excy in January 2015, Michele broke her leg that resulted in a rod, 10 screws, a plate, a blood clot and fives months of being in a boot. Within days of breaking her leg, she was able to do intense upper body workouts and burn 450+ calories using the prototype as an upper body ergometer on the floor and did this for months while non-weight bearing. Three surgeries, many trips to the anticoagulation clinic, relying on caretakers, months of physical therapy and complications that require another surgery, made Michele acutely aware of the importance of exercise in overall wellness and pain management.

It was at that time that the team realized that Excy could not only help busy people exercise more, but also those (children and adults) with restricted mobility because of an accident, pain, disease, or chronic illness. They started on a journey to give Excy one job and that was to be available as a full body low impact cardio and strength training workout at the exact time and place that anyone needs it.

At 44, she feels stronger than ever, even compared to when she was in college and playing two Division I sports as a scholarship athlete. Michele has lost almost 25 pounds with Excy and uses they system as a full body cardio and strength training platform.  She focuses on high intensity interval training with resistance set as high as she can take it for 30-45 second bursts, 20 minutes, 5 to 6 days a week. She is back to doing the things she loves like mountain biking and hiking, yet still never makes 10,000 steps in a day. Now she wants to share Excy with more people. You can read more about Michele’s Excy journey here.

Mike’s Journey

Mike is an early-retired engineer who was a principal designer making fully operational early prototypes of many of the hi-tech products that are now ubiquitous—tablets, simulators, computerized training, games, robotics—and an avid cyclist who has cycled over 150,000 miles. At age 62, he burns about 4,000 calories a week mountain biking and gets backcountry adventures in often. And no more dreaded hours a week of weight lifting for Mike, as now 3 minutes twice a week on Excy at high force levels keeps his posture straight, back strong, and upper body toned.