Making Your Movement Better With Anthony Carey of Reactive Training

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Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper cappings counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech Podcast, we interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. Welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I am your host, Neal Bloom, and joining me is Anthony Carey, founder of Reactive Training and the inventor of Cortex. Hey, Anthony, thanks for being on the pod.

Thank you for having me, Neal. Great to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to get to know what you've built, what you're working on. Do you want to give us a quick overview what Reactive Training in Cortex is?

Sure. Reactive Training is a company that's really designed about helping people move better, the quality of life that's associated with moving better. And we've got two products, Cortex and Cortex Sit. Cortex is our flagship product. It's a larger platform that's used in homes, gyms, and rehab facilities across the world. Cortex Sit is our newly launched, really more of A consumer facing little baby brother or sister that sits on a chair and does many of the same things.

Oh, super interesting. And gotta be a good time for business right now with all of us sitting virtually and remotely for the last two years. So I'm curious to hear, you know, what business is like now, but that's a tease. I want to get to know how you, how you got here because I gotta imagine you weren't born building tech for people sitting.

No, my background is really in, well, starting fitness and graduate work in biomechanics. And you know, I've always been intrigued by helping people and knowing that many of us face a lot of the same challenges. And you see that in the aches and pains that so many people experience. And first part of my career and to this day I still work with a lot of people just in chronic pain. But I also wanted to figure out a way that I could scale me and ways that I could influence the quality movement for people. And that's really what drove me to the ideas behind what cortex platforms do and how they can help people move better.

Got it. Okay. So did you grow up in a family with entrepreneurship and business ownership or, you know, that's a big difference from. Or a big shift to want to help people and finding ways to do it to actually building a company that does it. Like, when did that come?

Yeah, so interesting. Just the opposite. A child of two Irish immigrants and you know, we came to the east. I grew up on the east coast in New Jersey and my father was traditional union worker, carpenter. Did his years and his retirement and all that kind of stuff. So I actually came out to, for graduate school to San Diego State in the early 90s and just really had a hard time working for other people because, you know, I had a vision and I put in my time. I learned a lot from other people. I continue to learn from other people. But I just realized that there was a point where the only way that I could take what I thought was the most important thing to do for others was to sort of venture out as an entrepreneur. First as a private studio. I have a boutique studio that I've had for almost 30 years. And then again, trying to scale what we do a little bit more was coming up with, you know, a physical product that people could use beyond the interaction of one to one services.

Got it. What's been the focus of the studio? Is there specific kind of clientele that's come in for. For bodywork?

Literally folks in chronic pain that have typically not done well with Traditional physical therapy, chiropractic surgery, that kind of stuff. In the years that we've been doing this, I've had the privilege of working with people from. Who've come to see me from over 33 states and 17 countries who have flown to San Diego because we're good at what we do, and we kind of fill a need that for a certain population that just hadn't received the kind of progress and hope and care that they needed, and movement has been the solution.

Got it. Okay, so what did you learn? Because having this studio really is like an opportunity to test and try your ideas, right? You've got a customer base that will always give you feedback. How did you start going about inventing and turning this idea into a reality?

That's a great question, because we literally would consider that studio, the lab, and the way that we could take. We took the earlier prototypes. I have a lot of friends in a huge network in the fitness industry, so it was an opportunity to get feedback from them as well on a professional level and put clients on it. So the pluses and minus of that was that the using it as a lab kind of slowed the process over time because instead of, you know, some entrepreneurs will jump head first and go all in into a certain project or a certain new company, I kind of dragged my feet a little bit because I was dipping my toes in both pools. And initially the whole Cortex product was a. Was kind of a weekend thing you worked on in your garage, and then you did a little bit on your free time. But having it combined in a similar field that I'm already spending a lot of time in was a huge advantage for the many reasons you mentioned there.

So take us through a little bit about, like, the science, the biomechanics behind it, because it's more than the name leads it to believe.

Yeah, so. So the name is a play on two words. It's the play on the motor cortex and the brain. But we spell it differently. We spell it C, O, R, E, which is the core, which is. So many people are, you know, in movement and fitness, and the general public are very concerned with strengthening that kind of thing. So that's really where the name came up with. But the design is actually really simple, but also elegant at the same time because it's this platform that can basically mimic the floor that moves, and it moves in the X, Y and Z axis, which is unique. It's patented, so there's nothing else does it. So a lot of people may think or be familiar with things like the Bosu ball, kind of the half dome and those kind of pieces are great. And we often get the comparison. It's apples to oranges kind of comparison really though, because they're squishy and ours is firm and it moves on three ball transfers. So it kind of slides and tilts and rotates all at the same time. And it provides this really smooth experience when the user's on it. But that experience is taking whatever parts of the body that are engaging with it and really creating a novel environment that we don't get if we're training on a machine or we're sitting still on the floor, that kind of stuff. So has handrails that come up to provide that extra level of both safety for some people. But it also adds additional opportunities with the exercises. And so it's flat on top and it's dome shaped on the bottom. The balls ball transfers, three ball transfers like a three legged stool. They always get to keep contact with it, so adds to the smoothness of it. So again, like I said, very simple. But also the engineering in it is precise so that it gives you that really smooth and continuous motion that's so important with our goals with it.

So it sounds like you probably use it in your studio, in your lab, for your customers. And then people are also buying this and using it at home. So it's obviously simple enough to be used without experts around for that. How are you seeing people use it and what are the specific, maybe chronic pains that you've seen some success stories from?

Well, what's really interesting about cortex and even though I use it with people in chronic pain, is that we really view it more as an environment. So it's a movement or an exercise environment. Right. So we have people with Parkinson's. We just got an email from a clinic on the east coast who wants it for their Parkinson's patients. We have professional MMA fighters that are doing like extreme metabolic and hit training with it. So however you really want to implement it is some of the many options. If you're just a at home person for general fitness, you can do your core stuff, you can do a lot of mobility type things. And a lot of people don't realize that, but we actually call mobility the secret weapon. And that's another big thing in the fitness field is people are spending a lot of time on their foam rollers or they're using their percussion guns and all the different kinds of mobility stuff, which you've probably seen. But with ours, the dynamic movements and hitting all those different directions is exceptional. In what it can do for mobility. So it's really. How do you want to plug it in?

Right.

It's an environment and we can use it based on the user and what they want to do with it.

Okay. And so take us through the COVID scenario where, you know, a totally different environment for many people. What did you see happen, especially with like kind of at home fitness and at home treatment, maybe even.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of us in the industry that had inventory were able to see a nice move on that because many people went straight to. To allow initially, most people would go with what they were most familiar with, which would be, you know, the dumbbells or the treadmills and that kind of stuff. But we also saw an uptick on the person that has a little bit more. The general home user has to have a little bit of experience probably and some creativity to use cortex on their own. But yeah, we saw a huge bump between the two products. The new product, we doubled our revenue in 2021 from what we did in 2020, which was a big shift in the home user, but a big drop off on the commercial gym customers because they weren't spending any money because they couldn't open their doors either. And so our market is predominantly rehab physical therapy, the home user, and also kind of more the boutique studio type stuff that you'll see in your neighborhoods. Not the big chain, not necessarily the orange theories or stuff like that, but a lot of the boutique studios that bring a high level of personal attention to their clientele while they're in there.

Got it. So having a lab, like you say a studio in San Diego, you know, keeps you connected to a specific user base, even though this is being used all over the country in the world. Like, what's unique about San Diego in that regard? Like, we're a very active and outdoors community. Anything else you've kind of learned in testing and building this product towards where it is now?

Well, I don't know if I necessarily learned it from the product, but for those of us that are actually ingrained in the fitness industry, we. San Diego is a hub. It's a literal hub. Some of the big organizations related to on the professional side of fitness are headquartered in San Diego. Every couple years, we bring one of the biggest North American equipment trade shows, comes to San Diego every few years. There's some of the most influential professionals from an education standpoint and from a social media standpoint are in San Diego. So people do look to, especially our international customers, look to what's Going on in Southern California, everybody thinks la, but Southern San Diego is equally powerful and influential when it comes to the fitness industry. You know, we're also the triathlon capital of the world here, so there's a lot of good opportunity both to exchange ideas, to get feedback from certain communities and all that sort of stuff. So San Diego is a golden mind for that when it comes to the fitness industry for sure.

Yeah. And just from my own personal experience, I'm actually an ultra runner. So constantly having body parts worked on for, you know, having to get my body ready for the next 50k or 50 miler trail race, I've found. Also not only are we pretty outdoorsy, but we're also pretty tech forward or at least early adopters to trying new things, which also makes for a good market to test and try stuff as well too. I don't know if that's a specific generation or not, but it just feels like locally willing to try things to get an edge or to advance performance and other things like that as round two.

I would agree with that. Absolutely. And also just the integration of that technology with existing technologies I think has been one of the routes that I've seen other folks in the industry do as well.

Yeah. So take us a little bit through the mindset of like the business owner as well too. So a few things happen with COVID in terms of way to get to market, but also supply chains as well too. Managing your own employees and teams. Like what's that like from the view of the business owner right now?

Well, the supply chain thing was and still is to a degree one of the biggest nightmares you could ever expect to. It's that black swan event almost in that through the cost and the delays, which just had obviously cascading effects into all the different markets. But the amount of cost it added to bring in products and how that impacts margins was and still is insane. It's getting better, but everything about the delays and the transport, just a scary time that I hope we, we never have to deal with again. You know, ours is a very what we would call experiential product, meaning you see a picture of it, you're like, what's that? You see a video. Oh, that's really cool. I've never seen anything move on. You get on it and it's an exponentially different experience in terms of so not having the ability to do trade shows, not having the ability to have people come in and demo the product yet we still needed to push that message out. So obviously like many people, we Got very involved in. Well, we increased our digital marketing through the Facebooks and the Instagram. Instagrams and all that, which of course pushes up the competitive prices of that because everybody's doing that same thing. Then during that time, you had these changes that happened with iOS and the attribution that went along to do you know, where that customer came from when they purchased and so are your ads working or not? And there were these. This is, you know, I'm no expert in this. This is things I'm learning from the agencies that we contracted with. But from an employee standpoint and all that, we were able to do a lot of what we need to do virtually. We had a warehouse here locally up in. In Poway that's able to fulfill everything for us when we're close enough that we can commun with them that way. Downside of that, of course, is customers all the way in the Northeast are paying a little bit more for shipping and all those kind of things. But it's absolutely one of those environments where you're forced to learn, get outside your comfort zone, lean on some of the business mentors, colleagues that I have and exchange ideas and that kind of stuff I'm very fortunate, very fortunate to have as a mentor. And he's the minority partner holder with our company is Tom Campanero, and he's the founder of Total Gym and Total Gyms here in San Diego as well. They're the best selling piece of exercise equipment of all time. They've been around for 40 years. And just having access to somebody like that when I'm stressed and pulling my hair out is a. Is a very calming and a benefit that I'm extremely grateful for.

Yeah, no, you're right. Like, the density piece of other entrepreneurs in your space really goes a long way as.

Yes.

As much as just Covid maybe connected us virtually, it's still being able to just meet up and go for a walk with someone and just share and be cathartic. Right. Share some pieces that, hey, you're going through it, I'm going through it. This is normal. You know, like, I think that's a real true reality that I think Covid is not going to change for entrepreneurs in that regard. What about for your industry? Like, what other trends are you seeing for your industry that you're then taking back to your product? Are you advancing the product in different ways or what can we expect kind of next from what you're building?

Well, in our newly released Cortex Sit, which is a smaller version, and it also, instead of Being flat, it's got a little bit of a convex or dome shape on the top, which makes it unique in that way too. So aside from people like you and I who are sitting for the better part of the day and our bodies are not getting that stimulation that it needs, it's also got a rehab application as well. So one of the things on the rehab side, and this is more on the female health side predominantly, but it does apply to men. It's the pelvic floor stuff. And there was a long time, you know, probably when you were born, your mother, nobody talked about pelvic floor health to women back then. And now it's much more common. And there's physical therapists that are dedicated to this. So our cortex hit has applications to helping improve that health as well. But for somebody like you and I that don't have to deal with the birthing process on our own, we there's still what we do, what it does for the body while sitting. So somebody like yourself who's an ultra marathoner, let's say that today you're going to do a 20 minute or 20 miler training run, right? Yet prior to going out for your run, you still spent an accumulated seven hours of sitting. You'll still have visceral fat that does not reflect you as an ultra runner because of the amount of time that you spent sitting. Right. And even though you might be lean, there's health metrics that would apply to you that somebody looked at. Just those would have no idea that you were doing what you were doing. And that's because you're sitting for so long every day. So you can't just cancel that out. A 20 miler is, believe it or not, is it going to cancel out hours and hours, consistency? So the work from home, which is obviously blown up since all this and people are out of the office, people don't have the space for 1500 dollars ergonomic chairs at their dining room table or they don't have enough room for a stability ball. And this does some things different. So they could take an existing dining chair. If you're working from home at your dining table, put this on a dining chair and use it. And then you get the value of what it does, which is the constant micro movements and how that keeps your body from being locked into any one stuck position for hours at a time. As we kind of get buried and sink into these cushy chairs that we have in front of our computers every day.

Oh, fascinating, all of that. I think the other flip side around, you know, also what people may have done is immediately going to standing only. And that's kind of its own body effects to your body after you've been sitting maybe for two, 20 years. And now you're only standing as well too. I know. You know, take calves non stop. Right. And if you don't know how to stretch or do something like, you can do something to your body as well too. So kind of interesting, just the change of human behavior and nature all of a sudden. Kind of flipped on a dime. Yeah.

And the standing folks end up for the most part standing still too. Little gentle weight shift side to side, which is good. But then their backs start to tighten up, you know, and they're holding a lot more overall tension in their body versus the on off, on off, which is really one of the big values of anything that provides variability to the body.

That's really good to know. What else could you give us tip wise for people who now have become more sitting focused in their day job? Anything we can leave the audience with?

Sure. Everybody probably reads things about these, this sort of perfect alignment. You'll see all these ergonomic diagrams where with 90 degree angles drawn all over the place. And yeah, if you're going to stay in one position for an extensive period of time, that probably is valuable. But that again just means that we're locked into a specific position. So the lack of circulation that's associated with that, loading the same tissues for the extended time that you're sitting there is associated with that.

Right.

You're basically passive in your sitting because you're using this, you know, this 1500$2000 chair that holds you up into position. And what's really better is micro movements.

Right.

And this little dosing and one of the big medical programs, it's not mit, the name will come to me. But anyway, there's a process called NEAT N E A T and it stands for Non exercise activity thermogenesis. That's just a really extensive way of saying what's all the little tiny movements that we do throughout the day that add up to our calorie burn. So it's good for us. So even if I'm just fidgeting or I got the bouncy knee or whatever, all of those things are actually add to the thermal effect of movement every day. So again, if we're locked in that 90 degree angle, head supported arm, forearm supported hands just lightly touching the keyboard in front of us, that's not creating any movement. So get up, set your timer, all those simple Things that we hear all the time. But it's really, it's not. If I slouch for 30 seconds, it's better than me sitting at 90 degrees without moving for an hour so I can bounce around. And that's what we tried to do at Cortex Sit, was provide something that didn't require behavior change. You just put your butt on there. And if you reach for your phone or your mouse or somebody calls your name, you're going to have to respond to that and it's going to create a variable environment for your hips and your lower back.

That's great. It's great to know. And I think probably a lot of people at some point tried what you mentioned, the yoga ball, just sitting on a yoga ball, but not the same and not built for a body to be on that and working all day. So this is pretty cool to. To have a solution for so many people who are looking for not extra work, just for something that will do the work for you. Because there's just so many notifications and blinking things of drink water now and change your. Your stands, sit up, sit this, you know, all that. So pretty cool. And I'm interested to check it out as well, too. You've been building in this in San Diego. You've been in San Diego. While you got to know that our taco scene is pretty top notch, where do you go on a break from the lab to go grab some tacos?

Well, I may disappoint some of your listeners with this, but there's a little bit of a backstory. So right before I moved to San Diego, I gave up eating. I was a vegetarian, so I wasn't eating any fish at all. And one of two things I missed in the entire world was fish tacos and buffalo wings. As a vegetarian about 10 years ago, though, out of need, out of metabolic need, I went back on seafood. And what I remembered the most was Rubio's fish tacos. Their originals, right? So that is one of my. I still love Rubio's fish tacos, but when I want something creative, here in La Mesa, we do have city tacos, and they can come up with some pretty creative stuff that are a meal in and of themselves. You can go vegetarian, you can get some seafood on it. There's a lot of options there. But I think they've definitely cornered the market in some of the uniqueness of the tacos there that they have there. But, you know, I'm going to stand by Rubio's still. And I'm an SDSU grad school guy, so I know they come from sdsu, so. So I'll give them some love that way too.

Yeah, no go Aztecs. And Rubio's is a great answer. I mean, it's a great San Diego success story of taking a great San Diego product. Well, you can't claim San Diego invented the fish taco, that's for sure. Baja maybe did, but still capitalizing it and bringing it to so many and establishing San Diego as a place where that brand comes from. That's awesome. I would say SDSU for freshman year. And there is a Rubio's right there next to my dorm. Man, I hit it multiple times a week. They knew where to put that taco stand for sure. So yeah, that's a great one. And Sid taco is another good one. There's. And now they're all over the county and like you mentioned, some great vegetarian taco options as well too, so awesome ones for sure. Well, Anthony, thanks so much for not just being on the pot, but bringing some knowledge and awareness to helping our bodies. I hopefully everyone is listening to this while they're moving and walking, maybe running and for the times that you are sitting there, you know, hopefully they're going to come check out Cortex. So really appreciate you being on the podcast and all the best.

Thank you. Great to be here, Neil.

Cheers. Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbroodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Brewed tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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