beyond the whiteboard

First, we want to thank everyone for the great feedback we got last week for the goals feature. After reading all the comments and emails we made some key decisions.

1. No limit on Goals for now. We’ll see how things go for a while. All goals will have an expiration date, for now. However, you can set this date to 1 year from now if you like to set long term goals.
2. A user should be able to go to one place and add multiple goals.
3. Admins should be able to add goals for their gym members.
4. Failed goals, for now, are only visible to the user and their gym admin.
5. The user interface has to be simple and not overwhelming. A user should be able to view their goals in separate section as well on their profile. After you accomplish a goal it will stay on your calendar, but will be crossed out. Also, when you hover over a goal on the calendar you can see quick details.

Hope everyone enjoys the feature.

We recently noticed that users are setting goals exponentially better then there current result. For example, a person with a 12 minute Fran is setting a goal for a sub 3 minute Fran. Is that a goal or a dream? We think realistic goals are ones that you can achieve within a month or two. Although we like our goals feature we realize something has to be done. Below are some thoughts we are using to redesign and restructure the goals feature.

Time Based

Decide when you are going to achieve your goal. We think this will help set more realistic goals. You have to get to point “B” before you go from point “A” to point “C”. When you set a goal you should keep that in mind. There has to be a point where you either achieved or failed your goal.

Simple Design, But Constant Reminder

-Show goals on user’s calendar
-Coach/Trainer can see and set goals
-There should be one place where a user can view and set goals.

Goals Limit (Need Input From You Guys)

We have been discussing this and going back and forth. We feel that it’s counter productive to set too many goals. The idea is to set goals, achieve them and then set more. We are leaning towards 5 goals (not including days worked out per week and weight/lean mass). This way, depending on your privacy, your trainer and other members can see what you are concentrating on and encourage you. We would love to hear your thoughts on this.

We update the site once a week and will roll this feature out either this friday night or next friday night. Why? Well, according to our stats, you probably don’t work out on friday night.

Development Screen Shots (Final product will be different)

We are happy to introduce our new support system. We take our feedback and support very seriously, and look forward to discussing different aspects of the site with you our members.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base will consist of articles, written by us, which will answer questions routinely asked. All the articles will be searchable.

Discussions

Start discussions about features you would like to see, report bugs, or rant about what you hate about the site. You can make the discussion public, so any beyond the whiteboard can throw in their two cents, or private between you and the beyond the whiteboard team. We want to have an open dialogue with you guys about any aspect of the site, our company or LOST.

Check it Out

http://support.beyondthewhiteboard.com

We are able to build, test and tweak our features because of the great feedback we get from CrossFitters that use beyond the whiteboard. In fact, we are hoping, in the upcoming weeks, we can use the community to take the site to another level. The first step toward this is building a better interface for customer support.

Currently we use uservoice to handle our support, feedback and idea discussions, but are strongly leaning towards using Tender Support instead. There will be a few drawbacks because we might lose some data that is currently in uservoice, but we feel the pros outweigh the cons. Also, we internally discuss all feedback and have already planned or responded to all of the current suggestions. Before flipping the switch, we would love to get your thoughts via our blog. Below is a quick list of Pros and Cons.

Pros

All help questions and other feedback idea will be from your user account on beyond the whiteboard.
There will be a searchable FAQ section integrated. Right now the FAQ is separate.
Members can answer each other’s help questions and openly discusses site features.
The user interface and usability are much nicer.

Cons

We will most likely lose some of the suggestion data we have.

We are committed to improving the quality of beyond the whiteboard on a daily basis and feel this is a good step in that direction. Let us know what you think.

Until today we have only had one public gym, Main Site, which follows the WODs from Crossfit.com. As of today we have added our second public gym, Endurance, which will follow the WODs from Crossfit Endurance. Since the gym is public you go to the gym page and join. Note, you can only be in one gym at once, so joining Endurance will remove you from your current gym. You can, however, stay in your current gym and post for the WODs on the Endurance page.

Crossfit Endurance Gym Page

http://beyondthewhiteboard.com/gyms/50-endurance

Crossfit Endurance Cert and Gear

Crossfit Endurance also offers one of the most popular Crossit Certifications. Make sure you check it out. Also, make sure you pick up an official Crossfit Endurance Shirt.

We are really excited to announce our big gym page update.

Three Different Ways To Browse WODs

Browsing through a gym WODs has never been easier. There are now three different ways to browse through gym WODs. A user can either browse by day, week or month and switch between views at anytime.

Day

The day view will display the most information about the WODs for a given day. We have added new features to the daily view that we think will really help members learn, scale and prepare for a WOD quickly. There are four new big updates in the WOD details view.

Previous Result With Related Exercises

You will now see related exercises as well as your previous result. We think this will be extremely helpful when scaling for a workout. The related exercise list will have detailed information regarding the last time you performed exercises in the current workout. For example, in the screen shot above the WOD is Fight Gone Bad, which has the exercise Wall Ball. The related exercise list is of 30 reps of 20lb Wall Balls from the workout Kelly.

Related Crossfit.com Demo Videos

We have tagged Crossfit.com demo videos to the right exercises on beyond the whiteboard. Note, these videos are not hosted on beyond the whiteboard and are linked appropriately.

Related Crossfit Journal Articles

We have also tagged Crossfit Journal articles to exercises and workouts. You will need a subscription to the Crossfit Journal, which we highly recommend.

User Added Demo Videos

Two weeks ago we added functionality to let users add demo videos from youtube or vimeo. We trust our users and feel that there are amazing demo videos that we can all help organize. For example, I personally linked a lot of videos from Again Faster. Note, we will remove any official Crossfit.com videos that have been uploaded illegally on youtube or vimeo.

Week

The week view is similar to the day view except in two different aspects. First, it shows WODs for a week at at time. Second, it does not display the feed for post activity. The main benefit of this view is that a user can quickly browse WODs a week at a time, while still getting detailed information about each WOD.

Month

The month view shows the most amount of WODs, but the least amount of data. A user can quickly browse through a WODs and see if he or she has posted(blue post icon) for them or not(orange post icon). If a user clicks on a specific day they will be shown the day view for the chosen day.

Side Panel

We added a side panel to the gym page to give users an easy way to browse gym related information. Now a user can quickly find out more about a gym, view recent gym activity, browse gym members and view the gym’s leaderboard. Both the browse members page and activity page have also been udpated.

Gym Activity

We have ramped up the activity page to include more information about a users post. If available, we show how much the user has improved since the last time they did the workout for both result and average power. We also added a way to quickly share the post on facebook.

Gym Leaderboard

Basically a quick and easy way to find the top ten men and women for any workout. We break down the leaderboard into groups by default, but a user can search and see the results for any workout.

As I mentioned in my last article, the holidays are fast approaching. This time I’ll give you a list of things that won’t be a waste of your money — things every Crossfitter should have.

A Pull-up Bar

Even if you don’t have your own garage gym, you can do pull-ups at home. There are many different types of door-mounted pull-up bars you can buy, from a simple bar for about $20 to the more complex models which allow for different, wider grips which can range up to about $80. You can kip with these if they’re mounted securely enough, but read the reviews to make sure you’re getting a good one!

Stopwatch

This one’s a no-brainer: Every Crossfitter needs a stopwatch! Wristwatches have gone out of style recently because most people will just look at their cell phone for the time, but nobody works out with their phone at hand. A good wristwatch with a stopwatch function, lap timer, and countdown timer is a necessity for Crossfitting.

Abmat

As if you’d do sit-ups without one.

A Zone Cookbook

Healthy eating is just as important as exercise, whether you’re trying to lose fat, gain muscle, or both. There are at least a dozen books on the subject on Amazon alone.

Weights (Kettlebells, Dumbbells, Olympic bar and weights)

Weights are absolutely necessary for Crossfit. If you’re short on space, a set of adjustable dumbbells is the bare minimum. You can do kettlebell swings with a dumbbell, and you can do a variation on most barbell lifts with dumbbells; in fact it generally requires better balance since each weight is completely independent.

Video Camera

I do Crossfit in a converted warehouse gym, and I have the luxury of having a trainer there to yell at me about my form all the time. If you’re lifting by yourself, a video camera with a tripod is very useful. Set it up, do a few reps, and play it back to see where you’re falling short. Digital video cameras are much more accessible than they used to — the Flip cameras are as low as about $150 for an hour of recording time which should be more than enough to record any single Crossfit workout; just copy the clips you want to keep to your computer when it’s full.

Medicine Ball

If you’re just starting out, these are good for practicing your squats; wallballs are also a component of a lot of Crossfit workouts.

C2 rower

This is on the more pricey side but it’s well worth it. For $900 (a bit less if you’re getting a used one) you get the one machine I have ever seen a Crossfitter use. These rowers are ergometers; that is, they measure exactly how much work you are doing and your power output while you row. It’s also a great alternative to running if you tweak an ankle or the weather’s bad for running.

We have created a new feature, Sync, which lets users sync their other web accounts to their beyond the whiteboard account. We have supported Sync with facebook for a while, and just added twitter integration. We plan to add more options in the future, and hope Sync will benefit both gyms and members.

Member Benefits

Social feeds seem to be filled with addicting games, time-wasting status messages, and other non-active forms of living. We want to encourage our users to post their real productive activity into their social feeds. Simply sync your account once and we’ll handle the rest. As you post workout results, you’ll instantly get encouragement from your friends and family via your social accounts. This will help you complete any and all fitness goals. If you are part of an affiliate, you can represent them because every workout post will show your affiliate’s logo. As with all our features, there are privacy controls. You can find sync in the settings option on the beyond the whiteboard top navigation.

Gym Benefits

Gyms have told us how our facebook sync feature is helping them grow. As many affiliates know, one of the best types of marketing is word of mouth. Word of mouth advertisement is effective because people hear it from a reliable source and trust their opinion. Sync will let you take advantage of word of mouth advertisement through your member’s social sites. As your members post their workout results on beyond the whiteboard, Sync will push them into their social feeds where their friends will see them. Some of these friends will end up clicking on the links and end up on your beyond the whiteboard gym page. Eventually, they will approach their friend, who keeps posting results, about coming down and checking out Crossfit at your gym. Let’s assume that you have 30 members using beyond the whiteboard who have elected to also use Sync. Let’s also assume that they have an average of 200 friends each(case studies show more). That is a total of 6,000 people who will be available to find out about your gym via social feeds. Even if only 1% of these 6,000 people end up being interested in your gym, you will still produce 60 leads. We are in the process of building case studies and analytical reports now. If any gym owners have stories to share, feel free.

This weekend we rolled out some changes to beyondthewhiteboard.com. The most noticeable of these is the autocomplete field for choosing workouts and exercises. We decided to make this change because some of these fields were gigantic and cumbersome. In the case of the exercise selector, we had over 1,200 items in each of those dropdowns! Now, instead of having to scroll through a giant list, you just type in part of the name of the exercise or workout you are looking for and a dropdown with a list of matches will appear. Official Crossfit workouts and exercises will appear first, followed by unofficial matches. We think this will streamline creating and posting for workouts, as if you’re subbing out exercises it’s much easier to find them. For example, I still have to do pull-ups with a band, and before this change I would have to pull down the whole exercise list and find “Pull-up – Red Band”. Now, I can just type “Pull” and it’s the third item in the list. Likewise, if I type “Dip”, “Band Dip” is the third result.

However, some of our users have complained that it makes finding a workout difficult when choosing a workout, and some gym admins have said that it makes it difficult to set a WOD. Now that we’re approaching 20,000 different workouts in our database it’s difficult for me to understand how it’s easier to find something from a list like that, but it doesn’t matter; I’m here to help. So, here’s a quick FAQ on finding your workout, whether you’re an athlete posting your results, or a gym admin setting your WOD.

I created a workout. How can I find it now that the dropdown with “My Workouts” is gone?

Use the workout browser. Near the top of the page is a link to “workouts”.

Click here and you’ll be taken to the workout browser. By clicking the links at the top left you can see lists of official workouts, workouts created for your gym, max effort workouts, workouts created by other Crossfit affiliates, workouts created by other users of beyond the whiteboard, workouts you created yourself, and a list of workouts which have been “liked” by members of beyond the whiteboard, with the workouts with the highest number of votes first.

Click on “My Workouts” to see a list of workouts you have created. If you are a gym admin, any workout you create belongs to your gym, so click on your gym’s name.

From here you can further refine your search by clicking on one of the filters at the bottom left. So, for example, if you are a gym admin, and want to find a workout created by your gym that requires your members to post their total time, click on your gym’s name, and click on “Total Time” below that. You’ll have a paginated list of all workouts matching those criteria, each with a “Post Result” and “Set as WOD” link at the top right of each workout’s section.

I want to find a workout whose name I don’t remember, but I know some of the exercises that were in it! What do I do?

Our search engine is powered by Sphinx, and it’s more powerful than you might think. We index many different objects on their name, on the names of other objects they reference, and so on. What this means for you is you can find a workout by searching for the exercises it contains! For example, if you wanted to find a workout which you know included walking lunges, box jumps, and double unders, you can type “walking lunge box jump double under” in the search box at the upper right corner of the page and it will come up in the results.

Unfortunately we don’t know what sort of thing you’re searching for when you do a search, so click on “Workouts” on the left, which will bring you to a tabbed list of workouts. You can filter these results by official workouts, max efforts, workouts belonging to your gym, other gyms, or to you personally, using the tabs. Just like the workout browser, each workout has a “Post Result” and “Set as WOD” link. If you want more information on one of these workouts, clicking the name will take you to the workout’s page, where you can see the entire list of exercise sets, any results you have posted to it, your gym’s rankings, site rankings, etc.

Just wanted to update you on a small bug we noticed this morning from our last roll out. Some posts weren’t being related to a WOD correctly. We fixed the issue and will update any previous posts as needed.