A note from Stef

Why I built Onset

I’ve been training for well over 20 years, which is long enough to have fallen for almost every new idea the fitness industry has come up with.

I’ve spent tens of thousands on expensive gyms. I’ve followed bodybuilding splits and online programs. I’ve done classes. I’ve had personal trainers. I did CrossFit for over ten years. Flirted with HYROX. I’ve bought bits of equipment that were definitely going to change my life, then spent the next five years moving them around the garage.

Then one day, around eight months ago, I cancelled my gym membership for good.

I didn’t stop training. I simply changed how I trained. I focused mostly on short kettlebell complexes and cleaned up my diet. And that decision resulted in the most dramatic transformation I’ve ever seen in my body.

I’m in my mid-forties, and if being in my 40s has taught me anything, it’s that my body gets less forgiving every year. Despite that, I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life.

And the formula is so bloody simple.

Swings. Cleans. Presses. Squats. Snatches. Carries.

Combined with some bodyweight exercises, walking and clean eating.

I prioritise simple, dynamic movements that use loads of your body at once. They get your heart going, build strength, improve your fitness, and don’t require twelve machines and a 90-minute window in your diary.

Here’s the thing: I’m very lazy. I want maximum results for minimum effort. So the good news is each workout on Onset is only around 20 minutes. Because that’s all you need.

You can do a genuinely amazing full-body workout in the space of a yoga mat with one lump of metal that’ll probably still be here after civilisation collapses. (Which, to be fair, doesn’t feel that far away.)

So here’s what I created: an app with workouts for men and women. I cover muscle building and my wife Hannah covers toning. There’s some crossover, but that’s how it works in general.

If you want to train with me, I highly recommend you get yourself a kettlebell. If you’re just starting out, get a 16kg. If you’ve had some experience with kettlebells and lifting weights, a 24kg is ideal. Then, once you’re ready, scale up to a 32kg. Those are the only three I own, but I’m currently eyeing up the next one.

Hannah’s workouts need no equipment at all. It’s all bodyweight, but it’s worth getting some light weights or ankle weights to get the most out of them.

Fitness shouldn’t cost a fortune

Exercise has somehow become incredibly expensive. A decent gym membership isn’t cheap. A personal trainer can easily cost more per month than your child. And fitness apps increasingly seem to have looked at Netflix and thought, “Yeah, but what if we charged more?”

I wanted Onset to be different. Something genuinely affordable that gives you the stuff you actually need, in your pocket, then gets out of the way.

I don’t think most people need more fitness content. There are approximately eleven billion workouts on the internet already. The difficult bit is actually doing one.

Especially when you’ve got a job, kids, dogs, dinner to make, and somebody has just informed you at 9pm that they need a Roman costume for school tomorrow.

That’s the person I’ve built Onset for. The person who has 20 minutes. The person who wakes up early and wants to get something done before everyone else gets up. The person who gets the kids to bed, looks at the sofa and knows that if they sit down, it’s over.

Open the app. Start the program.

No driving anywhere. No waiting for someone to finish taking selfies on the bench you need. No changing rooms. No bloke called Brad making sex noises next to the dumbbell rack.

Just press play, follow along and you’ll finish feeling amazing.

It’s me and Hannah

I built Onset with my wife, Hannah. We’ve both trained for years, but we train quite differently. Which turned out to be useful.

I do the kettlebell, dumbbell, HIIT and bodyweight side. My workouts tend to be short, dynamic and fairly sweaty, aimed at men. I like movements that do several things at once. I don’t want to spend ten minutes isolating one tiny muscle if I can pick something heavy off the floor, put it above my head and involve half my body in the process.

The aim is simple: get stronger, get fitter, lose the lower belly fat, and then get on with my day.

Hannah’s approach is completely different. She’s a qualified nutritionist and yoga teacher, and her workouts are much more pulse and Pilates-style: controlled and toning-focused. They’re lower impact, with a lot of emphasis on posture, core strength, control and moving properly.

I’ve done some of them. They look easy when Hannah does them. Then you try one and about four minutes later some previously unknown muscle beside your arse starts shaking and you realise you’ve massively underestimated what is happening.

Hannah’s workouts are aimed at women who’d rather focus on tone than bulk.

So when you join Onset, you can train with me, Hannah or both of us. Choose what suits you. The app changes around that choice rather than forcing everyone through the same program.

Let’s talk about the features

Programs

This is the key feature of the app. If you want more structure, there are programs that run across days and weeks. This is for when you want to actually work towards something rather than randomly selecting whichever workout has the nicest thumbnail.

You follow the days. Tick them off. See where you are. Finish the program. Again, deliberately simple.

Build your own workout

Still one of my favourite parts. If you already know what you’re doing, you don’t need us telling you how to train. Build your own session. Add the exercises. Set your work and rest periods. Choose your rounds. Save it.

Then put your phone down and train using the big bright countdown timer. Onset gives you voice cues as you go, so you’re not halfway through a kettlebell swing trying to remember whether you’re supposed to be doing goblet squats next. Build it once and reuse it forever.

Or don’t build anything

This is probably more useful for most people. We’ve put hundreds of workouts into the app. You can filter them by trainer, length, body area and whatever equipment you’ve got.

Got one kettlebell and 15 minutes? Fine. Dumbbells and half an hour? Fine. No equipment and you’re in a hotel room? Also fine. Find one. Press start. Go.

Workout of the Day

Every day there’s a workout waiting for you. You don’t need to decide anything. Open Onset. There’s your workout. Do that.

I genuinely think removing that tiny decision makes a difference. Because motivation isn’t always the problem. Sometimes you just can’t be arsed figuring out what to do. They’re different things.

Quick Build

This came from a problem I’ve had loads of times. You’re somewhere unfamiliar with random equipment. Maybe you’re on holiday and there’s one sad kettlebell in the corner of the hotel gym. Maybe you’ve got two dumbbells at home. Maybe you’ve got nothing.

Tell Onset what you’ve got and Quick Build creates a workout for you. Bodyweight. Kettlebell. Dumbbells. Whatever’s available. And if it gives you an exercise you don’t like, or something that annoys your knee, tap it and swap it for something else.

Then there’s food

I didn’t want another app where you’re standing in your kitchen weighing 11 grams of peanut butter. So Onset uses your hands.

A palm of protein. A fist of veg. A cupped hand of carbs. A thumb of fats.

It’s deliberately approximate. Because unless you’re stepping on stage in your pants covered in fake tan, you probably don’t need every meal calculated to the gram. You need to eat pretty well, most of the time. Enjoy your life while building a healthy, sustainable relationship with food and training.

There’s a simple plate system, recipes and a growing library of articles explaining nutrition without turning food into chemistry homework.

Progress should feel like progress

There’s XP, badges, streaks and a proper record of what you’ve done. Partly because it’s useful. Partly because human beings are ridiculous and apparently watching a little number go up is enough to convince us to do another set of squats. It works on me, anyway.

Give me a streak and I don’t want to break it. Give me a badge and apparently I’m nine years old again. And if that tiny bit of gamification gets you to train on a Thursday when you otherwise wouldn’t have bothered, I’m all for it.

So what’s the point of Onset?

I’m not promising you’ll get a six-pack in six weeks. I’m not interested in before-and-after photos where somebody has been dehydrated, shaved, tanned and photographed under a light normally used to interrogate prisoners.

I just want to make training easier to keep doing. Because after more than twenty years of this, that’s the bit I think matters most.

I’ve had periods where I’ve trained brilliantly. I’ve had periods where work took over. I’ve had young kids. I’ve moved house. I’ve travelled. I’ve been injured. I’ve lost motivation. I’ve got it back again. Life continually gets in the way.

So I’ve stopped looking for the perfect training program. I want something robust enough to survive real life. Something I can still do when I’ve got twenty minutes and really can’t be bothered. That’s what we’ve tried to build with Onset.

Amazing workouts. Good nutrition. No bullshit.

And as few things standing between you and actually doing it as possible.

You can try the whole thing free for 14 days. If you don’t see the value in it, cancel it. All I set out to do was build a fitness app I actually wanted to use. And I use it every day.

Stef.

14 days free.

Every program, every workout, every recipe.