Merging Fitness and Tech: Get to know our Director of Exercise Science

When Ergatta’s co-founders were first coming up with the concept for Ergatta, one of the central questions they asked themselves was: how can we make fitness a daily habit for our users??

They knew that they wanted to create a platform that was fun, engaging, and kept people coming back for more. With that in mind, Ergatta is now on a mission to be the leader in the game-based fitness space.

Our workouts are designed to place you in the middle of the action; as a result, designing game-based workouts requires a particularly unique skillset. Most fitness trainers and coaches are accustomed to designing workouts where the instructor themself is the key motivator for the user. Ergatta workouts, on the other hand, are designed to tap into a user’s internal sense of competition as the main source of motivation.

As we started to build out our workout library, we knew we needed a fitness expert who also had a strong technical background to help take our fitness experience to the next level. You can imagine how excited we were when we met Chris Chang, who is now our Director of Exercise Science & Programming.

We caught up with Chris recently to have him share - in his own words - more insight into his role at Ergatta and how his background makes him uniquely qualified for the position.

How would you describe your role at Ergatta??

Chris: Being at a startup means I get to wear many hats. I act as the domain expert in fitness for the company; I support all of our teams cross-functionally, create the fitness content that our members experience on the platform, and act as a product manager on our Game Studio Fleet to help develop new games for our game-based fitness experiences.

Since joining, can you tell us more about how you have shaped & defined your role at Ergatta by blending your multiple skill sets?

Chris: Prior to Ergatta, I had a career as a mechanical engineer before making a career change into the fitness industry, where I worked as a personal trainer, health coach and an educator. I knew that I wanted a career that would allow me to leverage my technical background in engineering with my passion for fitness. Everyone knows that working out is good for you, but not everyone enjoys it or can motivate themselves to do it consistently. Ergatta’s mission really resonated with me, and its game-based approach really addressed my own pain points with making cardio a regular habit in my life by making fitness fun and interactive.

What has been your main focus since settling into your role?

Since joining Ergatta, I have really focused on understanding our member’s pain points and their fitness journey. From my coaching experience, I’ve learned firsthand that behavior change and habit formation are the single biggest drivers of long term success, so I sought to weave those principles into our product development. By understanding our member’s unique user journeys, how they move through the stages of behavior change, the pain points that may lead them to regress and the incentives that drive them to progress, I was able to highlight opportunities that would later shape our product roadmap around human psychology.??

How has this opportunity at Ergatta helped you to pursue your career goals and passions?

Chris: I have been able to leverage my mechanical engineering background to break down problems and develop strategies that will lead us to scalable and holistic solutions for our members. I have helped optimize our internal processes for content creation to keep up with the rapid growth in our community and provide tools for my colleagues to better serve our members.?By interacting directly with members of our community and leading discovery work streams, I have been able to uncover problems that specific demographics are facing and tailor specific features to address them. We want our game-based experiences to not only make fitness a fun, interactive experience, but we also want to create incentives that bring out the most in our members - and by doing so, allowing them to accomplish more than they ever thought possible.

If Chris’s story resonates with you, we would love to hear from you! Be sure to check out our careers page to check out the roles that we are currently hiring for.