Active Lab finalists - Meet the startups in Fit-Tech
Following the ActiveLab Live! finale at the recent Active Uprising conference, we take a look at startups seeking to solve some of society’s biggest challenges through technology designed to get people active
FOUNDED: April 2014 FOUNDER: Melinda Nicci ACTIVE LAB - WINNER
Melinda Nicci
Baby2Body is a digital, personalised, health and wellbeing coach for pregnant women and mothers. The platform gives women a personalised coaching experience focused on helping the user to lead a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy and as a mother.
It uses machine learning to deliver a hyper-personalised coaching experience, helping women to feel supported and empowered during this important time in life. The startup is helping women to become happier, make healthier choices and ultimately have healthier babies, on a global scale – with 610,000 users across 50 different countries.
The Baby2Body app provides personalised health coaching
Innerstrength Health
FOUNDED: August 2011 FOUNDERS: Avril Copeland & Greg Balmer
Avril Copeland
Tech startup Innerstrength Health has two main products: TickerFit and Hacka Health.
TickerFit has been deployed to enable health professionals in primary care to deliver bespoke programmes of physical activity and education to patients who are at risk of developing a chronic condition.
Currently under development, Hacka Health, a technology to support children with long-term conditions. The company is already working with the NHS and HSE in Ireland and is piloting Hacka Health in the US throughout 2018.
FOUNDED: December 2014 FOUNDERS: Jason Keller & Chris Sharman
Jason Keller
null,This technology platform seeks to reverse the trend of mobile devices that leave children sedentary by making physical activity fun again for young users.
Children can undertake physical activities at home using the TopYa! Skills Game to join video challenges against other kids around the world via their mobile phones.
Schools or sports organisations and third-party content providers deliver the content through TopYa! helping to engage children in at-home practice in a fun, inspiring way like never before.
FOUNDED: January 2015 FOUNDERS: Ben Thompson, David Jackson, Tim Stevenson
Tim Stevenson and David Jackson
Founded in 2015, The School of Calisthenics is an online educational platform for people wanting to explore different ways of using their body weight to build strength and fitness.
As modern lifestyles strip exercise from our lives, calisthenics allows users to go back to basics and discover what the body alone is capable of.
The School of Calisthenics Framework provides students with a progressive system that enables them to learn various skills and movements in calisthenics, catering for all ability levels. The platform already has more than 110,000 users.
The School of Calisthenics helps people learn skills and movements
Activ84Health
FOUNDED: December 2015 FOUNDER: Roel Smolders
Roel Smolders
Activ84Health is the organisation behind Memoride – a virtual reality platform that allows users to freely explore known and new areas while being physically active, from within the safety and comfort of an indoor setting.
Memoride uses Google Street View images to allow those who are restricted indoors to virtually go outside again – re-opening a window to the world. Each user has full autonomy to create their own unique experience, and by promoting exploration the technology challenges the user to remain physically active and train their memory.
FOUNDED: October 2013 FOUNDERS: Dominic Fennell, Nishal Desai & Nick Evans
Dominic Fennell and Nishal Desai
imin is a data platform with a comprehensive source of real-time data on sport and fitness activities. The platform harnesses the latest technology to help people to find easier ways to be active. imin’s API is used by sports, health and wellness organisations to build apps that help people to easily find and book sport and fitness activities.
Sports clubs can use imin’s API to build apps that help people find and book activities
Walk With Path
FOUNDED: November 2014 FOUNDERS: Florian Puech & Lise Pape
Lise Pape
The team at Walk With Path develops wearable products that reduce the risk of falls in vulnerable individuals. Built to help the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses, these products help reduce the risk of injury and improve confidence when walking, ultimately helping individuals to maintain their independence and quality of life for longer. Products include Path Feel (a shoe with a haptic feedback system) and Path Finder (a shoe which provides visual cues to aid walking).
This browser-based insight platform is custom-built to meet the evolving needs of the sports and fitness sector. It combines registration data, online conversations and survey responses in one place, to allow fitness operators to better understand their customers and therefore meet their wants and needs more easily. It means that management can see the real-time impact of changes in the customer experience.
Fitness community Fit Link connects, promotes and rewards like-minded people and businesses who want to stay fit, healthy and happy. Users connect their activity tracker(s) to Fit Link in order to challenge, compete, compare and share with each other, with rewards offered for points gained using tracked miles. Fit Link is growing a global community, with members spread across 360 cities worldwide.
Find a Player is a smartphone app that has been billed as “a bit like Tinder for sports”. It connects people who want to play sports, with events in local areas, as well as simplifying game organisation to reduce the barriers. Find a Player makes it easier for people to organise, find and play over 140 different sports. The company won ‘Best Start Up App Company’ at the 2018 Sports Technology Start Up Awards.
Find a Player connects people who want to play sports
UnitChallenge
FOUNDED: September 2016 FOUNDER: Dominic Carroll
Dominic Carroll
This technology platform allows individuals of differing abilities and fitness levels to compete directly with one another across a range of different activities. The platform’s ‘normalisation engine’ creates a level playing field for every participant, regardless of their standard of fitness, physical capability, age or activity preferences. Its social interaction layer and inclusive proposition provide a single community for sporty achievers and novice participants alike.
UnitChallenge creates a level playing field for people of different fitness standards
ActiveLab 2019
The ActiveLab programme will return next year and ukactive is looking for prospective applicants. If you’re an ambitious product- or service-based startup with the potential to shape the future of the health and physical activity sector, email [email protected] or visit www.ukactive.com/activelab
Active Blackpool is deploying Cornerstone Connect, a new digital interface allowing
disparate information from multiple systems to be aggregated into one dataset, to support
its focus on reducing health inequalities and improving healthy life expectancy. [more...]
Panatta brought together four of the most influential figures in bodybuilding history on the
stage of RiminiWellness 2026: Phil Heath, Lee Haney, Ronnie Coleman and Hany Rambod. [more...]
Active Lab finalists - Meet the startups in Fit-Tech
Following the ActiveLab Live! finale at the recent Active Uprising conference, we take a look at startups seeking to solve some of society’s biggest challenges through technology designed to get people active
FOUNDED: April 2014 FOUNDER: Melinda Nicci ACTIVE LAB - WINNER
Melinda Nicci
Baby2Body is a digital, personalised, health and wellbeing coach for pregnant women and mothers. The platform gives women a personalised coaching experience focused on helping the user to lead a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy and as a mother.
It uses machine learning to deliver a hyper-personalised coaching experience, helping women to feel supported and empowered during this important time in life. The startup is helping women to become happier, make healthier choices and ultimately have healthier babies, on a global scale – with 610,000 users across 50 different countries.
The Baby2Body app provides personalised health coaching
Innerstrength Health
FOUNDED: August 2011 FOUNDERS: Avril Copeland & Greg Balmer
Avril Copeland
Tech startup Innerstrength Health has two main products: TickerFit and Hacka Health.
TickerFit has been deployed to enable health professionals in primary care to deliver bespoke programmes of physical activity and education to patients who are at risk of developing a chronic condition.
Currently under development, Hacka Health, a technology to support children with long-term conditions. The company is already working with the NHS and HSE in Ireland and is piloting Hacka Health in the US throughout 2018.
FOUNDED: December 2014 FOUNDERS: Jason Keller & Chris Sharman
Jason Keller
null,This technology platform seeks to reverse the trend of mobile devices that leave children sedentary by making physical activity fun again for young users.
Children can undertake physical activities at home using the TopYa! Skills Game to join video challenges against other kids around the world via their mobile phones.
Schools or sports organisations and third-party content providers deliver the content through TopYa! helping to engage children in at-home practice in a fun, inspiring way like never before.
FOUNDED: January 2015 FOUNDERS: Ben Thompson, David Jackson, Tim Stevenson
Tim Stevenson and David Jackson
Founded in 2015, The School of Calisthenics is an online educational platform for people wanting to explore different ways of using their body weight to build strength and fitness.
As modern lifestyles strip exercise from our lives, calisthenics allows users to go back to basics and discover what the body alone is capable of.
The School of Calisthenics Framework provides students with a progressive system that enables them to learn various skills and movements in calisthenics, catering for all ability levels. The platform already has more than 110,000 users.
The School of Calisthenics helps people learn skills and movements
Activ84Health
FOUNDED: December 2015 FOUNDER: Roel Smolders
Roel Smolders
Activ84Health is the organisation behind Memoride – a virtual reality platform that allows users to freely explore known and new areas while being physically active, from within the safety and comfort of an indoor setting.
Memoride uses Google Street View images to allow those who are restricted indoors to virtually go outside again – re-opening a window to the world. Each user has full autonomy to create their own unique experience, and by promoting exploration the technology challenges the user to remain physically active and train their memory.
FOUNDED: October 2013 FOUNDERS: Dominic Fennell, Nishal Desai & Nick Evans
Dominic Fennell and Nishal Desai
imin is a data platform with a comprehensive source of real-time data on sport and fitness activities. The platform harnesses the latest technology to help people to find easier ways to be active. imin’s API is used by sports, health and wellness organisations to build apps that help people to easily find and book sport and fitness activities.
Sports clubs can use imin’s API to build apps that help people find and book activities
Walk With Path
FOUNDED: November 2014 FOUNDERS: Florian Puech & Lise Pape
Lise Pape
The team at Walk With Path develops wearable products that reduce the risk of falls in vulnerable individuals. Built to help the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses, these products help reduce the risk of injury and improve confidence when walking, ultimately helping individuals to maintain their independence and quality of life for longer. Products include Path Feel (a shoe with a haptic feedback system) and Path Finder (a shoe which provides visual cues to aid walking).
This browser-based insight platform is custom-built to meet the evolving needs of the sports and fitness sector. It combines registration data, online conversations and survey responses in one place, to allow fitness operators to better understand their customers and therefore meet their wants and needs more easily. It means that management can see the real-time impact of changes in the customer experience.
Fitness community Fit Link connects, promotes and rewards like-minded people and businesses who want to stay fit, healthy and happy. Users connect their activity tracker(s) to Fit Link in order to challenge, compete, compare and share with each other, with rewards offered for points gained using tracked miles. Fit Link is growing a global community, with members spread across 360 cities worldwide.
Find a Player is a smartphone app that has been billed as “a bit like Tinder for sports”. It connects people who want to play sports, with events in local areas, as well as simplifying game organisation to reduce the barriers. Find a Player makes it easier for people to organise, find and play over 140 different sports. The company won ‘Best Start Up App Company’ at the 2018 Sports Technology Start Up Awards.
Find a Player connects people who want to play sports
UnitChallenge
FOUNDED: September 2016 FOUNDER: Dominic Carroll
Dominic Carroll
This technology platform allows individuals of differing abilities and fitness levels to compete directly with one another across a range of different activities. The platform’s ‘normalisation engine’ creates a level playing field for every participant, regardless of their standard of fitness, physical capability, age or activity preferences. Its social interaction layer and inclusive proposition provide a single community for sporty achievers and novice participants alike.
UnitChallenge creates a level playing field for people of different fitness standards
ActiveLab 2019
The ActiveLab programme will return next year and ukactive is looking for prospective applicants. If you’re an ambitious product- or service-based startup with the potential to shape the future of the health and physical activity sector, email [email protected] or visit www.ukactive.com/activelab
According to research which tracked more than 147,000 people for 30 years, 90-120 minutes
of strength training a week may deliver some of the biggest long-term health rewards.
The UK's four Chief Medical Officers have published a refreshed edition of Physical activity
guidelines: UK Chief Medical Officers' report, updating the evidence that underpins the nation's
physical activity recommendations and placing greater emphasis on strength, balance, reducing
sedentary behaviour and, for the first time, supporting people taking weight loss medications.
Places Leisure has exchanged contracts to build and operate a flagship £60m water and leisure
destination on behalf of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.
The Republic of Ireland will become the latest market in PureGym’s expanding international
portfolio, with the first launch planned for Dublin in 2027.
Anytime Fitness opened more than one club a day in 2025 and is on track to maintain this rate
of growth this year, as parent company Purpose Brands targets further international expansion.
The £33.9 million Leighton Leisure and Community Centre has opened in Leighton Buzzard, UK,
creating a next-generation public leisure, health and wellbeing hub for the local community.
Walnuts Leisure Centre in Orpington, in the London Borough of Bromley, has reopened following
a £17m transformation designed to secure the long-term future of the public leisure asset and
reposition it as a community wellbeing hub.
The Gym Group, has announced that it's sustained positive trading momentum has continued
through the first half of 2026 and the company remains confident about the outlook.
Active Blackpool is deploying Cornerstone Connect, a new digital interface allowing
disparate information from multiple systems to be aggregated into one dataset, to support
its focus on reducing health inequalities and improving healthy life expectancy. [more...]
Panatta brought together four of the most influential figures in bodybuilding history on the
stage of RiminiWellness 2026: Phil Heath, Lee Haney, Ronnie Coleman and Hany Rambod. [more...]
