SAN FRANCISCO—Minna Life has once again taken its vision to the people, this time with a Kickstarter campaign for the kGoal, a smart Kegel trainer that functions as both an exercise tool and a performance monitoring and guidance system.
While the Kickstarter campaign still has almost a month left, the project has already received 139 percent of its funding goal. Previously, Minna Life officials successfully used the crowdfunding site to back their Limon massager.
The first tools for evaluating pelvic floor muscle strength were invented in the late 1940s using an air pressure balloon and a tire gauge. Sadly, Minna Life reps said, the technology used has not progressed much since. However, the landscape is changing quickly. Personal health tracking tools like Fitbit or Jawbone UP have exploded in popularity by putting knowledge about the body directly into users' hands. Likewise, improving technology has now made it possible to create a much better pelvic floor muscle exercise system.
The Minna Life kGoal measures the force exerted by squeezing your pelvic floor muscles and can communicate that information back to you via a phone and/or the device itself. Using the device and corresponding app is like having a personalized gym, physical therapist, and tracking system by your side whenever you want.
According to the Kickstarter campaign page, kGoal has a number of revolutionary features that make it a groundbreaking advance in pelvic floor health. In particular, kGoal gives you the ability to:
Get real time biofeedback: Pelvic floor muscles are often controlled subconsciously, and studies have shown that more than 30 percent of women are not able to correctly contract their pelvic floor muscles without direct feedback (instead, they will often flex their abs, glutes, or inner thighs). kGoal's ability to provide real time feedback via touch, sight and sound can help you make sure you're doing the exercises correctly.
Guide your workout: Our team of expert physical therapists and doctors has helped us develop algorithms to suggest exercise plans that are tailored to you and based on your current capabilities.
Track your performance: kGoal can measure and keep track of everything from muscle strength to endurance to which exercises you did and when you did them. Being able to look at how your body changes over time can help you (and your doctor or therapist) better understand your body and optimize your health.
Be comfortable: Since kGoal's squeezable pillow is squishy and has a vent to adjust the air pressure, you can tailor the fit to your body's unique anatomy, even as it changes over time.
Make exercise fun: Let's face it ... exercise can be boring. A smart device can make it way more interesting, and we're even working on games and other interactions to make pelvic floor exercise more engaging. We know that motivation can be a huge challenge with exercise, and it was vital for us to create an experience that doesn't feel like a chore.
The kGoal is a two-part system: The kGoal device and the kGoal app. The main section of kGoal is a squeezable pillow that is inserted into the vagina. Since it's squishy, it conforms to a wide variety of anatomies, and you can use the vent to let air in or out and further optimize the fit. Once in place, the pillow can measure squeezing of your pelvic floor muscles, and there is also a motor for providing real time vibrational biofeedback.
The arm stays outside the body and holds kGoal in place. It is also the basic interface, with the button, status light, and charging plug. In addition, it has a second vibrational feedback motor that can be used together with or instead of the motor in the pillow.
The other key element of the system is the app. It communicates with and can control kGoal wirelessly and it's also where you can find your exercise history and suggested workouts. However, if you don't have your phone handy, don't worry—many of kGoal's features are available without having the app connected.
For more information, visit MinnaLife.com.
