Dayo Aderibigbe of Bounce SF: The Bar Won't Come to You
July 26, 2018
When I attend a Bounce SF workout, what am I getting?A Bounce workout is really something special, because of the community and the depths of the relationships. Bounce is built on people really trying to get to know each other. You walk up, you see the bond. Everyone’s super positive.
As for the music: I love hip hop. I made a rule early on that Bounce workouts are going to be hip hop only. We have a big outdoor speaker - a block rocker - and it infuses every workout with high, high energy.
The last thing about the Bounce workout is the intensity. It’s high-intensity interval training, and I’m never going to create a workout where I take your money or your time and just say, “Good job.” I want you to be motivated to reach that bar, instead of having the bar come to you. You might not reach it the first time. But you will get there.
How have you been able to bootstrap Bounce without outside funding, and without charging for workouts?
I have to give credit to the whole team. I knew when I created the concept two years ago it was going to require some other people. I reached out to six people - Jess, Augustine, Jules, Jovanna, Manny and Aziz - with unique skill sets that could help bring the production to life. They were all on board, and that’s how Bounce was born.
For the first couple weeks, we had two or three people come. Then it started growing and growing. We routinely get 40-50 people, with numbers as large as 120. We coordinate social experiences, brunch experiences….we have community service events, for example bagging lunches for people in need.
Everyone on the team puts in a lot of time to cover the different responsbilities. The impact that’s it made on people’s lives is the real story.
Have you always been such a fitness devotee?
When I was a little kid, I always had a ton of energy. The crossing guard at my elementary school saw my calm demeanor as an adult, many years later, and said, “I can’t believe it! You’re the kid who always ran into traffic!”
I could run for days, so my Mom put me in sports to dissipate my energy. I was great at soccer, but I was not good at basketball. I remember throwing the ball all the way over the backboard. But there was something that rose inside of me and said, “I’m going to improve.”
My brother, who’s five years older, showed me some basic about weight training, and I discovered that I love the practice and process of getting better even more than actually playing a sport. I would come across training programs and then try to reverse engineer them. I read up on anatomy and studied physics to teach myself the principles behind the training. It was all self-motivated, because I felt, I want to get to the nuts and roots of this.
What do you think Bounce gets right about the Bay Area’s unique culture?
Passion.
When I first got here, having grown up in Boston, and having spent my adult life on the East Coast, I encountered a way of life totally different than what I was used to.
You can't really wing life here. You have to be very determined about how you spend your time. Everyone is connected by all these social interfaces, but it feels like people are in their own little worlds. I looked around, and people were building their lives around their passions...photography, hiking, skiing, fitness. At that point, I saw the West Coast and San Francisco in a new light.
In the Bay Area you have an influx of transplants, who are searching for things to do. And you have locals, with established routines, and long-term friends in the area. I wanted to know, What happens if I create an experience where I superimpose social and the power of community onto my passion, which is fitness? Let me create this sphere and see who intersects with it.
I started a Bay Area Fitness Enthusiasts community on the messaging app GroupMe, and now Bounce has grown out of that into a community approaching 3000 members across all our platforms.
The people you meet at a Bounce workout, you can still stay in touch with. You open up a friendship around common interests, and build this community and help people stick to fitness at the same time. You don't have to be super creative to activate somebody’s passion.
If it's within 20 miles, people will come.
Dayo Aderibigbe of Google is the founder of Bounce SF. Members of The D10 community are encouraged to join Bounce for free weekly workouts around the Bay Area...and to recruit new D10 teammates and competitors while they're at it. Follow Bounce on Instagram and Facebook for updated workout schedules.