Ladder
Strength workouts are serious business.
Seeing double. Strength training app Ladder dropped a marketing campaign calling out Peloton’s freshly launched Strength+ app for copying its UI/UX.
Coming with receipts, including back-end data of Peloton’s staff using the Ladder app, the upstart touted its training expertise while parodying Apple’s famous “Get a Mac” ads.
Flexing. Fresh off $105M in funding, Ladder’s personalized, coach-led strength platform is in growth mode, notching a 69% jump in downloads this year.
Seeking to expand its user base beyond hardware/cycling-centric workouts, Peloton beta-tested a standalone strength app this fall before launching last week — and Ladder was ready.
Rising tide. Interestingly, Peloton was on the flip side of this equation in 2020 when Apple launched Fitness+, with then-CEO John Foley calling it a “legitimization of fitness content.”
And strength training’s rapid rise demands effective content and programming at scale.
According to Fitbod’s CEO Allen Chen, his company’s strength app has 1M users who’ve logged 120M workouts. Meanwhile, Future CEO Rishi Mandal told Fitt Insider he believes every PT in America—online and off—should be using AI-enhanced tools.
Punchline: Copying features or functionality isn’t new, but Ladder used this instance to its advantage. As competition heats up, and developers continue to innovate, rivals will converge around what works.
