Don Brown: The Inventor of The Ab Roller on Gaming Your Core with The Stealth Core Trainer

Side Quest Podcast

Don Brown has been inventing fitness equipment since the 1990s.

He fell in love with fitness in no small part thanks to fitness icon, Jack LaLanne. His first chain of fitness centers was called XERCISE,Inc in Northern NJ. And it was in this gym that one day he ran into a problem with one of his clients.

Don Brown had always been a problem solver, so when his client who had a neck injury couldn't do a simple crunch without pain, Don knew he needed to create a solution.

After some thought, Don had a eureka moment when he bent a paper clip into a "funny" shape and he knew in that moment how to create his first fitness equipment idea.

He left work, went to a Home Depot, and built the first prototype for the Ab Roller that day.

In its first 3 years on the market, The Ab Roller exceeded 100 million dollars in sales. Well over 15 million people have purchased AB Rollers making it one of the most successful consumer fitness products ever. Twelve years after he invented the Ab Roller, he co-invented the AB COASTER which quickly became a huge success. You can see these devices in gyms all over the world. Don Brown is constantly looking for the next big thing in improving and training your core. That's why when Don's friend came to him with an idea for how to make planks more fun, Don jumped at the idea. And with the same ingenuity of his first device, Don created an early prototype of Stealth.

Things have changed since the days of The Ab Roller and Ab Coaster. Now, Don can use sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo to help fund his new product and get it to the market faster.

Don joins me on the show to talk about The Stealth Core Trainer which turns your planks into an active, fun, and challenging game you can use on your phone.

In this episode we discuss:

• How he got into designing fitness equipment
• Jack LeLanne
• Product Creation in Fitness
• Using Doom as a stress reliever
• Making Planks Great Again
• Sneaking in Fitness
• How Stealth Progresses Core Training
• Core Score
• What crowdsourcing websites offer inventors/entrepreneurs
• TV Infomercials
• Craziest invention he ever came up with
• Fun Questions
• Yoga in the morning
• Almond butter vs Peanut butter
• Turn Your Core into a Joystick
• Where technology will take fitness
• Video for Stealth
• InventWow.com
• GameYourCore (social)
• Stealth on IndieGoGo
• Stealth Body Fitness