Why We Built Dorsi

Five years ago, I was not an exercise enthusiast, and I particularly disliked strength training.

I was never particularly overweight, so I rarely worried seriously about my health. It was only when a checkup report showed several abnormal indicators that I decided to start exercising.

I chose running. At first, it was hard for me to keep going for even a single kilometer. Later, I could run a kilometer in under eight minutes, and gradually ran farther and faster.

This process lasted about a year and a half. Along the way, there were many times I wanted to give up, and many times I stopped and restarted. The real turning point came after a fifteen-kilometer run: I realized I didn't feel very tired. It was also from that point on that I began to experience the enjoyment of running itself.

Later, I ran my first half-marathon, finishing in one hour and thirty-five minutes. As running gradually became a habit, the abnormal indicators on my checkup report returned to normal one by one.

However, running did not resolve my long-standing neck and shoulder discomfort; at times, it even became more noticeable. I tried standing desks, but that did not help much either. Later, I saw some content online about back training and learned that strengthening the back might help with neck and shoulder discomfort, so I began getting into strength training.

This was the first time I truly paid attention to muscles. In the past, I thought building muscle was mainly for appearance. Only later did I come to realize that muscles also relate to how we stand, move, and handle daily life.

I started strength training with back exercises. Later, when naming the product, we thought of the Latin dorsum / dorsi, which relates to the back. The name Dorsi preserves the starting point of that experience.

As I learned and trained, I also began sharing the methods I found useful with colleagues in the office who had similar problems. We sometimes jokingly called ourselves "fellow patients." Most of them agreed with these methods and were willing to try, but after training once or twice, many still gave up.

I gradually realized that it was not that they did not want their bodies to get better. The problem was that starting strength training required making too many decisions.

Which movements to perform? How many times a week? How many sets per session? What counts as doing them properly? Is there a more efficient way? If you are tired today and do not want to train, but the plan is not finished yet, what should you do?

They wanted to get better, but first had to understand a lot of technical knowledge. Fixed plans also struggle to accommodate changes in life. Once a session is missed, the mental burden of the plan can sometimes outweigh the training itself, and eventually, they simply stop altogether.

This made me realize that what many people lack may not be more training content, but a plan that can reduce decisions and adapt to change.

The name Dorsi also brings to mind the English word dose, meaning an amount or quantity. There is a concept we strongly agree with called MED, Minimum Effective Dose.

It does not mean that less training is always better, nor is it about searching for shortcuts. It reminds us that everyone's time, energy, and practical circumstances are limited. Training should find a reasonable, effective, and sustainable dose based on a person's goals and current state.

This dose varies from person to person and changes as life changes. Having a full hour today and having only ten minutes while traveling call for different plans; feeling good and having just come through an exhausting day should not lead to exactly the same plan either.

This is what we hope Dorsi will do.

You only need to tell it your goals, current condition, available equipment, and how much time you can spare today. When circumstances change, you simply tell it directly. Dorsi will adjust the training accordingly, rather than letting the entire plan stop being useful just because reality did not follow the original plan.

In the past, truly personalized training usually required a coach to keep learning about the person and adjusting the plan, while most digital training products still offer relatively fixed courses or templates. Developments in AI offer a new possibility: a system can understand a person's situation described in everyday language, and then rearrange training based on goals, time, equipment, and state.

AI is not a substitute for exercise science. Instead, we want to use it to turn existing training knowledge into a plan that each person can actually execute on that day.

I have work experience in technology and business, and my co-founder has long worked in big data and AI. We both enjoy sports and believe technology can make training a bit simpler. So, we started building Dorsi.

Currently, Dorsi focuses on resistance and strength training. We chose to start here not because it can replace other forms of exercise, but because many people are still relatively unfamiliar with it and often have to face more choices when starting.

As a startup team, we need to start with a specific problem and do it well. In the future, we hope to gradually extend Dorsi to aerobic exercise, nutrition, and sleep, helping people take care of their health more completely. But right now, we will first focus on making strength training truly adapt to everyone's life.

Life will not set aside a full block of time for training every day, nor will people always be in their best state. You do not have to wait until everything is ready, nor do you need to feel that today's effort is meaningless just because you cannot achieve perfection.