Most workout programs are painfully boring, so we created an exciting and addictive experience that blends gaming + serious fitness to get you in the best shape of your life.
Founders
Black Box VR was founded by fitness fanatics Ryan DeLuca & Preston Lewis. The team spent years building Bodybuilding.com into the largest online supplement retailer in the world (with nearly $500m in annual sales). With the collaboration of many talented individuals, they created some of the world’s most recognized supplement brands, chart-topping fitness mobile applications, were honored with award-winning health & fitness campaigns, and created the world’s largest online fitness social network (with over 3m members), while always holding true to the mission of changing people’s lives.
In 2016 Preston and Ryan decided to start their new venture, Black Box VR, with a mission to disrupt the fitness industry once again by creating innovative products and experiences that create lasting change in people’s lives. After trying virtual reality for the first time, Ryan and Preston knew they were experiencing a magically immersive technology that, if paired with resistance training, gaming principles and high intensity cardio, will be the winning combination for people trying to reach their health & fitness goals. Black Box VR is redefining fitness as we know it.
Preston is the Co-Founder, President & Chief Design Officer at Black Box VR. Preston is a fitness fanatic (past State Champion & Division I Track & Field Athlete), UXUI junkie, product design ninja and product visionary. Preston has provided creative direction and product management to some of the largest brands in the world including Hewlett Packard, Bodybuilding.com, Fiverr, Hurley International and SAP, to name a few. Along the way, his passion for amazing products and solving difficult design problems has earned him numerous awards for projects ranging from traditional print campaigns and packaging design, to chart-topping mobile applications with complex information architectures and millions of users.
After growing many multi-million dollar brands, Preston decided to leap back into the world of entrepreneurship with a mission to combine his passions for technology, games, fitness (Preston was a state champion track and field athlete), and changing lives to create the future of fitness; with this vision, together with co-founder Ryan DeLuca, Black Box VR was born. When he's not creating new digital products and growing brands, he can be found traveling with his wife, enjoying her delicious paleo creations (she's a paleo author and blogger at amazingpaleo.com), playing the guitar, singing, working out in VR and dreaming up the next tech innovation.
Ryan DeLuca founded Bodybuilding.com in 1999 in his garage in Boise, Idaho at the age of 20. Under Ryan’s leadership, the company skyrocketed to nearly $500,000,000 in annual revenue before he stepped down as CEO in 2015. With almost zero startup capital and no outside investors, Ryan grew his company from nothing to become the world’s most visited fitness site and largest e-tailer of sports nutrition supplements. From the beginning, the company was focused on transforming the lives of its millions of customers and staying true to the core principles that Ryan passionately believed in. Profitable from the start, Bodybuilding.com was eventually purchased by Liberty Media. A born innovator, Ryan was named Entrepreneur of the Year by E&Y in 2009 for the Idaho/Utah region and Inc. Magazine called him one of the “Top 5 Coolest Entrepreneurs Under 30”. With 800 team members spread throughout six states and four countries, Ryan was proudest of the fact that Bodybuilding.com was consistently named one of the best places to work. Ryan was temporarily retired for only six months before the startup bug bit him again and together with co-founder Preston Lewis, Black Box VR was born, merging their continued passions for technology and fitness and the way they can intersect to help people transform their lives. In his spare time, Ryan is a private, instrument rated pilot with over 1600 flight hours. You can usually find him flying his Pilatus PC-12 turboprop around the western USA on the weekends for fun, charity, and business. He’s an avid non-fiction reader, spends his mornings at the gym, and recently took up ballroom dancing, much to the amusement of his friends and family. Ryan lives in Eagle, Idaho and has three crazy kids named Raiden, Kyla, and Bradley.
The Rock Star Team Making it Happen
We are fitness fanatics, user experience junkies, design ninjas, game development aficionados and virtual reality evangelists. We are always looking for talented individuals to join our team. Help us create the future of fitness.
Sam is a results-oriented executive with a proven track record of success in increasing revenue and profitability through leadership, collaboration, and innovation. He’s been recognized for having an entrepreneurial approach that takes into account the “big picture” while translating vision into reality. Sam has proven himself to be highly effective leading across global regions and cultures, driving results, and improving organizational capability.
Sam spent nearly 20 years at General Motors leading teams and projects. During his last four years there, he was the Global Program Engineering Manager for the Crossover SUV and Compact Car division. In that role, he led a team of eight managers and 40 engineers with program budgets of up to $340M.
Most recently, Sam was the Vice President of Engineering and Research and Development for Oregon Tool. Oregon Tool is a 3000+ person global company that specializes in professional grade precision cutting tools for forestry, lawn and garden, farming, ranching, agriculture, and concrete cutting and finishing.
Jonathan brings to the team over 16 years of rich expertise in the fitness industry, having honed his skills across various leadership roles. He has a solid track record of building, growing, and developing businesses through strategic operations, customer engagement, and team development. His latest stint as Operations Director at F45 Training saw him establish and grow the brand’s presence significantly in the competitive San Francisco market. His role was pivotal in creating effective business strategies that led to the studio becoming the #4 top-grossing in North America and #2 in California.
David To is a Senior Unity Engineer on the app team.
An avid climber and talented VR developer who made Season's Beatings, Arkshot, and Paranautical Activity.
Full-stack C# / Java / Python programmer with 6 years experience in coding, and 3+ years in building applications and games for desktop, web, and mobile.
With a focus on efficient, visually appealing applications designed for scalability with strong memory management, using modular code structure.
With a focus on efficient, visually appealing applications designed for scalability with strong memory management, using modular code structure.
𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗡𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗬 𝗦𝗨𝗠𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗬
● Knowledge of engineering tools: 4+ years working with Unity, MySQL, Visual Studio, Android Studio, Eclipse
● Expertise in Photoshop & other editing software for creating U.I., graphics, textures, materials & effects
● Experience with concepts: space management, memory optimization, animation, debugging, etc.
● Won a 40Under40 city-wide award in Guelph for my illustration work, printed onto weekly newspapers for 5 months
● Proven natural leader in university coding and business projects, leading projects from concept to release state
Clint Robertson is a Senior Product Design Engineer on our Hardware team.
Raiden is our QA Lead and an API and Backend Engineer.
Cody Brown is a Product Design Engineer on our Hardware team.
As a Gameplay Engineer, Marine Corps Veteran and VR research author, Mike’s history brings together a unique perspective and a marriage of skills not found in your average developer. He’s built new games from the ground up and brought new life to old ones during is 6+ year tenure as a game developer. Sporting a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Game Design and credits on titles played by audiences across the globe, he’s here to shake up the industry.
Joseph Russell is a Senior Unity Engineer on our app development team.
Christopher Brackett, an IT ninja
Hailing from the beautiful Island of Ireland. Dara is an award-winning sound designer and audio mixer. Dara studied at Leeds Beckett University where he obtained a (BA) Degree in Music and (Msc) Masters Degree in Sound and Music for Interactive Games. He studied under the legendary mixing engineer Steve Parker (Rolling Stones Audio Engineer) and other legends of the Game Audio Industry. Dara enjoys designing and building adaptive audio systems that react and change depending on player actions, breaking the rules of traditional linear media. In his spare time, he can be found experimenting with the latest audio tools and creating experimental game audio experiences.
True Transformation Has a Formula
Immerse & Emerge
At Black Box VR, we have pioneered the world’s first virtual reality gym experience. Step into our innovative Black Box VR boutique gyms and immerse yourself in a transformative fitness journey that makes traditional gyms obsolete.
Leveraging the cutting-edge technologies of virtual and augmented reality, we have redefined the landscape of fitness. Black Box VR harnesses these advancements to revolutionize fitness, offering a solution to the mundane, confusing, and unsustainable exercise routines that many struggle with. Gone are the days of boring workouts; we bring you an exhilarating, easy-to-follow, and sustainable path to fitness.
Experience a paradigm shift in working out with Black Box VR. Enter our Black Box rooms, don your custom fitness headset, and be transported to an exhilarating world where fitness meets fantasy. Engage in a full-body workout so captivating, you’ll forget it’s exercise.
Our VR workouts go beyond the basics. While others might offer simple virtual trainers for bodyweight exercises, we push the envelope. Black Box VR integrates resistance training with an electronically controlled cable system, perfectly woven into the game’s narrative. Grasp a virtual rope or lift in-game objects and feel the tailored resistance of real cables. It’s functional fitness in a fantastical world.
Just three 30-minute Black Box VR sessions per week can significantly boost your strength, endurance, and overall health, sculpting your body in revolutionary ways. Each workout is intelligently tailored to your goals and progress, ensuring no plateaus in your fitness journey.
We’re excited to offer franchising opportunities for entrepreneurs to open their own Black Box VR gyms. Additionally, licensing options are available for existing gym chains to incorporate Black Box VR into their offerings, staying ahead of the curve and unlocking new revenue streams.
Black Box VR isn’t just a fitness solution; it’s the ultimate fitness revolution. Be part of this groundbreaking journey with us!
Our Mission & Core Beliefs
At Black Box VR, we help our members transform their lives through addictive fitness experiences that harness the power of immersive technologies.
Core Beliefs
01. Fitness improves lives.
Being fit and healthy helps you become your best self for your family, your friends, your work, and society. You become the greatest version of you. Exercise is better than any drug for happiness, energy, disease prevention, and building self-esteem. These aspects of physical and mental health spill over into every part of who you are. Nothing else is as powerful for improving your entire life.
Core Beliefs
02. Adherence is the secret.
Consistency is essential when it comes to getting in shape. There’s no magical potion or mystical solution. Adhering to an effective workout and diet program will work for everybody. Unfortunately, life gets in the way and our willpower only lasts for so long before we fall off the wagon. A truly fit body and life remains an elusive goal for the vast majority of us.
Core Beliefs
03. Customer success is all that matters.
Our success as a company will be 100% correlated to the fitness results that we deliver to our users. If our users get in shape, they will continue to come back for years. The word will get around as people see the astounding transformations that we create and our company will grow. There is no other way. We will not settle until 100% of our customers achieve their lifelong fitness goals.
Core Beliefs
04. Video games are addictive.
Video games level up your character or farm but level down yourself and society, ultimately leading to less personal happiness and success. Game creators are the world’s best behavioral psychologists. They have perfected the art of getting people addicted to an experience so the person plays longer and more often, sometimes while sacrificing other parts of their lives. These same strategies can be harnessed for good.
Core Beliefs
05. Immersive tech is powerful.
Virtual reality has the ability to affect the brain in ways that other technology cannot. If your mind perceives it as real, it might as well be real. We consciously know we are not actually in another realm, but other parts of our brain aren’t wired to understand the difference. Using your body as the controller, this can be utilized to create shocking fitness results.
Core Beliefs
06. We are stronger together.
Bring us a difficult challenge. We love it. The thrill of solving hard problems together is only equalled by the meaning that we get from seeing our inventions being used to improve the lives of our customers and our team mates. Every day we will support each other as we embrace the grind, the frustration, and the failures that ultimately lead us to greater rewards than we ever could have imagined. There is no short cut.
THE HARDWARE
For centuries, true innovation in fitness has been sluggish at best. Incremental improvements have provided only incremental results. Not for long. The Black Box award-winning dynamic resistance machine re-imagines the fitness experience at a fundamental level.
Learn More
Still Have Questions?
Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page where we answer questions like: "Why VR vs. traditional workouts" and more!
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