"90% of sports studies have been done excluding women"

BarcelonaA Catalan app designed in Tarragona aims to revolutionize the world of women's training. "We are developing an application that uses artificial intelligence to help women understand their menstrual cycle. This allows for controlling all symptoms and adjusting personalized training recommendations in real time. The added value is to provide progressions, intensity, or volume," summarizes Àngel Miguel, one of the co-founders of Drop It.The app caught the attention at the Indescat AI Summit, where it was voted the most interesting proposal from a pitch with six start-ups from the sector. “During the menstrual cycle, women go through four phases and each requires different training. There are applications on the market that allow tracking their period and symptoms, but few adapt it to real decisions in the field of training. We are looking for personalized sessions that adapt in real-time to each woman's performance. We have created a method that takes all the user data, both those they record themselves and those provided by the most common apps. Our artificial intelligence detects patterns and gives recommendations. The objective is to generate a unique model for each woman that specifically adapts to her cycle and her symptoms,” analyzes Miguel.

“Our application is aimed at amateur users. Some go to the gym, but others do other activities, such as pilates or yoga. However, we are enriching the system so that it is adaptable to high performance. The idea is also to expand it later with other hormonal changes such as menopause, pregnancy or postpartum. In addition, the idea is to be able to expand the project with other verticals such as nutrition, supplementation, rest, everything related to well-being”, he argues.The other co-founder of the start-up is Raúl Medina. “Each menstrual phase has its characteristics that affect performance. There are days when women go to the gym and everything costs them a lot, and others when they go with a lot of energy and manage to improve their personal bests. The problem is that 80% or 90% of sports studies have been done excluding female physiology, and therefore, training advice has been made thinking about the hormonal bases of men. Many studies tell women that they have to train like men. This, fortunately, is changing, because otherwise the results are not optimal,” warns Miguel.“It’s not that there are things that cannot be done, but that it is advisable to understand when it is best to do them. There are things that work differently. Men do very well training on an empty stomach, but women do not. We could be applying this to different aspects of the world of sport that no one questioned,” he explains.Funding search

Drop It's proposal is generating great interest. “When we listen to women, we see that many do not understand their pains or discomforts and have doubts about how to continue training without losing progression. Their comments help us to fine-tune the aspects that are important. Users can talk through the app with our team and interact with other women”, he summarizes.The Catalan start-up faces a decisive moment. “The initial project, which was born in April 2024, was more focused on personalized training for all audiences, but we pivoted to this project. We have this Minimum Viable Product (MVP) published and, little by little, we are refining it because we see that it is gaining very good traction. The app has received awards and we are being invited to different investment forums. We have started the active search for funding,” he concludes.