2016 Year In Review: What Went Well & What Didn't (+ Reader Survey!)

Ok you guys, I don’t know about you, but this year really sped by.

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced a faster year in my life. It felt like I basically had time to blink a couple of times between last January and now.

But, hey, I guess that’s what happens when you’re trying to follow your dreams and accomplish a lot along the way, right?

Anyway, I hope you guys had a great 2016 and have even bigger dreams for 2017. Honestly, 2016 was fairly mixed for me. I had a lot great stuff happen, but a lot of crazy/scary stuff too, like getting in a car crash that really changed my perspective on what’s important in life.

Still, there were a lot of pretty awesome things that happened this year as well, like coming out with the 12 Minute Athlete Apple Watch app and having some really awesome challenges in our brand new Facebook group (where we have over 3,000 members already!).

I do these reviews every year as a way to stay accountable to you guys and my own goals with 12 Minute Athlete. If you’re interested, great—if not, feel free to go do a workout or make something yummy and healthy instead.

Important: We need your help! Even if you skip the review, make sure to check out the reader feedback section at the end of this post. We have a SUPER short survey we would LOVE for you to take part in. (Here is the link if you want to go straight to it!)

Here’s what went well and what didn’t in 2016:

The Good

12MA Challenges — This was the first year we introduced official challenges to 12 Minute Athlete, and we think they were pretty awesome. A ton of you participated in the Fuel Your Body Nutrition Challenge, 6-Week Handstand Challenge, the Get Bendy Flexibility Challenge, and are currently rocking the December No Excuses Accountability Challenge.

We’re looking forward to more cool challenges in 2017!

(Do you have an idea for a challenge you’d like to take part in? Make sure to take our survey and let us know)

Apple Watch App — We released our first Apple Watch app this year! It took much longer than we’d hoped, but we did it and we’re pretty proud of how it turned out. If you have an Apple Watch make sure to check it out.

Rock the Pistol Course — A few months ago we introduced our brand new pistol squat course, Rock the Pistol! We’ve gotten great feedback from it and are so impressed at all of you who have committed to working on the ultimate bodyweight leg exercise.

If one of your goals in 2017 is to be able to rock a pistol squat, make sure to check out the course.

Handstands and Workout Progress — I’ve been working pretty hard this year on improving my conditioning and skills like handstands, human flags, and other cool bodyweight skills I’ve been wanting to do. The progress is slow, but steady, and I’m feeling more confident in my handstands than ever. I’m also working on tumbling skills like back tucks (flips), front and back handsprings, and walkovers—my progress has been a little slower here, but I’m trying to be patient with myself and just stick with it.

12MA Facebook Group — This year we started a private Facebook group for 12 Minute Athlete, and we are SO stoked about it. We have over 3,000 members so far, and everyone in it is incredibly supportive and encouraging. We post lots of great stuff in there so if you haven’t joined yet, please do!

Travel — It’s a priority for me to travel as much as possible, and this year I’m pretty happy with how much I traveled. I made it to Europe twice, as well as lots of smaller fun trips to Bay area wine country, Santa Barbara, Bend, Portland, NYC, and Hawaii.

Cool Partnerships — We’ve linked up with a lot of cool companies this year, including Old Navy, Champion, MET-Rex, Gnarly, and Orchard Valley Harvest, among others. We love working with other people and companies whose mindsets align with ours and are looking forward to more cool partnerships in 2017.

Growing Community — 12 Minute Athlete continued to grow throughout 2016. We have over 50,000 email subscribers, 20,000 Instagram followers, 32,000 Facebook followers, 430,000 Google+ followers, and growing.

We couldn’t do it without you guys. I’m so proud and thankful for each and every one of you.

The Not Quite As Good

App Feature Slowness — We know there are many new features you guys would like added to the app, and we are working on them. But unfortunately these things take a lot more time and investment than they seem like they should, so they tend to be implemented much slower than we want.

The main reason that new features get implemented a little slower around here is that unlike most big tech startups, 12 Minute Athlete is a 100% bootstrapped company. We are proud to have built it from the ground up, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating that cool things like app updates just take a little longer because of it.

Just try and keep this in mind and be patient with us—we are working hard to constantly make the app cooler and better than ever, it just sometimes takes longer than we want.

Android App Super Athlete Features — Despite our best intentions, we still haven’t made it out of beta mode for the Android App Super Athlete subscription. This means that Android 12MA app owners can’t yet log their reps, keep track of their PRs, track their workout frequency and all that cool stuff. We had hoped to get to this early this year, but sadly our awesome Android developer decided to change careers and we’ve been looking for a replacement ever since.

If you are an awesome Android developer (or know someone who is), please get in touch at [email protected]! We’d love to work with you to make the 12MA Android app better than ever.

Car Crash — I got in a pretty scary car crash earlier this year, and although my husband, dog, and I are all OK, it set me back in my training and really changed my perspective on life in general. If you haven’t already, read how I recovered from it by being fit and healthy.

Help! We Want Your Feedback

Quick Survey — As 12 Minute Athlete continues to grow, we want to make sure that we’re addressing all of your needs. We would be very grateful if you would help us help you by answering a few questions for us!

It would mean the world to us if you could fill out this really short survey for us with your feedback.

The survey is only 10 questions long, will take you less than three minutes to complete, and we would be forever grateful for your responses.

Here is the link to the survey.

Your Stories — Lastly, we want to hear more of your stories! If 12 Minute Athlete has had an impact on your life in any way, whether it has changed your view of health and fitness, helped you lose weight, learn a new awesome skill, or something else entirely, we would love to hear from you and possibly feature your story on the site. Please get in touch at [email protected].

And in case I don’t say it enough—you guys are AWESOME. Thanks for being such an amazing community, I can’t wait for 2017 and what the future holds.