How Jahaan Ansari keeps his workouts fresh (plus more health and wellness product picks)

Welcome to Health Stack, a series where founders, operators and experts share their favorite health and wellness products, gear, apps, and routines…

Jahaan Ansari is the CTO and co-founder at Gainful.

He studied chemical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and started Gainful as a college senior alongside his best friend from High School, Eric Wu.

We caught up with Jahaan to discuss his favorite brands and products. Watch the video and read below to learn about Jahaan’s Health Stack:

Future

“The product that I really have come to rely on is called Future — it’s one-on-one personal training,” explains Jahaan. There are a couple of reasons he enjoys using Future:

1. “They can give me ideas of new workouts to do, new things to try, and [ideas on] how to take it to the next level.”
2. “Kind of more importantly, it’s this accountability partner. You know, we’re in this stage of AI and one thing that [AI has] no chance of replacing is that human connection, right? So I really love my coach, his name’s Caleb, he’s incredible, and he keeps me accountable.”

Barry’s

Alongside his gym routines, Jahaan occasionally does some classes, “What I like about classes is the group setting,” he explains. “You’re all in it together, you have an hour go hard at it.”

“My favorite class is Barry’s Bootcamp. I just love getting it all [running and weightlifting] in one. It’s an incredible workout.”

Gainful

“I do my workouts with gainful products and I have a pretty stacked shelf at home,” he explains.

Here’s a breakdown of Jahaan’s Gainful stack:

Pre-Workout

“I’ll have a decaf version for the evening or a caffeinated version in the morning.” He also adds in a bit of creatine as well as collagen — as recommended by one of Gainful’s science advisors. “[They were] a director of performance for an NBA team — I asked her what they do for their pre-workouts and she said ‘we add creatine and collagen.’ I’m like, if it’s good enough for them, it’s gonna be good enough for me. And so I feel incredible when I’m going to the gym.”

Protein

“When I get home from my workout, I have the same delicious smoothie every time. It’s Gainful Protein, a banana, some ice, peanut butter, a chocolate flavor stick and some milk. It’s so delicious. I feel incredible after — it’s a nice little reward after a hard workout.”

Hydration

“[This one’s] not necessarily tied to workouts, I use Gainful Hydration every day to make sure I’m getting enough water in my system and also enough sodium magnesium and other electrolytes to really multiply that hydration.”

Calm

Jahaan uses the Calm app at least once per day. “Usually before I go to bed,” he says. “I just spend like 10 to 15 minutes meditating.”

“I find it to be a challenging mental exercise to just center my mind and not drift. It’s an additional way that I can exercise my brain and be focused.”

Chess.com

“This is an interesting one that you might not consider a health and wellness app, but I love Chess and the Chess.com app is one of the apps that I use the most.” Similar to the Calm app, Jahaan uses Chess.com to exercise his brain. “It makes me feel sharp,” he adds.

Cold plunging

“A big one is cold plunging. Obviously it’s a challenge, but once you’re out of it, you feel incredible. It’s great for you physically, it’s great for you mentally. But what I love about it most is it makes it easier for me to do hard things. So if I start my morning with a cold plunge, I have more mental acuity to really tackle the day.”