FightCamp

Duration: November 2021 - January 2023

Role: Full-Stack Engineer

The Context

FightCamp, often described as "Peloton for boxing", was a connected fitness startup riding the pandemic home-workout boom. I joined a small web team of 3 engineers, reconnecting with a former mentee from Internet Brands who'd recommended me for the role.

The company had grown fast, but the website's technical foundations hadn't kept pace. I discovered just how much during my first R&D Friday.

The Challenge

Performance Discovery

FightCamp held monthly R&D Fridays, dedicated time for code cleanup, refactoring, and investigation. On my first one, I ran Lighthouse audits on the marketing site. The scores were bad. Really bad.

Mobile First Contentful Paint was 8-12 seconds. Users on 3G/4G connections were bouncing before they could see any content. I dug into why:

• Images: HD images (hundreds of megabytes total) served regardless of viewport size
• Videos: Hero videos were 500-800 MB, downloaded entirely on page load
• Bundle bloat: Duplicate libraries, no tree shaking, ~725 KB total
• No lazy loading: Everything loaded upfront, blocking render
• Missing optimizations: Incorrect image dimensions, missing HTML attributes

I proposed a systematic fix to my manager. He approved, and it became my primary project.

Marketing Bottleneck (Again)

Sound familiar? Just as at Winc, marketing relied on engineering for content updates. Every copy change, image swap, or new section required a developer. The pattern was clear; I'd solved this before.

The Solution

Performance Optimization

I attacked each root cause systematically:

Images:

• Built a centralized image component with viewport-dependent srcset
• Integrated with Storyblok CMS + fallback providers
• Added lazy loading via Intersection Observer
• Served device-appropriate quality and dimensions

Video:

• Manually optimized video assets, creating multiple quality tiers
• Reduced file sizes from 500-800 MB to <300 MB (MP4) / <150 MB (WebM)
• Built a lazy-load video component that deferred download until near-viewport

Bundle:

• Removed duplicate libraries
• Tailored Nuxt.js build configuration
• Streamlined task chaining
• Reduced bundle from ~725 KB to ~275 KB

Discovery: While debugging, I found that the Vue store alone caused a 20-point Lighthouse impact. Without the store loaded, scores jumped to 98-99. (We didn't remove it; the functionality was needed, but it explained the ceiling.)

Storyblok CMS Migration

I analyzed 7 marketing pages for common patterns, then extended the UI component library with 10+ CMS-connected components:

• PageSection, Copy, Video, Image, Hero, Thumbnail, and more
• Each component is documented in Storybook with usage examples
• Full Jest test coverage
• Storyblok API integration with input validation rules

This lets the content team build and update pages without engineering involvement.

A/B Testing Infrastructure

Marketing wanted to run experiments on different copy angles, video variations, ands, but had no way to do so without offering a structure without engineering building each variant.

I built configurable test components integrated with Google Optimize:

• Quarterly collaboration with marketing on test design
• 2-week test cycles
• Test types: copy (health vs. training messaging), video (male vs. female athletes), images (action shots vs. stills), offers (control vs. discount variants)

Mentorship

I paired with Sam, a junior developer, on complex TypeScript tickets. Focused on teaching component breakdown and task decomposition, the same approach my mentors had used with me.

The Impact

Other impacts:

• Engineering requests from content team dropped from ~10/week to ~2/week (80% reduction)
• Sam promoted from Junior to Front-End Developer within one year
• 10+ CMS components documented and tested

Why I Left

I was furloughed in January 2023 during the post-pandemic market correction. Connected fitness contracted hard; Peloton's struggles around the same time tell the broader story. FightCamp had over-projected growth, and when the market shifted, they reduced headcount.

What I Learned

This role reinforced a pattern I first saw at Winc: the highest-leverage engineering work often isn't the most technically complex; it's the work that removes friction for other teams. The CMS migration wasn't glamorous, but it changed how fast marketing could move.

The performance work taught me something different: sometimes the biggest wins are hiding in plain sight. No one had run a Lighthouse audit. I did, and it became the most impactful project of my time there.

Tech Stack

Vue.js, Nuxt.js, TypeScript, Storyblok CMS, Storybook, Jest, Google Optimize, Google Analytics, AWS S3, Lighthouse, Intersection Observer API, WebM/MP4 optimization