ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- It started as a spreadsheet to solve workout issues. Now, Detroit Lions linebacker Brandon Copeland is trying to eventually make it become much more.

The development of an exercise randomization spreadsheet that he hopes will become a successful app began sometime between the winter of 2013 and spring of 2014. Scott Lopano, Copeland’s college teammate at the University of Pennsylvania, was beginning his first post-college job as an investment banker with UBS. Between his new commute and his new schedule, he started to realize he was finding less and less time to work out.

So Lopano started to put together the spreadsheet with exercises. Then he would randomize it in an attempt to have a different workout each day. He soon reached out to Copeland and another UPenn teammate, Joe Holder.

The three eventually sent it out to friends and together they came up with the idea for FHiitLife, a functional high intensity interval training app and website they are hoping to launch by the end of the year.

“It’s been a slow, it’s been a baby step process and that’s how we’re taking it,” Copeland said. “We’re OK with that because we all have our own priorities but we have helped some people individually, not through the app but through other stuff, personal training stuff, and we’ve seen the benefits that people have gotten from our work.

“So hopefully try to build a mass product that can help more people at one time, you know.”

While all three have contributed to the workouts, Copeland helped design the initial website, www.FHiitLife.com, although it is under construction now as he and Lopano brought in professional website developers to help redo the site. Lopano is helping with a lot of the behind-the-scenes work. Holder initially put together a lot of the workouts. He has since taken a step back due to his own personal training profession starting to take off, including his system called The Ocho System.

Holder told ESPN he is still involved as a consultant, but Lopano and Copeland are taking the lead with it.

The goal of the app, which they hope to have ready for a Beta launch soon, is to help busy people with hectic lives find time to work out with high intensity interval training. Due to a competitive marketplace and since the app hasn’t launched yet, neither Copeland nor Lopano wanted to go into too much detail about their business plan or the ins-and-outs of the app, which will be free at least through beta testing.

They believe the randomization of the workouts combined with the high intensity focus of it is something they can bring to the marketplace in both iOs and Android formats.

“This is one of the few that provides you a more exciting outlet to work out on a daily basis because of the randomization of it,” Lopano said. “It’s, we think, it’s scientifically beneficial because your ability to randomize workouts and approach, say, working out your biceps or legs a different way each time actually creates better results.

“In that sense, it’s better for you scientifically. It’s also, we think, better for you mentally in terms of approaching the workout. It’s exciting to try something new.”

All three have other priorities right now as well -- Holder with personal training, Lopano with investment banking and Copeland with his attempt to make the Lions -- but in their spare time, they are also trying to build an app they believe will be successful.

That is part of the reason the development has taken over a year.

“We want to be sure that the way we’re doing this, given it’s a market that has a good amount of competition, our priorities are to launch correctly with the right people and an excellent product,” Lopano said. “We’re less about trying to move to get products to market and more trying to make sure it is the best product it could be.”