Technology and Software for Personal Trainers
In today’s digital world, technology surrounds our lives, and, more importantly, those of our clients. So, in order to thrive as personal trainers, it’s important to adapt to and utilize technology to an advantage.
Online personal training has seen massive growth, largely in part due to the Covid19 pandemic, with a majority of trainers moving their business online and hosting live-streamed sessions. This trend isn’t slowing any time soon, and staying ahead of the wave is always better than playing catch up.
If your focus is to build an independent personal training business, you will need systems and procedures in place to help grow the business, achievable through the use of technology and software.
There are a variety of different ways personal trainers can use software and technology today:
- Scheduling software
- Personal training app
- Distance/workout tracker
- Nutrition tracker
- Body fat calculator
- Payment processor
- Website
- Time keeper
- Music
- Gym aggregators
- Social media
- Hardware
Below, we’ll go into detail on each of the ways you can use software and technology to build your personal training business.
Personal Training App
With the fitness industry growing at such a rapid pace, a number of Personal Training Apps have been introduced to the market.
These specialized web and mobile apps enable personal trainers to manage, schedule and communicate with clients, create workout plans, track progress, monitor nutrition intake, and market their business. Often, these apps come with built-in workout templates and an exercise library, which you can easily share with your clients.
The wonderful thing about personal training apps is the ability to take on more clients and hold more sessions, thus scaling the business further than what could be done in the past.
More importantly, these apps have opened the way to online personal training , allowing you to train clients from just about anywhere in the world!
The top apps we’ve found in this space are:
Find our full write-up on each of the tracking apps for personal trainers here.
Many of the apps will allow you a free trial, or have monthly/annual or pay-per-client payment plans. The time savings alone will help to offset the cost of this wise investment into your business.
Essentially, these apps aim to be your go-to hub for just about everything that a personal trainer needs. While they excel in certain areas, the purpose-specific apps covered below will beat them in others.
Scheduling Software
You know how important it is to stay on top of your appointments, but scheduling and rescheduling appointments can often be tedious and time consuming.
Technology now makes it easier than ever to stay on top of your latest bookings and appointments.
Scheduling apps are used across all industries, so there are countless feature-rich apps available to help maintain your calendar:
- Default Calendar app – just about everyone has a smartphone, laptop, and access to the internet. Whether you use a Google Android or Apple iPhone, there is typically a default calendar app you can use to input appointments, set reminders and more. It’s pretty basic but gets the job done. You can even access your Google calendar directly from Gmail.
- Calendly – Calendly is another useful app for scheduling appointments. You can send your availability with a Calendly link and the clients can select the time slot that works for them. Unless you’re scheduling large team meetings or need some of the extra features, it is a free service.
- Square Appointments – similar to Calendly above, but well integrated with the Square payment platform. Simply set your availability within Square Appointments, and clients can book time based on the open slots on your calendar.
Spending a few minutes to download and start familiarizing yourself with a calendar scheduling app is way better than missing an appointment with one of your valuable clients.
Distance/Workout Tracker
All trainers should be tracking client progress in order to measure the effectiveness of their program. The key to progress is tracking that progress and working to improve upon it with each consecutive effort.
What good is smashing a 30 minute HIIT session or running three miles if you can’t keep track of it all? And, you certainly won’t be able to commit to memory the complete workout history of your many clients.
It’s all about data points, and, the more the better.
With GPS features and real-time data these apps are able to track you and your clients just about anywhere with an extremely high level of accuracy. Here are a few options:
With these exercise tracking apps, you’ll have your clients hitting personal records left and right.
Nutrition Tracker
Similar to the workout trackers above, a number of apps are designed specifically to track nutrition and diet. With a database of built-in nutrition facts for thousands of different foods, snacks, drinks and meals, these apps also boast a community of users to validate the data.
Here are a few examples:
Most people are surprised just how much they’re eating once they start tracking their intake and observing their eating habits. That extra handful of almonds and glass of milk can really add on to the daily count. Give it a try and see for yourself today!
Digital Scales and Calculators
Seeing physical progress is an important component of almost every successful fitness journey.
When it comes to measuring changes in the body, body weight and body fat measurements are two of the most useful metrics.
Ways to measure body weight and body fat:
- Body weight scales
- BIA monitors
- Online body fat calculator + body fat calipers – As an alternative, you can use a body fat caliper to measure the different sites on a client’s body, and then input those measurements into an online body fat calculator.
Body fat calipers are highly portable, offer consistent measurements and have a high degree of accuracy. This is why the professionals choose calipers such as the Lange body fat calipers for their records.
You can check out our body fat calculator here.
Payment Processor
Very few of your clients will be paying your training fee in cash. Especially when you start charging for packages that run into the thousands of dollars.
You’re in luck because technology makes it much easier to accept payments, submit invoices and track all of the transactions made within your business.
Most of the apps noted above will connect directly to your bank account, so it’s even easier and more seamless to collect your money than ever before.
Website
In the tech-driven world of today, if a business doesn’t have it’s own website, it is already behind the competition.
Websites are a staple of any serious personal trainer and there are few better ways to jumpstart your sales and marketing efforts than by building a website.
Here are a few components of a well-functioning website:
- Hosting
- Domain Names
- Themes
Click here to check out our full guide on How to Build a Personal Training Website.
Time Keeper
How fast can your client run a mile? What is their heart rate BPM when running a 40 yard dash?
These things can all be measured with the use of a simple stopwatch or stopwatch app, but there are also more advanced implementations thanks to recent technology.
With these apps, you can do more than start and stop the clock and timer – you’re able to set intervals, track laps and much more.
- Default smartphone stopwatch app
- Gymboss Interval Timer
- Stopwatch
Music
What’s a good workout without some beat bumping music?
Whether you like hardcore metal, EDM or pop music, a strong, steady beat will keep you moving when the going gets tough.
Check out one of these music streaming apps to start playing your favorite tunes today:
Play music straight from your smartphone, or, for an even better experience, hook your music up to a bluetooth speaker to get the whole room moving.
Gym Aggregator
When you’re looking for effective ways to attract clients, fitness and gym aggregators can prove essential.
These aggregators allow you to locate new potential clients and increase the bookings in your class or training session.
Although they charge a small fee for their services, these fitness aggregators can help to populate your classes, resulting in higher top-line revenue. The exposure alone is often worth the price you pay to be on the platform.
Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media is incredibly popular today and used by audiences worldwide. Maybe you use it to stay in touch with friends and family or to browse motivational fitness memes.
A more business-savvy use of social media would be to spend time learning how to use the platform to build and market your fitness business.
Businesses of all industries have flocked to social media because of its ability to target customers and demographics. A huge following and audience on social media can be cultivated organically, whereas to obtain the reach via traditional marketing would cost thousands of dollars!
The most popular social media platforms and internet properties are below:
While one of the oldest ways of communicating on the internet, email remains king. Just about everyone who uses the internet has an email address and tends to use the same account for years on end.
This is why email lists are so important!
With an email contact list, you can reach your clients and potential clients into the foreseeable future. Your email contact list is money, so check out the email marketing tools below to help grow your business.
Whether you are using an automated tool like the ones above or simply sending out a periodic email manually to all of your clients, email marketing is an important tool that should not be overlooked.
Hardware
All of the software above is complemented by the latest tech and wearable gadgets such as smart watches and smart phones. Features such as GPS tracking technology, health monitoring apps, video cameras, stopwatch, calendars and more, make these gadgets an integral part of any personal trainer’s toolbox.
Without the hardware to run it all, the software and apps that we rely on so much wouldn’t be possible. You don’t always need to have the latest and greatest to succeed, but staying on top of popular trends can set you apart from the crowd.
Conclusion
Technology will only continue to permeate our lives as new advancements and applications are developed in the years to come.
With just a simple smartphone, you have an entire toolbox of apps to build your schedule, create workout plans, monitor client progress and even listen to some tunes while running your group class.
More and more trainers are finding themselves running sessions online than ever before and the possibilities are endless.
As a personal trainer, you can either use these technologies to grow your business, or you can choose not to incorporate them and let the competition pass you by.
