With the growth in demand of personal training and online personal training over the recent years, so has grown the demand for personal training software.
Personal training software and apps are useful to streamline your business by reducing the “paperwork” and record keeping that is needed to properly track and manage your clients.
The competition is growing between apps which is great for personal trainers and their clients, because the list of features available continues to grow along with the functionality and usability as a whole.
TrueCoach Personal Training Software
Founded in 2015 by Fitbot, Inc. out of Boulder, CO, USA, TrueCoach is an online coaching platform built for fitness professionals such as personal trainers. Used by more than 20,000 coaches and gyms worldwide, TrueCoach provides coaches with the tools needed to create personalized fitness programs for their clients.
TrueCoach is a top-tier web and mobile-based personal training software platform. With TrueCoach, you’re able to more efficiently and effectively monitor client workouts, nutrition plans, progress and simplify your training business.
It’s an easy and convenient way for fitness professionals to connect with clients and its features to store, manage and track client data makes it great to use with both online and offline personal training clients.
Some of the main highlights are noted below.
Significant highlights:
- Exercise library links over 1,200 exercises to a preset YouTube video or you can link to your own videos for reference.
- Clients can log their workouts, view their workout history, add comments and ask questions straight from the mobile app (iOS/Android).
- Real-time messaging allows for instant feedback
- Allows for tracking client workout histories and other metrics to monitor consistent progress
- Allows you to add custom branding and your own logo.
- Offers a free 14 day trial although there is no free version
TrueCoach Personal App Review
TrueCoach covers the key components of a training package that covers most fitness professional needs including individual trainers, bootcamp instructors and even studios and gyms.
Features and Benefits
To sign up for TrueCoach takes just a few seconds and I set up an account of my own using the 14 day free trial with no credit card needed. This was greatly welcomed as it’s always nice to explore the features of a program without feeling like they’re going to try and “catch” you with a renewal fee.
Upon logging in to the TrueCoach web app, you’ll be taken to your Dashboard which is like a newsfeed that provides an overview of which clients should take priority based on the proximity of their next workout, recent comments and compliance rates.
If you spot a client that needs attention, you can quickly view their profile including program metrics and workout history, and even message them directly for a check in.
It doesn’t take much to learn how to use TrueCoach as most of it is fairly intuitive.
From the Dashboard you can also access the other features such as:
- Client list
- Exercise library
- Programs
- Team info
- Payments
Clients
Clients have a 7-day, 30-day and 90-day compliance rate, which is calculated as the exercises completed vs exercises assigned during that time frame. This helps to identify trends in whether clients are sticking with the program assigned. Some clients could be better at short stints rather than long-term programs. Clients cannot view their own compliance rate.
The TrueCoach Dashboard provides you with an overall compliance rate measured across all of your clients, which also proves to be useful feedback to your own performance as a coach.
The messaging feature is simple and effective, and creates a personalized coaching experience since clients are able to ask questions and gather real-time feedback.
Exercise Library
The TrueCoach exercise library includes over 1,200 unique movements and variations.
The included movements automatically link to a preset YouTube video for quick reference. However, you can swap these preset links to your own links, or even upload your own video.
It’s incredibly effective to view a video of your own personal trainer performing each movement.
The included preset videos aren’t the most engaging or detailed, but they are a good starting point and you’re easily able to swap it out for another.
Programs
Exercise programs (workout routines) are important because they are the roadmap to the end goal.
Since there isn’t much in the way of pre-built TrueCoach programs included, you’ll spend a bit of time creating customized programs for your clients.
Once you’ve created a workout, you can use it as a template and assign it to other clients, modifying it as necessary to fit their needs. Templates save a ton of time from having to recreate the same program over and over again.
You can record specific notes on each client so you can consider their workout history, metrics, goals, movement limitations, past injuries, and calorie requirements when programming.
This makes it easy and convenient for you to track their progress and share it with them once you help them attain each goal.
Clients can even log their macro and calorie metrics so that you can track it and help keep them accountable. Unfortunately, TrueCoach does not have a direct integration with MyFitnessPal and the metrics must be logged directly into the TrueCoach platform, which leaves much to be desired in the area of nutrition.
Team Info
TrueCoach allows you to add team members, which is great if you ever plan on expanding your personal training business by bringing on new trainers or if you simply want to share your planned workouts with another coach while they cover for you on holiday leave.
Payments
TrueCoach Payments are processed through a third party and in order to accept payments, you must have a Stripe account set up and linked to your TrueCoach account. Once Stripe is connected, you can accept most major credit cards, subject to Stripe’s processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Additional Features
One of our favorite features of the TrueCoach platform is the ability to add optional custom branding. This adds a unique look and feel of your own brand, complete with custom colors and your own logo appearing on all headers and pages of the client’s app.
TrueCoach even offers a really cool referral program. Whenever you refer another coach to sign up for a TrueCoach package using your referral link, you’ll both receive a $50 account credit. It’s a great way to save some money.
The Mobile Apps: TrueCoach Connect and TrueCoach for Clients
When you sign up for TrueCoach you get access to the web-based platform and the mobile apps.
TrueCoach Connect is the mobile version of the platform which coaches use to connect with their clients. The TrueCoach Connect app is available for both iOS and Android devices.
While the TrueCoach Connect app is user friendly, we noticed that it doesn’t have many of the features that are found on the web-based app. You’re essentially limited to messaging clients and viewing their activity.
The TrueCoach client app is called TrueCoach for Clients, which your clients use to update their daily or weekly activity and progress. As of the writing of this article, TrueCoach for Clients is available on iOS and the TrueCoach Android app is currently in public beta with limited features.
While the mobile feature set is somewhat lacking, as it is just an on-the go way to message directly with clients and view their progress and comments, it does the job well so you’re never out of touch during business hours. We know that TrueCoach is continuously improving their app and we’re likely to see more of the features that could make it a fully mobile suite.
What Trainers Say About TrueCoach
We did a review check over at review site Capterra. TrueCoach has a little over 160 reviews with an overall rating of 4.7, which is a fantastic rating. A lot of the reviews have shown improvement over time as TrueCoach continues to improve upon its web-based and mobile products.
The 2020 TrueCoach reviews show that most users are generally happy and the only downside is either the price or the fact that TrueCoach is purely good at programming (as it’s intended), however, some users are also seeking business admin tools built in. A previous complaint was that there is no TrueCoach for Android, but that is no longer an issue as of the release in the second half of 2020.
Overall, the reviews are positive and we agree as we never ran into any difficulties or challenges when using the platform.
TrueCoach Pricing
As a personal trainer, TrueCoach is useful because the useful features allow you to offload a lot of the unnecessary burden of client record keeping and program management, and focus on providing a high-quality client experience.
With a top-level software you can provide the same top-level experience to your clients. Let’s look at the TrueCoach pricing.
Starter | Standard | Pro | |
Monthly Pricing | $19/month | $49/month | $90/month |
Active Clients | 0-05 | 06-20 | 21-50 |
All Other Features | Available On All Plans | ||
After the 14 day free TrueCoach trial, we find that the pricing is on par with most other personal training software programs and apps in the market. You pay for the amount of clients you have and all features are included at each tier.
TrueCoach is always free for the client and plans can be upgraded or downgraded at any time. This means that you’re able to scale to new features or even cancel to switch between platforms if it isn’t the right one for you.
Conclusion: To Buy or Not to Buy?
While TrueCoach offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android, the mobile app only offers basic functionality of communicating with clients and monitoring their recent activity. We’re sure the mobile feature set will grow over time, and the web-version still offers all of the major functionalities of all the competitors in the meantime.
While personal training apps are very effective at tracking client data, the expertise of a true fitness professional is what brings it all together. The personal trainer will always be needed to interpret the data, and customize the client’s program accordingly.
TrueCoach is a great option and amongst the most widely used. It gets our nod of approval due to the platform being easy to use and for it offering some of the best customer support services around. Whenever we had a question, they were quick to respond typically on the spot or within 1 business day.
