“Abstain from Alcohol”: That and Other Habits That Will Guide Fitness Consumers in 2021

Have you ever had an idea for an app and thought, “This must exist already.”?

I had that experience recently, and it was a bit of a deja vu moment.

I’m dealing with a shoulder injury at the moment, so I’ve been seeing my physiotherapist. Last week, I went to an appointment, and he gave me some exercises to work through.

I went home and got busy with work and life. Then, when I tried to do my exercises a few days later, I completely forgot what I was supposed to do. I had to text my physiotherapist!

I caught myself thinking, “There’s got to be an app for this.” — throwing me back to 2003.

Back then, I had this exact same experience. I was seeing a physiotherapist for a different injury and, like now, I couldn’t keep track of my exercises. I knew an app could solve the problem — but it didn’t exist. This experience was what inspired me, a few years later, to pull together the team that built Trainerize.

The irony is that twelve years later, with Trainerize being used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, I’m still dealing with the same issue for my physio sessions.

From a Consumer Fitness App to Personal Trainer Engagement

Back in 2008, our Product Director Trevor Chong , Development Director Ricky Ying, and I started to digitize the fitness experience, by developing v1 of Trainerize — a consumer-focused Blackberry app called Gym Technik.

Then, Blackberry went bust. And our fitness app got pretty useless. But it wasn’t just that RIM was dying out — it was that we weren’t fully and truly satisfied with the impact we were having on people’s lives.

A critical component was missing: the human personal trainer.

We envisioned a world where a billion people are connected to a trainer. Our current mission was born — to make fitness accessible. We added two more heads to help with this pivot, COO Farhad Gulamhusein and Director of QA John LA, and we went to work!

Integrating Nutrition Coaching

Since then, we’ve expanded our definition of fitness. When our trainers and users expressed interest in integrated nutrition into the app, we wanted to make it as easy as possible. We wanted to plug into what clients were already using, so we built integrations for MyFitnessPal.

Our team is always measuring how clients are working with their trainers. We see over a hundred thousand workouts a day in the app — but we see over a million meals a day.

*Ding ding ding!*

I see nutrition as the most underserved marketing in digital fitness, and we plan on doing something about that. For us, the opportunity we see, based on how trainers and clients are using the product, indicates a future of Trainerize that goes beyond fitness, and really, beyond nutrition too.

Nutrition coaches and person trainers don’t just want to prescribe meal plans about what to eat — they want to teach their clients how to eat, by encouraging positive choices and building healthy habits.

Introducing Habit Coaching

Habit Coaching, which is the latest release for the Trainerize product, was actually born out of this interest in sustainable, lifelong nutrition coaching. Habits fit into the fitness component too — really, as an evolution of personal training. Building the habits piece into each user’s personal routine builds this 360° approach to health and wellness — an overlapping venn diagram:

I’m seeing such a tight integration between habits and fitness and nutrition, each one feeding into the other, building healthier lifestyles. These three components are what make up Trainerize today — a powerful trifecta that offers one seamless integrated experience.

Habits also open up opportunities for coaches to influence parts of their clients’ lives that don’t neatly fit into nutrition or fitness objectives… which is particularly powerful during a pandemic. The top four types of habits for the year reflect on the struggles of 2020 — step counting (very necessary), digital detox (WFH life, right?), self-care (gotta boost that morale!) and, you guessed it — abstaining from alcohol.

These elements of health and wellbeing are only going to be more important in 2021. When a trainer is involved in all three pieces, that trainer will help clients improve every single day and extend those habits long-term, beyond the pandemic. This redefines the partnership between the trainer and the client — shifting it from a transaction to a relationship that’s part of their daily life.

Building digital fitness for the 2020s

Right now, everyone wants to talk about 2021 and how COVID-19 will continue to impact society around us. At Trainerize, we see habits as a key piece of that — especially considering some of the Trainerize stats I shared above!

So for 2021, trainers can look forward to influencing the way people take care of themselves — how they move, how they eat, and how lifestyles support their overall health. Daily positive reinforcement, coming from a real coach. Iterations on training plans, based on personalized goals and real-time progress.

For 2021, the goal for gyms and clubs is to keep members engaged, both during COVID-19 and beyond it. When COVID-19 first hit in North America, tracked workouts in Trainerize tanked. But habits remained consistent, and eventually they increased — by a lot — signifying the sustainability of healthy habits.

Now, as many communities are entering second wave lockdowns and people are stuck at home, trainers can focus on habits — consistently influencing the way their clients move, eat, and live, despite changes to other parts of their days.

The power of fitness technology is using that technology to connect real people — and that connection is how clubs are going to build client engagement next year. During COVID-19, people need accountability and motivation. And more than anything, they crave human connection.

That’s the piece that we’re fighting for — the importance of a coach in integrating into their daily life to build a healthy lifestyle. Clients don’t just want their trainers to hand them a workout and walk away — just like I don’t want my physiotherapist to give me my exercises and walk away.

Trainerize was founded based on a need for a better way.

Similarly, we observed a need for habits over two years ago — and during COVID-19, that need grew more urgent. We saw the demand and we built the technology — now, we just need to empower trainers and clients to get to work on this next phase in the evolution of digital fitness.