Category Archives: trainer management software

New ‘Skip’ Feature added to The Workout Coach.

We had a lot of PTs asking if we could make it so that a client could skip any particular exercise and move onto the next one. This was because sometimes a piece of gym equipment wasn’t available, or the client had an injury and needed to rest that area and skip to the next one.

So we’ve made it super-easy to pull up the all the exercises in the current Program, and simply click to jump to any particular one.

All you need to do is to click the link near the top of the page (see attached example) and then you’ll instantly see which exercises are completed, and which other ones you can jump to.

You can also easily skip back as well as forward.

We’ve also added “RPE” into the Weight options in the Program Builder page. 

RPE stands for “Rate of Perceived Exertion” (if you’re unfamiliar there’s more info here.  So if you need to specify a weight to the exercise you’ve built, then you can now choose between kilograms (kg),  Pounds (lbs) or RPE.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then a video must do millions!

This is why we’ve just rolled out a brand new feature that allows PTs to actually show their clients a demo video of any exercise in their Program.

We know this is one of the most requested features, and previously we’d been looking to create (or licence access to) a full video demo library.

But there were a couple of problems with using a third party for the videos…

Firstly the videos wouldn’t actually be showing you (the trainer) to your client, it’d be introducing someone new, and thus reducing the relationship building that you have with a client.

And secondly, there are always going to be small disagreements between Trainers in showing the correct form whilst performing an exercise. Trying to get everyone to agree that there’s only one ‘right’ way to do something was going to be nearly impossible!

So we developed another method instead. All it requires is for you to have already uploaded your demonstrations to either YouTube or Vimeo, and then link to them inside the admin area in The Workout Coach.

Steps

1. Login to your account area at [username].theworkout.coach/
2. Click on the “Exercises” icon in the left menu
3. Find the exercise you want to show a video demo for, and click it
4. Then in the right section of the page you’ll see blank field called “Video Link to YouTube or Vimeo”.
5. Simply paste the relevant webpage address into there, and click “NEXT” at the bottom of the page

That’s it. Now the next time your client loads that exercise in their Program, they’ll see a small video icon by the info – clicking it pulls up your video!

It was a relatively normal day here in the office, and then we received a support email from one of our PTs subscribers, with what sounded like a simple request:

“Hi, loving the product, but I wondered if you’d be able to add a ‘rest’ option into the Program Builder so I can instruct my clients to take a break for a short time between exercises”

Our first thought was to suggest that you could already create a custom exercise, call it something like “30 seconds rest” or “2 minute rest” and then add these into any program… But somehow that didn’t quite feel like a good enough solution. It felt like we’d missed something that a lot of PTs might also want to use.

So we thought about it for while longer, what would be the best way to present a rest period to a client, and how do we help PTs add these into existing Programs? It was looking more and more like a great new benefit…

And so we decided to really ‘do a job’ and not only create a new module so PTs can easily add any length of Rest period they wanted into the Program, but also create a lovely ‘countdown timer’ on the front-end that the Client can see how much time is left until the next exercise.

Sounds simple – I mean how long could it take? A couple of days, maybe three at the most?

Er no, almost 3 weeks as it turns out! As there was a lot more logic to work out so that the whole process was as slick as possible, and added useful extra functionality to the software, but without any added complication for the PT or client. Plus we needed to ensure that Clients could skip through a rest period if the machine they needed wasn’t immediately available (We all know how busy some gyms can get!)

but now it’s complete, and we pushed the new code into the system over the weekend. Now all PTs need to do is click the small “ADD REST” icon at the bottom of the Program builder, and then select ’Seconds’ or ‘Minutes’ then input a number – everything else is taken care of and your Clients will see a beautifully designed countdown timer telling them how long they’ve got left.

We hope you enjoy it – and please keep sending us ideas or suggestions to help improve the product and make it more useful for you all.

Back in 2017 I joined a gym.

There isn’t anything particularly special about that statement, as I think i’ve probably joined about 10 gyms over the last couple of decades. Yet there turned out to be one rather fundamental difference. This time it worked!

What I mean is, rather than just traipse along to the gym once or twice a week and follow the same workout routine, I joined a gym that had a Personal Trainer element, and we kept records of results from every session. And guess what? Yep, It worked! Not only did I maintain a strict attendance of three times a week, but I also gained significantly more muscle mass, and was able to feel fitter and stronger than at any time since my mid-twenties.

Coming from someone who’s now nearer 50 than 40, that’s been quite an achievement.

Key to all of this was the PT element of course. Having someone scheduling your workouts, pushing you in the right direction whilst keeping a watchful (sometimes even shouty) eye on your form, really worked well for me. But there was one thing that bugged me.

This new gym insisted that we each kept records on an A4 sheet of paper strapped to a plastic clipboard. Notwithstanding the time lost each session in finding your clipboard out fo the 200+ lined up, but the archaic way of recording limited data really seemed inefficient to me. Now I develop Apps and databases for a living, and I’d also been a member of a gym some years before which ran the full Technogym setup complete with your personalised Workout Key. Of course that sort of investment starts somewhere north of £250k, and is out of reach of most smaller gyms. But as I looked around my new gym I noticed that almost everyone had a smartphone – surely there was a way to use existing technology to create a better tracking and reporting system?

One of the key things for me was to be able to let small gyms, and PTs – who may only have a handful of clients – be able to professionalise their offering, without needing to invest in any new IT kit. I also wanted to make it easier for PTs to be able to track and monitor how well their clients were doing during those workouts when they weren’t present, and all of this had to happen through an easy-to-use interface that could be accessed whilst slowing down on a running machine!

And so, during my next set on the bench press, rather than concentrating on my form or my breathing, I was trying to work out how long such an app would take to develop.

In the end I was only out by six months, (but I least I hit a Personal Best of 105kg) – so it’s not all bad!

The following day I started sketching out the design and User Interface, and getting feedback from the gym team and some other PTs locally. Everyone who saw it seemed pretty positive which really helped with the motivation. I knew we had a lot of experience in developing Progressive Web Apps, and so I got started with the coding. I also wanted to try a different approach to getting it into the marketplace. And so rather than try one-to-one sales, I decided to help adoption by making the system free to all PTs, and let them invite their Clients to join their account if they liked the system.

No upfront costs, and only a very small fee (£3 per month) to the clients if they liked what they saw and could see the benefit of it.

As I write this we’re in the Pre-Launch phase to the early adopters, and feedback is again, really positive. I’ll be updating the website links for new signups later next week, and i’ll look forward to any more comments.