Successful Use of Tech in Fitness

Successful Use of Tech in Fitness

The rise of the wearable fitness tracker has been a long time coming.  Those among us that were familiar with the early pedometers (loved those!) and early heart rate monitors (not so much) could see that lack of accuracy and integration made them more novelty than useful tool.

The accuracy issues have almost been laid to rest (see later) and with a smart phone in everyone’s pocket solving the integration problem then the age of the wearable is upon us. The pandemic also pushed the online fitness provision massively forward.

Online vs. Real Person  

The digital vs. IRL challenge was never one that either would or will win outright.  Nothing can beat a motivating, expert and inspiring coach standing in front of you and getting the best out of you and your fellow exercisers.  That is a feeling that cannot be replicated online. 

However, to think that any modern fitness provider can do without the digital input in some form, or another is missing a trick.  Whether it is using a 3^rd party platform for on-demand digital classes, doing your own or slotting some live sessions into your timetable, it is here to stay.

At RISE Fitness our digital side is via our software provider partner who has developed a library of thousands of exercises each with an avatar that can be curated by the RISE coach for individuals who need additional training or a holiday program.

Wearables

The other high profile addition to the fitness landscape is the wearable fitness tracker.  This is becoming a competitive field for the hardware and software side of things.  What makes a great wearable?  We think

• Ease of wear – got to be comfortable and not get in the way
• Accuracy – needs to be reflective of effort otherwise the user will stop using
• Dynamic accuracy – if using in class the devise must be able to cope with rapid body movement and still push out data in seconds
• Understandable outputs – if you start to make it too hard to understand again users will not stick with it.  It’s got to mean something!
• Great app – the coms output of the device has to feed somewhere and that somewhere better deliver in terms of ease of use, fun and sociability.

We use Myzone as it ticks all the boxes.  We get a great partner app that sits neatly within our app as a tile; we get MEPs to use in our challenges; we get members motivated by their gamification; chest devise is accurate and the wrist device convenient.  We tend not to use the wrist device in session as it struggles to keep up and RISE members have their results live on their phones during very session.

We make this central to out offering as each member gets a device when they join.  This is a brilliant marketing tool as well as a retention tool from the moment they put it on and do a RISE session.

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