Personal(ized) Training: The Next Frontier for Fitness Apps

Many people hoping to stick to their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, eat better, or get fit turn to health and fitness apps for support. Often, they’re hoping for the type of encouragement and guidance they’d get from a personal trainer or coach — that is, customized and personalized to keep them motivated.

For those lucky tech organizations that scored a healthy percent of new users during the holidays that are still logging in and engaging with your health and fitness apps, you may think you’re in good shape. You’ve created a user experience that meets their needs. For now.

As AI-powered hyper-personalization becomes more prevalent in retail, media, and finance, consumers will also demand more from other brands. Can you keep up?

Most fitness apps ask new users for personal details, such as age, height, weight, and goals. While some apps simply offer tracking or access to collections of workouts or recipes, others offer more customized content. These types of apps may ask about motivations, obstacles, dietary and workout preferences, fitness levels, and pre-existing health conditions to create a more personalized experience. They offer adjustments to accommodate individual differences. For example, consider two runners prepping for their first 5K race: a 24-year-old former college athlete will require a different training program (fuel, stretches, pace, distance, etc.) than a 42-year old who hasn’t touched a pair of running shoes in 20 years.

Program customization is an important part of setting users up for success, as well as keeping them motivated as they progress. Most users expect training programs to shift based on how well they perform and how they interact with the app. Much like working with a personal trainer, users look for apps to adjust to their mode, health, timelines, and fitness levels. Don’t login for a few days? Maybe you get a low-impact workout to ease you back into the routine. Logging in consistently? The program gets more challenging or shortens the length of time required to reach a goal.

This adaptability – which makes individual users feel like the app works for them – is the main driver for success. Users have the sense that the program is tailored to them, especially if they can adjust their fitness levels, goals, preferences, or other data and then get different recommendations. For many users, this is enough to keep them coming back.

But not for everyone.

What happens when things change more dramatically?

As many coaches, trainers, psychiatrists, and software developers know, it’s easy to maintain strong performance under consistent conditions. Introduce a new variable and things can get tricky. When the user who’s been slaying at meal prep has to travel for work for a week, they may struggle to maintain a healthy eating routine. Back pain may keep even the most dedicated yoga practitioner off the mat. A cyclist training for a century ride may get frustrated if they’re knocked off pace by a week-long bout with the flu.

So how can apps help users adapt when they encounter obstacles? True personalization addresses the user’s concerns and factors in their environment, ability, and access to tools or equipment. All too often, people turn to search engines when they hit a bump in the fitness journey — and then get overwhelmed or frustrated when confronted with conflicting wisdom.

How does a frequent weightlifter safely resume strength training in the wake of shoulder surgery? Are there ways to maintain cardio fitness for someone with a broken ankle and no gym access? What should meal planning look like for a vegan entering menopause, when protein needs increase along with the risk of muscle loss and decreased bone density? Or for someone taking medications that interact poorly with certain foods?

Recommendations from the fitness app would have several advantages – users already have their data stored there and know how to navigate the app. There’s familiarity and trust. Users also benefit from maintaining momentum and consistency. Guidance presented within the holistic context of each user’s preferences, health status, and resource access can be more focused than simple search results.

While many of the concerns cited above should be addressed with a doctor, physical therapist, or dietician/nutritionist, fitness apps could supplement that guidance or provide a first step while users wait for appointments. Consumers who have limited or delayed access to medical professionals due to long wait times or an absence of specialists in their area could benefit from some immediate recommendations on what to do — or avoid.

With paid services and subscriptions a vital revenue source for many fitness apps, it’s easy to see access to this level of personalization as a premium tier offering, powered by AI. The right training data and testing partner could help shape a digital experience that could win against a wide range of competitors. Applause offers access to a diverse community to provide fit-for-purpose training data sets at the speed, scale, and specificity you need. We can also help you test functionality, validate AI outputs, and ensure a seamless user experience across all your demographics.

Contact us today to learn more.