While it was commonplace for your Personal Trainer to have a clipboard and pen when tracking your workouts and progress, things have [thankfully] progressed in the realm of technology. This progress means better tracking, faster responses, and more layers of accountability which equal better things for you!
Here is how we, at Iron Hero, leverage technology to better help our Personal Training Clients. In other words, it helps us to help you…
Workout Tracking
This one is pretty straightforward: I remember using a clipboard, with printed sheets of paper, stored in a manilla folder, and separated alphabetically in a hanging folder in a drawer when I started Personal Training.
…that was a run-on sentence. I think…
It was very doable to be able to look back through sheets of paper and track progress. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t efficient. But it was workable.
Now, there are a rather robust number of apps you can use to track your workouts and we decided to leverage one in particular. How does this benefit you?
If you had some place to store workout and lift results, a place where you can refer back to these results to track progress, a place where you could see movement videos if you forgot what it was, and a place to communicate with your trainer if need be? Enter workout apps!
As a Personal Trainer, this allows me to spend more time focusing on the thing that matters: you and your results!
Attendance Tracking
Surprisingly enough, the workout tracker does [secondarily] operate as an attendance tracker. However, we also track attendance separately.
As you are probably aware [whether you want to admit it or not], consistency matters above pretty much everything else. Tracking attendance is a way for me, as your trainer, to make sure you are doing what you told me you wanted to do.
We call this accountability!
Nutrition Tracking
There are probably just as many, if not more, nutrition tracking apps as there are workout tracking apps. Who knows, maybe it is a flip flop, but there are a lot!
Typically, challenges in nutrition fall into one of two categories: either it is an information issue or it is an accountability issue.
…there is that accountability word again.
In either case, our nutrition tracking app allows us to cover both of these issues at once: we give out the requisite information and we are able to track compliance with [again] what you said you wanted to do.
The other thing it does for us, as some of it is set and scheduled to send out at specific intervals, is it allows us to get more personalized in our conversations with you to help you better.
Body Composition Measurements & Tracking
Seeing gains in strength, in cardiovascular fitness, in retesting past workouts, and improved scores is awesome! Seeing physical changes is awesome-r!
We encourage our Personal Training clients to measure every single month. We used to do skin folds (pinches) and for those of you who have gone through that, that’s a little invasive. It’s got a certain consistency and accuracy but it’s pretty invasive to have someone grabbing skin on your arms, legs, and your side.
We utilize an InBody machine to do this for us, now. No more pinching but plenty accurate and consistent results to compare to. Even more important, at the bottom of the print out, you can watch your trends and see that what you’ve been doing is working. The more tests you do, the more you can track what works and what doesn’t.
Much like your doctor would encourage you to do consistent blood work, we encourage you to do consistent InBody tests.
Texting & Phone Calls
Accountability is the name of the game, here, too.
As a Personal Trainer, this also allows me to get a feel for how you are doing and what your demeanor is with regard to your training and nutrition. These are all vital for me to continue to help you to the best of my ability.
So… respond to your trainer, please!
Face to Face
This has not changed. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that beats face to face interactions. This could be in the sessions themselves. This could be a separate meeting or check in. Face to face interactions are chances for the trainer and the trainee to discuss how things are going and what the next steps should be.
Plus, I’m tickled pink when I say “burpees” and I see an expression akin to flipping me off.
All jokes aside, don’t forget to leverage the face to face interactions with your trainer. They help you, they help us, and you get better results.
There You Have It
Technology is an amazing thing when it works and, as a Personal Trainer, it allows me to leverage what I can accomplish for you two or three fold.
After all, everything about the trainer / trainee relationship is about how we can get you results with the time and effort you put into it.
Looking into Personal Training and how you can leverage these apps to get you results too? Click HERE to have a conversation with one of our amazing Personal Trainers!
