Apple Is Killing The Fitness Industry!

I hate to admit it, but there's some pretty awesome health and fitness smartphone applications or apps available from apple's itunes store and judging by download statistics, people are catching on fast!

There's an app for just about everything you can imagine (and can't: ifart?); in fact there are (as at 22/11/10) almost 300,000 apps available for iphone and ipad with about 600 being added each day!

Of those 300,000, there are almost 7,000 health and fitness related apps which include calorie counters, pedometers, exercise advice apps and whatever else you can think of. A good percentage are free, however the average cost seems to be around $1.99 with some as much as $9.99 per download.

A popular app can make anywhere between $500.00 - $5000.00 a day!

While researching this article, I spent some time goofing around with a few of the free fitness apps and while I hate to admit it; some are extremely comprehensive and easy to navigate (exactly what I'd look for if I were in the market).

How times have changed; I remember when the most fun you could have with a mobile phone was typing in combinations of numbers (55378008 for example), turning the phone upside down and having a hearty laugh.

So I got to wondering what the future holds for gyms and personal trainers as more and more people adopt these 'hi-tech' alternatives to employing human expertise.

Will the general population ultimately ditch paying 'people' to count their reps and teach them how to squat? Oh yeah, even the 'High Five' isn't safe, there's an app for that as well!

Like us, the health and fitness app owners are out to make money. I rang around and with development costing anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000+, it's a decent investment that they expect a return on.

To their advantage, by avoiding holding focus mitts or running up hills or developing interesting tan lines, fitness app owners find themselves with plenty of time to market and promote their products to the entire world and their incredible sales are evidence of that.

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

In my experience, it's always better to embrace change and technology rather than sit back and complain. As I often say; clients are inherently curious and like most people, always looking for a cheaper or faster alternative to solve life's problems, so provide them one.

Incorporating carefully selected apps into your clients programming could be the answer and keep you on their payroll.

Some of the nutrition apps are fantastic. For those of you with limited nutritional expertise you may find these quite helpful as will your clients. The most popular free nutrition app is:

• Lose It!

Another cool free app for getting your clients to do some walking or running outside of your session times and keep them motivated is:

• MapMyRun

A great free app for counting calories and managing weight etc. is:

• DailyBurn

So now, just to make a dollar you're not only competing against the trainer up the road and the gym around the corner, you can add some of the largest most powerful corporations in the world to that list...awesome!

You know (and I just want to throw it out there), if you have a spare 20k or so laying around I'd almost suggest having a go at developing your own health and fitness app, but that may be a bit of a stretch, so until then why not take advantage of some of the incredible facilities available.

So what do you think? I genuinely appreciate your feedback, so please leave me a comment down below with questions, thoughts, or feedback. And please share this post with your Twitter and Facebook friends by clicking on the share buttons at the top of the post.

Have an awesome day!

Ben

Additional Reading:
How To Destroy Your Fitness Business And Reputation
50 Best Free Health And Fitness Apps

Nutrition Complete: Product Review

Nothing gets me more excited than an innovative product and while it may seem new to all of us, Australian fitness industry superstar Sonja Falvo's Real Body - Nutrition Complete program has been in the making for over two years!

From the Nutrition Complete press release:

Nutrition Complete is a complete nutrition and meal planning software solution for fitness professionals and health clubs.

I wanted to look at Nutrition Complete in two ways; As a consumer AND as a fitness professional that may recommend this program to their clients.

You see, Nutrition Complete has been designed as a tool to compliment a personal trainer or fitness centre's services that they offer to their clients and members.

As a subscriber, you have the option to nominate how many clients you wish to have access to the site which they access via YOUR site or blog.

Implementing this software into your business will do two things for your business:

1. You could appear much more professional, no more print outs or photocopies of generic unspecific meal plans.

2. It will save you hours and hours of time you would otherwise dedicate to designing nutritional programs for your clients, which means more time to train more clients and make more money!

When Sonja first approached me to review Nutrition Complete I grabbed my girlfriend and asked her for an immediate impression. Not because I don't know a great product when I see one, but because my girlfriend, who is also a certified personal trainer, has read every book you could imagine in the nutrition and diet channel and our poorly organised library is proof!

I decided the best way to review Nutrition Complete would of course be to use it. I wanted to test out not only the amount of information and versatility, but also the user friendliness of the site as a whole, which I personally feel is just as important.

My girlfriend and I sat down, cracked our knuckles and logged on.

Our first impression was that it looks very classy, the branding, colours and images are first rate. It's obvious immediately that a LOT of effort and expense has gone into this site and we were still on the homepage!

Once you log on, Nutrition Complete asks you questions. It doesn't assume anything or try and convince you that whatever you've been doing is wrong, it simply asks you questions about what YOU like.

Nutrition Complete impressed me immediately for two reasons:

1. I'm allergic to seafood and it asked me!

2. My girlfriend is vegetarian...and yes, it asked her!

After submitting all of our details, including current physical situation it takes you to the meal planning area.

This is where things get fun. Nutrition Complete asks you what kinds of foods you like and I'm not talking about 3 or 4 choices, there must have been 30 different cuisine choices to choose from!

I selected Italian, Thai, Western and somewhere I'd never heard of just to see what it would spit out.

As mentioned, it had already confirmed that I was allergic to seafood and there are other considerations as well.

Nutrition Complete puts the consumer in the hot seat, they have no excuses for not following a meal plan that they have designed themselves.

The next section asks you about how many meals you would like through the day as well as approximate meal preparation times i.e. how long you have to prepare EACH meal!

Sold yet?

Once this is done, which so far was about 8 minutes of my time; you're provided with choices for each meal. I selected about 10 minutes to prepare breakfast and there must have been 6 choices from me to choose from all as delicious as the next, which doesn't surprise me as the menu's were designed by 3 of the UK's most sought after nutritionists.

You do this for each meal, for each day and then it gives you a shopping list which you print out and take to the store...let me repeat that;

It gives you a shopping list of all the foods you need to buy for your Nutrition Complete meal plan that you print out and take to the store!

If this program was available while I was actively working as a personal trainer I would have subscribed in a hot minute. It makes every personal trainer an instant nutritionist and not a pretend, read some rubbish in a magazine nutritionist, an actual balanced healthy meal specific nutritionist!

The presentation and user friendliness is first rate and as a guy, I did not at all feel like I was on a 'girls site' like I feel on some other nutrition based sites.

The only fault I found, which isn't really a fault as Nutrition Completes target market is weight loss, that their weren't any high caloric meal plans for someone looking to gain weight or muscle, like sports people or bodybuilders.

Besides that minor detail, I encourage every personal trainer and fitness centre owner to at the very least take a look at Nutrition Complete and come up with your own conclusion.

Nutrition Complete is definitely an overdue innovation that convinces me that as long as there are people out there like Sonja, the fitness industry's future is just getting brighter.