Technology
Question of the Month
What apps do you use to improve your productivity?
Helpful Productivity Apps
Do you struggle to stay focused or cross off items on your to-do list? There are apps for that. Here, five successful business owners share their favorite apps for getting things done:
9 Simple Ways to Keep Your Clients
The success of your business relies solely on your ability to attract and keep clients. Use these tips to enhance the client-trainer relationship so that you can focus more on providing quality service to your current clients and less on finding new ones.
7 Keys to Creating an Unforgettable Onboarding Experience
Do you want to strategically and consistently educate and motivate your new clients so they feel like they’re getting incredible results—and so you’re getting a steady flow of referrals and earning positive social proof? Are you ready to not just deliver but over-deliver? If your answer is yes, then one of your most important next moves is to create a step-by-step onboarding process.
Selfies, Weight Loss and Virtual Support
Social media and selfie photos can play a positive role in helping people achieve weightloss goals, according to a study published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing in 2017.
Learn, Connect and Thrive at the IDEA® World Convention
Education is the foundation of the IDEA World Convention, but this fitness event offers plenty more than stellar instruction. For Jonathan Bernath, publicist-turned-personal-trainer, it’s where he discovered the “fitness family” that would guide him in his new career.
MyPlate Goes Seasonal
Looking for new nutrition tools and resources to share with clients? MyPlate has launched seasonal resources for nutrition and health professionals to share with clients. Jump into spring with gardening resources and ideas for using homegrown herbs in cooking, and sample Earth Day activities, farmers’ market resources, and tips for prepping potlucks and parties.
Learn more at choosemyplate.gov/seasonal.
Healthy-Eating Blogs
Thinking of starting a nutrition or healthy-eating blog? Start by knowing the data on what end users find most useful.
How to Find Your Epic
The fitness industry is a rewarding and inspiring place to be. However, it’s not without its challenges, and getting ahead with passion alone can be difficult. The most successful fit pros know that to build an epic life and career, they must invest in education and learn from those who’ve been there and done it.
Healthiest and Unhealthiest States
America’s Health Rankings® has released its annual report, which ranks each state’s health based on 35 factors, including behaviors, community and environment, policy, clinical care, and outcomes data. Now in its 28th year, the report has two primary goals: to provide a benchmark for states and to promote action to improve the health of citizens.
According to the data, these are the five healthiest states:
1. Massachusetts
2. Hawaii
3. Vermont
4. Utah
5. Connecticut
On This Day in Fitness History
The first-ever Winter Olympics were held January 25–February 5, 1924, in Chamonix, France. The event involved eight sports and just over 250 athletes.
2017 IDEA® World Convention
Wherever they are, the best personal trainers, group exercise instructors, fitness entrepreneurs and nutrition/wellness professionals excel at what they do, but in the macrocosm of motion that is the IDEA World Convention, they redefine the limits of their potential. At the 2017 event, held in Las Vegas, July 19–23, more than 10,000 like-minded pros placed a bet on continued happiness and success, upping the ante as they attended more than 330 workshops and workouts taught by the industry’s greatest minds.
Recovery Tech—An Array of New Products, Services and Centers
New technologies, products and services are boosting the exercise-recovery business. What’s going on here?
The rising popularity of wearable devices is making people much more aware of their performance.
High-intensity interval training remains one of the most popular kinds of exercise.
Everyday exercisers can now afford treatments that were formerly reserved for pro athletes.
The Importance of Introductory Offers
Early in my career as a personal trainer, I was confused as to why my client base was growing at a glacial speed. After all, I had spent years preparing, applying principles, learning program design and getting certified so that I could have a career that would change people’s lives for the better.
Product Showcase
Nutrition By The Book
The Endurance Training Diet & Cookbook (Harmony 2017) by Jesse Kropelnicki is both a cookbook and a training nutrition manual. Kropelnicki shares his personal program of optimized nutrition, including 70 recipes that put his concepts into practice. The book provides nutrition information for distance runners, cyclists and triathletes and explores guidelines for what to eat pre-workout, post-workout and during recovery. There’s also a game plan for race-day nutrition.
Get in the Game!
Fitness facilities compete to offer cutting-edge movement trends, but what about cutting-edge technology? The fitness world is becoming ever more virtual, and incoming clients are looking for more than a fun indoor cycling class or a cool cardio machine; they want to play a game!
“What smartphone app or computer program could you not live without in your business?”
I could not live without the Tabata Pro™ Timer and MyFitnessPal apps. Tabata Pro Timer is essential to my private and small-group training sessions and our group running program. I can set three different timers to meet all my interval needs.
MyFitnessPal enables my clients to track exercise as well as food and water intake, and to share these publicly or just with me. The app provides accountability for my clients’ fitness and nutrition goals.
Is Advertising on Social Media Worth the Cost?
Remember social media 5 or 6 years ago? A lot of people thought of Facebook and Twitter as “free advertising” hubs for companies and entrepreneurs, because it was easier back then to gain attention with your posts (Snapchat and Instagram were just getting started at that time). If you were committed to posting decent content, you could expect ample clicks, likes, replies, etc. Now, however, times have changed.
Is There a Best Place to Wear a Heart Rate Monitor?
With heart rate monitors, where you place them may determine how accurate they are, according to data published in the Journal of the College of Cardiology (2017; 69 [11], 336).
Pokémon Go Gets People Moving in a Big Way
Pokémon Go, a virtual-reality app that requires players to navigate their surroundings in search of animated creatures, got people to log lots of extra steps last summer, according to researchers from Duke University in North Carolina.