Connected Fitness

Expensive and proprietary hardware is increasingly not the answer for at-home fitness. Is the pendulum now swinging back to apps?

Everyone knows Zoom. During Covid, everyone has used Zoom regularly, and if you’re reading this you probably took or even led a group fitness class on Zoom.

You’ve been hosting online fitness classes for a while now, your members are starting to come back to your physical studio, and you’re seeing fewer members attend your virtual classes.

Connected fitness has been a major upgrade to at-home fitness over the past decade, moving from DVDs and video streaming with zero interactivity to video streaming with leaderboards and some coach shoutouts.

Recent warning signs have been hitting the headlines about how the party is over for start-ups, including the fitness tech industry.

I fundamentally disagree with this defeatism about online at the local level, and in this blog I’m going to set out why.

I’ll run through a few considerations here, but whether to put an embedded screen on a piece of fitness hardware is not a cut and dried decision, which is why we saw an almost equal weighting in our market survey in part 1 of this blog set.

To have a screen or not to have a screen, that is the question in the connected fitness hardware world. Having a screen can make the device feel more premium and self contained, but it also adds cost, bulk and a long-term maintenance tail.

In the first half of 2020 a new generation of fitness coach tools was born or greatly accelerated, mostly with non-fitness founders, several with high profile investors.

“Digital”, “virtual”, “online”, “connected” – there are so many adjectives bouncing around “fitness” right now. But when words mean different things to different people, everyone can end up talking past each other. 

For anyone who didn’t notice yet, Peloton has gone through a rollercoaster few months, culminating in its founder and CEO stepping up to a chairman role, and a new CEO being appointed - Barry McCarthy.

The last few years have seen the majority of local fitness brands venture into the digital space by necessity. At Tribe, we’ve talked with everyone from single location studios to brands with thousands of locations, and there’s a great deal of diversity in what owners have been trying.

Connected fitness is getting more expensive - not for consumers, but for the companies selling products and services in the sector as a whole.

As a software company, we ask ourselves how to make our product more engaging every day. There are various ways to create software that looks pleasing to the eye and feels like a seamless user experience.

We know what you must be thinking - "that's impossible". Respectfully, at Tribe, we disagree. Read on what makes Peloton great and see why we believe you can compete on that stage. [Photo: Peloton App]

Wrapping up this series on your tech options for running online workouts, let's look at the key take home messages. (Photo: Member App powered by Tribe)

To build or not to build your own fitness app? Know more about the road to custom-building an app, what are your options, and what could be a good alternative that will give you what you need and more. (Photo: Centr App)

White labeled fitness apps are a lot like regular fitness apps, but they have some custom branding and a separate icon in the app store for the studio. If you want one, you'll probably find what you're looking for in this article.

In this next installment, we're looking at some of your options that are fitness specific. Check out which one will fit your needs and how much you will need to budget to access them.

Today we'll explore the most common platforms that gyms and boutique studios are using for their virtual workouts. While some are low-cost or free, the experience is not designed for fitness.

Let's look at specific options that boutiques, gyms, trainers and influencers can use to take their workouts online.

Join me in this 7-part series tackling the technology behind the options to host your online workouts. APIs, SAAS, white-labelling, custom-made apps - dive deeper into what they mean for your studio and your business.

E-fitness is the next e-commerce/e-sports boom. To be successful at engaging members from a distance, as you would face-to-face in a physical location - online training has to be more than video streaming and video chat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Netflix user and fan. But it’s a totally different mindset and experience to fitness.

Peloton has turned into an incredible rocket over this past year, and has built the preeminent “workout at home” brand.