Member Engagement for Fitness Centers

As advances in technology are allowing healthcare professionals to provide care virtually, fitness professionals have also begun to break into the world of virtual fitness.  Now more than ever, providing care for physical fitness is crucial to ensuring a holistic approach to our clients’ well-being.  

Adding a telehealth tool can allow your gym or fitness center to continue to engage with and provide services for members when in-person options aren’t available.  Healthie’s telehealth and client engagement platform is a great option to add to your fitness center.  Read on to find how to best use Healthie within your gym to support your clients. 

Group Virtual Fitness Classes

With advances in technology, at-home workouts don’t have to be one-sided anymore.  Using Healthie’s integration with Zoom, fitness instructors can offer live classes that mimic in-person classes.  Both clients and instructors can have their cameras on, so clients can watch instructors in real-time, and instructors can give feedback and motivation during the class.  Healthie’s video chat feature is integrated with the calendar feature, making it easy to schedule classes, confirm times with clients, and invite specific groups of clients to certain sessions.  You can set specific appointment types within Healthie, so you can distinguish between different types of classes and appointments with clients.  

Online group classes also give the feeling of community even when working out alone at home.  Group fitness classes also can have positive impacts on our health.  Working out in a group increases positive competitiveness, makes us push ourselves harder, increases our endorphins, diversifies our workouts, increases our commitment to the program, and adds accountability.  At times when in-person group classes aren’t available, telehealth is the key to accessing these benefits at-home.  

Online Wellness Challenges + Programs

Online programs can be an extremely effective tool for sharing information with clients virtually.  Using Healthie’s programs feature, trainers can easily create customized programs for clients that they can complete at their leisure and from the comfort of their homes.  Within Programs, coaches can add videos, documents, modules, and surveys for clients to complete, as well as easily monitor client progress from the Healthie platform.  

Dripping out content virtually, over a period of time, allows clients to have that flexibility they crave for their workout programs. They can complete the workouts when it is convenient for them, but you can still monitor progress as they complete modules.  The content you provide can be easily customized by adding videos and modules specific to your clients’ needs.  You can group clients based on their goals and needs, and share certain content with each specific group. 

Heathie’s programs can be created with a fixed start and end date for programs that you’d like to run for a certain time period (ie. January Wellness Challenge) or can have open enrollment for signature programs (ie. Total Body Workout Program). Creating a program to compliment your fitness services allows you to: 

• Diversify revenue sources 
• Engage with existing clients (longer membership/retention) 
• Attract new clients  

Message Support

While face-to-face sessions can be a great time to go over any trials or tribulations since the last visit, engaging with clients between sessions allows you to address challenges as they happen. Real-time support is a powerful motivator for your clients. 

Additionally, message support allows you to add another layer of accountability for clients through simple check-in messages.  Ask clients how they are feeling after a session, or if they have completed their “goals” for the day yet.  Letting clients know that their fitness instructor and/or personal trainer are there to support them and make sure they are working towards their goals will increase their motivation to make progress between sessions.  

More than a text-message style of communication, the Healthie chat feature is a built-in messenger tool that both you and your clients can access from any desktop or mobile device. It allows you to be in constant contact with clients, without breaking the boundary between personal and work life.  

No need to give clients a phone number; whenever they have questions, or if you want to check-in on progress, simply send a message to one client, or even multiple.  You can also use Healthie chat to message other trainers or employees.  It will help streamline communication within your business, securely share client updates, and obtain information from other employees.  

Goal Setting

Beyond making some steps towards change, health goals are achieved when clients can make consistent habit-forming changes. Making a collaborative effort towards goal setting shows your clients that you care about their progress and future success.

Goal setting has been shown to be effective in helping adults achieve changs in their dietary or physical activity behaviors.  Additionally, goal setting interventions that included SUPPORT from another person were much more effective than those in which clients set goals and worked on them individually.

Healthie’s Goals Feature allows trainers to create personalized goals for each client. Through their client portal, clients are able to receive reminders of their goals, check-off completed items, and easily see their completion progress for each goal.  When clients complete goals for three consecutive days, clients have begun a goal streak.   By using Healthie to set and track goals, clients can easily access everything they need for success in one place.  

Metrics Tracking

When working with clients in a fitness center, tracking metrics is a relevant and data-driven way to help clients feel confident in their progress, and propel them to continue working on their goals.  When clients begin to see improved outcomes, their circle of friends and families sees it too.  This leads to word-of-mouth recommendations and potentially more new clients for you.  

• By syncing with wearables, like FitBit and Apple Health, clients can track their steps and other numbers tracked by the technology

• Trainers can update relevant metrics post-sessions for clients to view within their client portal 
• Clients can self-monitor and log recommended metrics and independent workouts

Once your clients see their results forming, it will give them motivation and align them to stay determined and focused throughout their entire journey. For instance, although losing weight isn’t always a linear process, like anything in life there are ups and downs, but seeing results will give them hope in reaching their goals. 

With Healthie’s Metric feature, providers can monitor and graph metrics like weight, height, BMI, or body fat percentages as well as create custom metrics to track for each client. Also, Healthie Metrics can be viewed and tracked from both desktop and mobile devices, for convenient logging. Documents, such as test results, can be uploaded to a client’s profile to be securely stored for future reference. 

Additionally, clients can sync their wearables, like FitBits or Apple Health, to Healthie to seamlessly track metrics like steps, calories burned, or daily exercise.  Entries will automatically upload to their Healthie portal, so both you and your client can monitor progress without extra effort to log the numbers.

Journaling + Food Logs

With a built-in journaling tool, clients are able to conveniently log water and beverage intake, pictures of meals, and assess their meals using custom metrics set by their coaches. In a study completed at West Virginia University, it was found that participants who consistently recorded their food intake lost more weight than participants who rarely or never recorded intake.  While our goal isn’t always weight loss, food journals add another layer of accountability for the patient.  

To help improve both the consistency and accuracy of food journaling, Healthie uses a photo based food journalwithin the platform and mobile app. Photo food journaling allows clients to log images of their meals in real-time. Even more, with a host of settings, the Healthie Food Journal also allows coaches to customize the food journaling experience for each of their clients. 

Besides, the journaling process can be kept basic (ie. client can simply upload their picture) or more detailed (ie. client can log the meal, include a description, identify their pre/post-meal hunger and mood).

For Healthie providers, you can conveniently keep track of all of your clients’ food journal entries by logging into the dashboard of your Healthie account (or mobile app). When a client's food logs appear in a feed, similar to Facebook newsfeed, for you to scroll through, review and comment on. Then see all of your clients’ most recent logs in minutes.