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How to Develop A Personal Trainer App like MyFitnessPal

A Guide to Creating a Fitness Training App like MyFitnessPal

Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
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Okay, so first things first, the health and fitness industry in Australia is poised at an inflexion point, with high market segmentation, enormous market potential and strong end-to-end growth.

Several new business models are emerging to disrupt this industry, and technology is the driving force! Here is how mobile is taking over the Healthcare sector:

Mobile Healthcare Market

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People are getting more concerned about their bodies, taking out time from their busy schedules to visit the gym or follow a strict workout routine. They’re shedding quite a sizeable amount to feel and stay healthy.

Studies have shown that Aussies are spending $8.5 billion a year on gym memberships, sports equipment, and fitness fads.

Even some of the leading fitness centres are advising people to train themselves to stay fit on their own. Trainer apps are are getting more applause than ever due to several factors, including time and money.

So if you’re running a gym, launching your own app can be something phenomenal to boost your customer’s morale. In Fact, you can expand your customer base without having them to visit you on a consistent basis. It will be like a long-term investment in your marketing endeavours as well.

Besides the monetary benefits that an app will do to your business, it will also foster your fame and recognition among the youngsters.

Or even if you’re running any private business in Healthcare sector, say a clinic, or a fitness centre, a mobile app is bound to accelerate your growth as compared with your peers.

Here is something amazing to look at:

Mobile App Personified as Gym Trainer

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Yes, you can call that a mobile app personified as a personal trainer! Isn’t that amazing? Let’s talk more about it in our next section.

Not long ago, if you wished to learn about training and health, your choices were fettered with reading fitness magazines and asking local gym goers for their advice. Now, there is a smart little trainer that you can carry with you at all the times. An unerring solid trainer app.

In this piece, I will sum up how a right app can become anybody’s coach and also a portable meditation guru to feeding your mind, bones and soul.

Mobile apps are excellent assistants for health, fitness, as well as weight-loss as they are always with us, and they’re quite private. Maintaining fitness is not a child’s play, it needs daily habits and lifestyle changes, and some nudges in the discipline.

A mobile app is capable of much more than you think.

University of Sydney experts has accurately narrowed down some attributes that a trainer app should essentially have. Take a look at them before we can get you an insight into some real-time features:

  • Motivational components
  • Point scoring
  • Levels
  • Feedback
  • Rewards
  • Challenges

Fitness

Though there have been some fitness apps surfacing the sea, only a few of them have made people stick to them for their fitness needs. MyFitnessPal is the name that has observed a hype lately among women for their weight reduction goals; men have equally been using it attracted by a number of healthy habits they could stick to with the trainer app.

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal

Let’s have a look at what MyFitnessPal is all about:

One of the most popular apps, MyFitnessPal is an app that helps people count their calories by recording it into an online log, as well as have a track of their training. It’s exclusively made for individuals with a busy life, willing to lose weight or easily maintaining a healthy weight. It can be accustomed to fit the requirements of anyone with certain doctor/dietitian-recommended needs.

MyFitnessPal is San Francisco-based fitness app that claims to have the largest nutrition database in the world with over 5 million food database. In its nine years since inception, the firm has amassed more than 80 million registered users for its website and app and is claimed to see its combined user base with Under Armour grow to 120 million. So this can be legitly termed as the “largest digital health and fitness community in the world.”

Let’s have a look at some of its key features:

 

Diet Tracker

Diet Tracker

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The app has a massive database of foods, giving you a target number of calories, based on your age, sex, and weight. Each menu item gets a small illustration next to its listing, so it’s natural to scroll within and see what you had in each meal. If you used the Snap It feature, you’d also see a thumbnail of the photo of your meal.

 

Community

Community

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MyFitnessPal’s community aspect contains a forum, where other peer users of the app are available to share tips and advice, as well as to build connections through sharing personal experiences or struggles.

 

Exercise Tracker

MyFitnessPal has more than 350 task stored in its record, and it shows how much each person eats during each activity, based on their specific height, weight, and gender. It includes most cardio and strength training workouts, as well as yoga and Pilates.

 

Calorie Counter

The app’s calorie counter is an online diary of each MyFitnessPal member’s intake. The table enables to set common goals, and the app can figure multiple foods at once. It also automatically saves food and snacks that members often eat, which gets them easy to find when they eat them again and want to log them.

Calorie Counter

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The Recent Update for premium users of the app has following features:

 

Water Logging

Hello, hydration! You can now log water in cups, ounces or ml. You can save your recently recorded water amounts, so it’s even faster to log them next time.

 

Restaurant Logging Multi Add

Restaurant Logging multi-add gets it easier to track multiple menu items at once. You’ll love it for “build your own” things like burritos, sandwiches, and, omelettes.

 

Progress Photos In The News Feed

Mark your achievements by sharing Progress Photos in the MyFitnessPal newsfeed. Add a message or milestone to inspire others in your community further.

Newsfeed

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Export Your Information

The registered users can also export their progress history, meal level nutrition details and exercise history as a set of CSV files. Open the files in EXCEL or any data program to do a deep dive into your habits by generating custom graphs. You can also print your records and participate with others.

 

Macronutrients by Meal

The members can also view a macronutrient categorization for every meal they log right into the diary. You can also learn how each meal contributes to your daily goals and quickly shift between grams and percentages.

 

Calorie Goals by Meal

Premium members can split their daily calorie goal into small, meal-sized chunks. It gets it easier to remain on track during the day and ensure you have sufficient calories at the meals that mean most to you.

Calorie Goals By Meals

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App’s Success At A Glance

The app’s success is a journey of mobile growth to 165 Million App users. Some key aspects to note are listed as follows:

  • The power of “first-mover advantage”. MFP was early into the game because it was delivered in the initial days of the iPhone. That made on their Web audience and remains a primary reason they are a leader today.
  • It has around 500,000 5-star reviews. It has been helping people with life goals and has been the primary marketing driver for user acquisition.
  • The app started off with defining the business mission regarding the user’s end goals implying that it was focused on a utility that would benefit them. And that is exactly what MyFitnessPal did.
  • So MFP’s inflexion points in user activation, retention, and most importantly utility came from focussing on the user’s goals.
  • It had the value of massive relevant food data in retaining a strong leadership position. The value of “verified” food counts delivered accuracy to the core utility.
  • It tapered push notification frequency to ones who ceased to be engaged (after 7 unopened pushes) reduced the annoyance. Presumably, that meant that a user may not uninstall the App and so will open the App again when they are in their next “get-fit” cycle.

Sounds like a disciplinarian coach sitting on your head. Doesn’t it?

Let us now look at some other apps that managed to get quite a good applaud amongst users for its utility.

 

Other Successful Fitness Apps To Look At In 2017

 

Sattva (iOS & Android)

Sattva is one of the most popular meditation apps. It provides a number of free meditation tracks and sounds, a meditation clock, a mood recorder to analyse your state of mind before and after the sessions, notifications to help you stay on track and trophies to motivate and keep you meditating consistently. The interface is soothing to look at and easy to use. Some may find the gamification aspect a bit out of the box, but it’s a wonderful format to encourage beginners to make meditation a regular thing.

 

Runkeeper (iOS & Android)

One of the most user-friendly sports apps on the market and a perennial favourite of runners, Runkeeper tracks your jogging, cardio, bike rides and other activities. The app records all the essential metrics such as pace, distance, cycling speed, elevation, calories burned and will track your progress on a map. After your run, you can speculate your progress and workout record, as well as tally with many other apps and services and receive detailed reports of your already logged activity. If you’re just getting started or are an advanced runner wishing to shake up your routine, there are pre-made training plan workouts you can follow that will help you reach your targets.

Here is a snapshot of the app:

Runkeeper

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Alternatively, you can have the app develop a personalised workout that is generated based on your current running ability and the ­fitness milestones you hope to achieve within a specific time­frame. Motivators such as sharing your fitness milestones with friends and audios are available as well. The other reason Runkeeper is preferred over other apps is that it has the widest compatibility with wearable devices. Smartwatches that stays with an onboard GPS can also take the benefit of phone-free tracking. The latest update involves integrated Spotify support, that saves you from having to jump between apps anytime you want to adjust your playlist.

 

Spotify (iOS & Android)

Listening to your favourite tracks while running can be a great motivator and a handy tool for distracting your brain beyond the rigours of heavy exercise. Most of the popular streaming tools such as Apple Music and Google’s Play Music have particularly curated playlists for runs and workouts but Spotify takes things a step further.

Here is a snapshot of the app:

Spotify

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Spotify’s new “Running” feature cleverly uses your phone sensors to pick up on your running tempo, exploring music to match and help you keep pace, extending from your favourite tracks to brand new music written with runners in mind. Having music playing at just the right tempo can generally be the difference between pushing out an extra kilometre and throwing in the towel, so it’s definitely worth the effort.

 

Conclusion

Staying healthy and fit is someone everybody wants, but only a few pull off the amount of attention and care it requires. With technological intrusion being on its acme in the phenomenon, we hope to see a positive drift of the approach people adopt for the fitness practices.

Health could have never been this easy before! Giving first-hand solution to everyone’s growing concerns regarding their bodies and fitness will be something legendary in the industry. No fixed routines, no drama, just a practical and loggable fitness approach with an app! Isn’t that a win-win for you?

And it isn’t to say you have to sit down doing some heavy coding! Just jot down your needs and get in touch with some top-notch builders in the town.

Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub is the founder and CEO of Enterprise Monkey, has a sincere passion for innovation and startups. With an experience of around a decade, he is a proud co-founder of 4 technology startups, focusing on real-world problems and their solutions. He also loves to cook and spend time with his onlyborn.
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub is the founder and CEO of Enterprise Monkey, has a sincere passion for innovation and startups. With an experience of around a decade, he is a proud co-founder of 4 technology startups, focusing on real-world problems and their solutions. He also loves to cook and spend time with his onlyborn.

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