Online Fitness Program Designer

Calling all fitness lovers! We know that training to become a fitness instructor requires a lot of training in anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry, but the best fitness instructors today are reaching a wider audience by designing online fitness programs relying on the latest technology and software.

Personal Connection

Becoming an online fitness program designer is all about using the latest technology and innovations in order to take care of people:
  • Do you love fitness?
  • Are you interested in learning about emerging technology for online businesses?
  • Are you excited by innovations that will assist you in designing effective fitness programs?
  • Do you care about helping people live an active and healthy lifestyle?

Other Connections

Even if you don’t end up becoming an online fitness program designer, there are many different career paths that involve caring for people online, including:
Remotely caring for the elderly by setting up appointments for them or ordering their groceries as a caregiver
Tutoring kids online or teaching them another language as a teacher
Providing healthcare online as a telehealth nurse or doctor on demand
Working as an online therapist
Planning relaxing vacations for clients as an online travel agent
Developing new software or apps that care for people remotely as a software or app developer

STEM Connection

Here are just a few ways that new and emerging technologies are transforming how online fitness programs are designed:
Online training programs are personalized with artificial intelligence:
People are increasingly looking to online fitness programs and apps for convenient workouts, but they also want those programs to be personalized. Future, Tonal, Mirror and Aaptiv Coach (among others) are leading the market with features such as AI-based personal trainers and custom programs adapted in real-time based on biometrics. Thanks to artificial intelligence, “you can now exercise anywhere and anytime, following a highly personalized plan tailored specifically to your fitness level and goals.”
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The online fitness industry is looking at Augmented Reality to encourage more people to exercise:
Augmented reality (AR) fitness apps can make workouts more stimulating by creating a fully immersive space for workouts. “Augmented reality can give you a more motivating workout experience. The gamification feature of this technology means that you get to incorporate fun games or tasks to make your exercise interactive.” Fitness AR is one such app that lets you ride bikes and run in augmented reality. “It uses Apple’s ARKit to “pin” a topographical map of your hike or walking trail.”
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5G adoption brings smart gyms and wearables to the next level:
FightCamp, Peloton and Bowflex are just a few of the companies that are bringing workouts to the home with wearables and smart gyms. Due to “the mass adoption of 5G on the horizon, experts say manufacturers of smart gym equipment will soon have the bandwidth to take immersive workouts to the next level. We’re seeing how wearable technology can disrupt the home fitness experience… You’ll have the processing power to be able to create super-immersive experiences in the home… Connected home fitness is poised to overtake the recreational gym market within the next 10 years.”
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Data-based customer insights drive innovation:
Successful fitness companies root their programs in what the customer needs. Peloton was able to grow into a $4 billion startup by using data analytics to establish changing lifestyle trends and to determine how to best serve customers. Peloton was able to discover in their analysis a growing group of busy professionals who want to stay fit but do not have time to go to the gym. They saw the need for home gym equipment that replicated the in-person gym community, and so the hallmark live classes and Peloton community was born.
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Journeys to Becoming an Online Fitness Program Designer

The path to working as an online fitness program designer may seem like a faraway dream, but what’s common between the stories below is that both entrepreneurs saw a problem and decided to figure out how to use technology to fix it, and that’s something you can do even while in high school.
Learn about how a ballet dancer and Harvard graduate is changing the online fitness industry:

Brynn Putnam is a Harvard educated ballerina who studied Russian literature. She had no idea when she was in high school that she would end up building an innovative online fitness solution. She was in the health and wellness space for her whole life as a dancer and she started a fitness studio when she started to get older and wanted to figure out a better way to workout as she aged. However, when she got pregnant, her needs changed, and she started thinking about at-home fitness, which she had always seen as sacrificing quality for convenience. She heard from clients at her studio how much they loved being able to check out their form in a mirror and realized she could solve the footprint issue of traditional gym equipment and the quality issue of animated videos on a small screen with the Mirror.

When Brynn came up with the idea for Mirror, she built a prototype of the mirror in her kitchen using a tablet, piece of glass, and raspberry Pi. She knew the experience would work from her prototype, and she hired engineers to create the Mirror. The Mirror is a full-length mirror that streams live and on-demand training that is personalized in real-time based on biometric data.

Brynn believes that you can figure anything out if you focus on the end goal: “When you are focused on… what you’re building and the transformational power of your product… you figure it out by learning new things or by hiring people who know the things you don’t know. If I was not scared every day, it would probably mean that I wasn’t building something that exciting.”

Hear Brynn’s story here

Read about how this entrepreneur wanted to make health and fitness accessible to everyone:

Ethan Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of Aaptiv, an online health and wellness content app. His goal was to bring health and fitness to anyone who lives anywhere, regardless of their income level or demographic. Ethan was always entrepreneurial because of his dad, who started his own software company, but he wanted to understand how to run a business before starting his own. He got an undergraduate degree in economics and political science with a minor in business, and then he went on to get his MBA. After graduating, Ethan worked as a consultant, advising clients in technology, media, and finance.

Ethan was on the road four days of the week as a consultant and was frustrated that it was difficult for him to hire a personal trainer in most of the cities that he travelled to. He realized there was an “opportunity there to bring great training and content and guidance to a much larger audience.” That was how Aaptiv came to be, and over the course of 4 years, it grew to over 250,000 paying members.

Read more about Ethan’s story here

Articles, Videos, Podcasts of Interest

Watch this TED Talk about how health and medicine can be transformed by innovative technology and apps:
Read more about the future of online fitness programs. “Current trends and new technologies on the horizon along with increasing customer expectations and competition will make understanding the implications of digital, virtual, anytime, anywhere, and on demand health and fitness experiences essential.”
Read about how one fitness YouTube star turned her Pilates-inspired workout into a global fitness brand with millions of followers:
Learn more about what it takes to become an online fitness coach, from mentorship to empathy:

Fun Facts

Some fun trivia about online fitness programs:
An exercise app uses zombies to motivate you to run:
Zombies, Run! is an exercise app that combines augmented reality and gamification that motivates you to achieve running goals “by turning every workout into a post-apocalyptic zombie game in which you are chased by zombies.”
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You can workout with celebrities or professional athletes:
The Nike Training app offers a wide variety of workouts which are led by athletes or celebrities such as Maria Sharapova, Nadal or Ellie Goulding.
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Online fitness trainers put as much thought into their diet as they do their workout:
Online fitness personalities need to make sure they are energetic for hours of training, so their diets are full of everything from special protein powders to vegetable bowls to lots of scrambled eggs. But who says athletes can’t also have sweets? These personal trainers are sure to add their favorite foods like pizza and cupcakes on the weekends.
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Successful fitness programs incorporate the latest technology:
Kayla Itsine’s transformed her fitness program from an ebook to an app and is now working on integrating her program with things like Apple watches, smart TVs, and even augmented reality.
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