What is Data-Driven Personal Training

Even if you don’t know what this term means, if you are a successful personal trainer you likely practice data-driven personal training. Other terms for it like data-driven coaching, data-based coaching, and data-based personal training all mean the same thing.

So what is data-driven personal training? Well, there is a ton of data related to your personal training clients and their success. You probably often ask some of the following questions as you think about training someone:

• How well is the client complying with the program you have assigned?
• How much weight are they lifting this week vs last week?
• What are their current body fat percentage and weight?
• How many steps are they taking on their days off?

All of this data is important and it helps you and your clients understand their overall health. This can help you determine what type of fitness program they should be assigned. Additionally, it can help you understand the effectiveness of their program, and what changes need to be made.

Engaging in Data-Driven Personal Training

Data-based personal training is the practice of using data available to you in order to make informed decisions on how to design and improve training programs. Data is a critical component in setting SMART goals with your clients.

Data Important to Personal Trainers

As a trainer, some key types of data that are important to you and your clients are below.

Client program compliance

What percent of the assigned workouts, tasks, or nutrition plans are they completing? Client compliance is essentially a measurement of how consistently your client is adhering to the programs that you assign. So if you assign 50 workouts and your client only completes 30 of them, do you think they will see the results they will want? No. They might see some results but it will be slow.

Having a good understanding of where your clients are in the compliance arena can be a great tool to ensure the best results for them.  If you see their compliance dipping, you can talk with them to explain the importance of adherence to the program in order to reach their goals. 

Exercise Progress

How are the reps and weights they are using changing over time? Are they getting significantly stronger? You want to be able to monitor your client’s exercise progress over time. This can help you see what is working. It can help you alter their plan or plan future programs if you know what results in the most progress for your clients.

The best part about exercise progress tracking with FitSW is that it happens automatically. The planned data comes from the workouts you build. The results data comes from what your clients enter each workout. FitSW pulls all that data together automatically in easy-to-read tables and graphs over time without you having to do anything extra.

Custom Metrics

Custom metrics are things like body fat percentage, body weight, BMI, number of pushups per minute, bench press max, waist measurement, or anything else you or your clients want to track. Depending on your clients goals, you might have different metrics that you track. FitSW gives you the flexibility to track the ones that you want. You or your clients can enter new data points at any time. FitSW will track them over time and display the data in tables or graphs.

This is great because it lets you and your client visually see progress in graphs. This makes it easy to understand with just a glance.

Wearable Data

This data from things like an Apple Watch or Fitbit can show lifestyle habits like steps per day and more. Again it’s automatically tracked by your client’s devices, as long as they give it permission. This data can be imported into FitSW for you to see.

This data can give you a clear picture of your client’s health and fitness habits outside of your workouts. It can help you see if they are getting enough steps during the day. Using that data, you as the trainer can decide if you need to alter their program based on how the client is behaving in their everyday life.

With FitSW, all of these things are possible, often automatically tracked, stored, and easy to review.

Data Important to Gym or Studio Owners

As a gym or studio, you may still care about all of the data mentioned above that your trainer cares about. However, there are likely other data you care about that would be helpful to you as you run your business. A key piece of this data is trainer effectiveness. Gym managers want to know which trainers have clients with the highest compliance.  They also want to know which trainers keep clients coming back. Finally, they want to know which trainers have clients that are the most successful.

FitSW also makes this extremely easy with its gym dashboards. Studio or gym managers can monitor and compare data across trainers. FitSW can roll this data up at the trainer level to make it easy to understand and review.