How is AI Revolutionizing the Fitness Industry Nowadays?

Do you sometimes wonder if you could offer something more to your fitness app users? You provide them with great training plans, but do you wish your product was number one on the market? Applying AI in fitness applications is a rising trend. Read our article and learn how it can improve UX, increase user engagement, and help your business grow.

How is AI used in the fitness industry?

According to Forbes, 72% of respondents found it easier to work out regularly even though they couldn’t visit a gym during the pandemic and lockdown. In the face of the crisis, many people decided to give fitness applications a shot. The result? Some sports enthusiasts decided to exercise with an app, rather than go back to a gym. And even those who have willingly gone back to their favorite studios have remained users of fitness apps – choosing a mix of online and offline experiences over a single option. As a result, the number of potential clients of fitness apps remains huge, even though brick-and-mortar studios are up and running again. The thing is, the fitness app market is huge, too, so it is crucial to offer your users something unique and make sure your app will be THE choice for them. The use of AI brings a number of benefits that can help you achieve that goal.

With that being said, companies operating in the fitness industry can follow one of the three approaches:

• run a traditional gym,
• focus only on online training,
• offer hybrid services – a traditional gym membership and access to the fitness app.

The modern trends in the fitness industry include, for example, using wearable, wellness-tracking devices, thanks to which you get access to vast amounts of user data. A nice idea is to use this data to combine fitness functionalities with diet and sleep hygiene recommendations and create training sessions of different types and lengths. Following a holistic approach is a very trendy thing nowadays. AI in fitness allows for providing a high level of personalization (even by assigning an actual personal trainer to the user). Take a look at how other fitness businesses leverage artificial intelligence.

Personalized training programs

FitnessAI uses this technology to come up with personalized training programs for its users. This is possible thanks to machine learning, advanced analytics, and an enormous collection of exercises and user data. Advantages? No more repeatable, boring training that is not adjusted to the client’s actual needs. AI-powered fitness applications provide users with training programs that help them achieve their fitness goals.

Holistic approach

Freeletics is another great example of an AI fitness app that offers a more overall approach. Apart from creating personalized exercises, it gives users nutrition advice based on their data, scientific research, and user’s individual preferences. It helps clients stay healthy and makes their workouts even more effective.

Real-time data usage

With advanced AI-based analytics and access to data in real-time, your company can come up with personalized training programs and lifestyle recommendations even more efficiently than a human personal trainer. That’s the approach taken by Aaptiv Coach, which offers an app leveraging data collected through wearable devices.

Why is it worth building an AI-powered fitness application? 

Are you considering investing in an AI workout app? That’s a great decision! By leveraging AI in the fitness application of your design, you will become more competitive, regardless of whether you run a hybrid fitness business or operate fully online. Developing an AI exercise app allows you to:

• Personalize user experience – it will help you improve client retention and attract new, potential clients. By combining the power of AI with gathering data from wearable devices in real-time, you can offer hyper-personalization and display highly curated suggestions to your users.

• Increase user satisfaction – more accurate training and diet recommendations help users to achieve their fitness goals faster. AI in fitness apps makes workouts more engaging and fun, thanks to providing clients with real-time analytics and professional exercise suggestions.

• Increase your gym’s revenue – as you already know, AI-powered features can significantly increase your app’s attractiveness. And that’s exactly what translates into increasing your gym’s revenue! Innovative functionalities that come with leveraging the possibilities of AI in your fitness app will very likely attract more users, even those who were previously using a different app. That’s because people want a wide variety of functionalities, especially those smart ones that can uplevel their training and give them the feel of being supported by a personal trainer.

• Attract people who can’t or don’t want to attend a brick-and-mortar gym – as an addition to the traditional fitness business, AI fitness apps give gyms an opportunity to reach new groups of clients. There are many people who don’t have time to visit a gym on a daily basis but who are capable of exercising at home. Others may simply not feel comfortable in a gym but want to be active and healthy. With AI in a fitness app, you can help them with that. Training sessions, adjusted to users’ particular needs based on their data, increase their engagement and satisfaction.

• Support marketing activities – To make use of data, AI-powered fitness applications need to collect it in the first place. Gathered information tells you a lot about your current and non-active users. With this data, you can leverage segmentation and targeting.

How to run an AI-driven fitness business?

The answer is simple – follow the client-centric approach. AI is all about data. With the right algorithms and a huge amount of information, you can provide users with truly personalized experiences and help them achieve their fitness goals. AI in fitness companies increases their overall business flexibility, so it is a great investment not only if you would like to run an online business but also if you plan on running a traditional fitness studio. You can develop an AI-based fitness app to enhance your business model, reduce costs and increase revenue. An application can be another pillar of your business that allows you to attract new clients – those who prefer to exercise at home or don’t have time for regular training.

Artificial intelligence in the workout industry – challenges

Although AI in the fitness industry is very desirable by most companies, there are some challenges you have to take into consideration before you engage in this project:

• Ensuring data quality – there is no AI without data – this means your business needs access to reliable sources of information, and you also have to establish processes for data cleaning to ensure high data quality.
• Limited talent pool – it’s hard to find data scientists with relevant domain expertise (but not impossible, of course!).
• AI is an R&D process – in other words, AI projects are much like experiments. As such, they can fail for many different reasons: because of the quality of data, lack of data strategy, or underestimated human factor. In order to get on board with AI adoption, you need to be ready to test ideas and let some of them fail. The key is to validate it as soon as possible.
• Proper business maturity – is about the business model’s flexibility and level of digitalization. As was mentioned already, companies that leverage AI need to have access to a lot of data if they are to succeed.
• Time-consuming development process – the creation of any kind of fitness app takes time (sometimes many months). If you need to train AI models or collect data and then train the models, you must be aware that it’s a long-time investment.

There are also some challenges related strictly to the development process, such as data protection and integrations – these issues will be covered later in the article.

Read also: Athlete tracking system – definition & benefits

How much does an AI fitness app cost?

You are probably wondering about the AI fitness app price. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to estimate the price of AI-powered fitness applications without details, as there are many variables in every project. However, it’s usually between $50-100K for the MVP and $100-500K for a fully-featured solution. Once you tell your tech partner more about your idea and share all the requirements, they should be able to tell you more about the price of your AI app development. Each company chooses the functionalities and designs that suit its needs, so it is obvious that the cost of fitness mobile app development varies depending on the specific project requirements.

If you are interested in creating a fitness app for your business, check out our article about the cost of fitness app development.

AI-powered fitness application development challenges

Apart from the business challenges of implementing AI in digital fitness products, there are also some more technical things you should know about. First and probably the most important is data – you need to have access to huge amounts of data in order to take advantage of artificial intelligence. Integration with wearables will help you gather useful data; however, you must be aware that such integration may be a complex and time-consuming process. You will also need to establish some standards for ensuring high data quality. 

Also, when you store and process data, you deal with certain cyber risks, so data protection should be your priority. Of course, a trusted tech partner will help you build a highly secured AI-powered application, but you must promote best practices in handling data among your staff as well.

Regular updates are something you can’t overlook, as they also increase the security of an app. This helps to ensure a greater user experience and efficiency of your fitness application. Apart from that, you should keep looking for errors in your digital product and improve the code. Remember that any external tools you can integrate your app with can be modified, and you need to ensure that any data exchange goes smoothly.

It’s time to move your fitness business model into the future!

AI and machine learning power the best fitness applications on the market. Data analytics and artificial intelligence are the future of the fitness and wellness industry, and, as rising trends, they should not be ignored. Clients’ expectations are dynamically changing. Customers require more and more personalized services, and they will soon reach for services and products that meet those needs. Make sure you’re ready for that!