28-April-2020 By Jeffrey Cooper

The Virtualized Club: Working Out @Home- Part 2

Note: This article has been updated to reflect what is now a 5-part series.

In the previous article, we talked about the overall framework for the Virtualized Club and its five elements. One of them, the Connected Gym, has already been extensively written about on this site. In this article, we will extend your club to your member’s home.

With the COVID-19 shutdown, workouts are now done either at home or out in the open, such as running and cycling. However, while working out at home has increased, it is not at the same level as people who worked out regularly at your club. Despite the increase at home, the workout levels have still fallen dramatically.

There are a few reasons for that. Once is simply inertia- the change in environment and getting used to working out at home. Some people do not have the room to do so, and most people have very limited equipment. Additionally, the content available at home now is simply not available from their clubs, or it is “strapped on” at best, and inferior in quality.

Motivated users facing lack of high quality content from their clubs will turn to online, free sources, such as YouTube. There is so much free content available of decent quality that it suffices much of the time. But it takes people away from your brand and your experience. The club is out of sight, out of mind. And even when things reopen, hygiene issues will remain an impediment for some time for numbers returning to clubs to return to what we consider normal. Home workouts will be disproportionally important for several years.

This is why I argue that at home workout content is the most important area to address for clubs. You can now go to companies like Endorphinz to manage a quick transition to high quality, at-home content. You can go to companies like Pear Sports for the club app that helps close the loop, and even extends 1:1 Personal Training to the home.

The Virtualized Club Application, @Home

When the member is at home and they launch their club application, the app will know they are at home. It will take on the @home context. When the user is at home, the app will offer content relevant to workouts at home.

When the member first uses this mode, they are asked to check off any equipment they own at home, which can help filter content for relevancy. For instance, at my house, we have an Octane elliptical, a couple of yoga mats, a TRX @home Pro System, a BoSu, an exercise ball, and a few dumbbells. Add to that the universal resource available to everyone- body weight. I will point out that even with this meager equipment, it is likely more than most people have. Beyond that, you have to throw in cans of paint and boxes of cat litter to give you any amount of weight to lift.

In addition to that, there are a few streaming options- the home TV, computer monitor and an iPad Pro. And finally, how much space you have to actually do a workout. If you are in a small apartment in NYC, you may not have much room. I have a nice backyard space I can use and good, year-round weather, so I’m lucky in that respect.

The Content

Next comes the requirement that content be of sufficient diversity and quality to satisfy and engage your members at home. Quality of content entails more than just how good the instructor is. The content needs to be tagged in the library so relevant workouts can be surfaced for your members to choose. This is called metadata.

Metadata is descriptor data. At a high level, it is the Title and Description. But there is much more to it than that. What parts of the body does this workout target? Upper body, legs? Is it strength or cardio today? What equipment does this workout require? What is the fitness level required for this workout?

The equipment metadata is important for matching a workout to the equipment a user lists in their initial inventory. If my workout requires kettlebells and I don’t have any, I’ll miss part of this workout. Maybe I can use cans of paint, but then if I live in an apartment, that is not likely. In my own club’s application, I did list the equipment I had, which was woefully incomplete, but it didn’t make a difference. The suggested exercises disregarded my equipment inventory. Moreso, I had a choice between Body Weight or Custom, which did not include Body Weight. Either/or. The fact that body weight is a universal resource we all have should have been included that I wanted to use that in addition to any equipment I do have.

Good content will have a decent amount of metadata included in order to be the most relevant and useful to your members.

Types of Content

With streaming content, there are also three major types: Audio, Library, and Video.

Audio

Audio content is just that. It requires the least amount of equipment for consuming the content. Just headphones, or even just your phone with the volume turned up. It’s also less useful at home unless the content is simplified. If you are telling your listener to do a goblet squat with their dumbbell, and they don’t know what that is, you’ve created a situation where the user has to pause the workout and Google it.

Simple calisthenics is the easiest audio content to consume. What’s more, they are all body weight, so it’s dead simple. Putting music to it and having a coach talking you through it helps get you through the workout. Aaptiv has a pretty good library of audio workouts that require no or little equipment, and are good at telling you if you need equipment before you start.

Library

Library content is drawn from a vast library of individual movements. The best of this type of content has audio coaching, visual stills, plus video clips showing how to properly perform the move. Think of this as a set of exercise Legos- building blocks. From a library of hundreds of moves, you can assemble a workout called, say, Ab Burners 2020. With a full library of options, these can be assembled for beginner, intermediate and pro levels.

This content must be clearly labeled in the metadata, too. It should include targeted muscles and any equipment needed, as well as its fitness requirements. A burpee is a lot harder than a squat, for example.

This type of content benefits from a larger screen, but also works well on a phone. If the user looks at the screen to see how to do a new move, they won’t be interrupting the workout for too long.

This is the approach Pear Sports has used, and is very effective. While their application has “prefabricated” workouts already populated in the app and algorithmically adapts to the member’s fitness level.

This same library is also accessible to Personal Trainers, who can assemble custom content from that vast library and send those customized workouts to your member’s phones and smart watches. These customized workouts work exactly the same as preloaded workouts. The clips are assembled in the order the trainer placed them and video clip playback guides the member through it at every move.

Streaming Video

Finally, we have streaming video content. This is essentially like a group fitness class. You watch an instructor on screen and perform the workout along with them. The requirements for this are a screen on which to view the workout. You can have either content from a library, much like you would pick a movie from Netflix. Or classes can be streamed live. Most of the time I feel that a library of content is sufficient, but there can be elements to a live class, especially if there’s a feedback loop with a leaderboard that shows your actual effort.

Companies like Les Mills offer up a lot of content at home. However, classes like above indicate that you need some equipment. Alternatively, your club can offer your own, custom content in addition to this, and with good metadata quality, filter that content for the equipment a member does have at their home. You could also sell kits specific to your workouts that your members can purchase. These kits would include the basics, such as dumbbells, a mat, a small step, etc..

If you are looking to develop quality content of your own, or amass content from various sources into your offering, you can go to a company like Endorphinz, which was recently created to help address this very big gap in fitness.

Feedback

Using this Virtualized Gym framework, the app will incorporate any wearable devices to close the loop and provide feedback to your members. These can be simple chest straps, fitness bands or smart watches. When the user is getting feedback on their workout, you they can see if they are improving or if they have plateaued. As a club, you get valuable engagement information on how actively your members are following your content.

With Pear Sports’ application, the wearable is an essential piece if you want to get the most out of it. While it will work without it, the magic happens with measuring your heart rate while you do those exercises.

Next, for Part 3, we’ll look at Outdoors, which includes running, cycling, hiking and swimming.