4-June-2020 By Jeffrey Cooper
The Virtualized Club: Working Out @Work- Part 5
In Part 4, we covered the Traveling scenario, following at the club, @Home and Outdoors. In this fifth, and final installment, we will discuss the Universal Club Application @Work.
When we are not in a pandemic-induced lockdown, a lot of people work out at work. Many of the bigger employers have their own gyms. And while they are usually somewhat limited in scope compared to local clubs, they nonetheless offer some good choices, with the convenience of being onsite.
People also commute to and from work on bikes for exercise, and some folks run before, during or after work, to take advantage of the locker room and showers.
To support the Workout @Work mode, ideally the user will fill in their profile when they first install the app. That gets all the information input out of the way so when they want to work out, they just hit Start. But, if they have not filled it out, when the app launches in a previously-unknown location, one of the options would be to tag this location as Work. At that point, the app would ask the user details and preferences for that location.
Before we get into the details, it’s important to note that free gyms at work are a competitor to mainstream clubs. If the employee gets enough benefit from working out for free at work conveniently saving time, they may feel compelled to drop their club membership to save money. By providing value at work under your brand, this offers some hedge against that risk.
Manifest Destination
The simple idea of a manifest is to describe what is contained within. Cargo ships have manifests. Passenger jets have manifests that list the travelers. In our case, it is a list of capabilities and machines at a given site. Similar to the @Home mode, the user needs to, one time, identify what facilities they have available when at the office.
In a small office, there may be none, and it’s quite simple to list primarily running, cycling and walking. Identifying that your office has a gym opens up the options. Once you’ve indicated there is an onsite gym, the app would ask the basic types of equipment, such as Cardio types, dumbbells, free weights, etc… This can be done at a fairly high level to not overburden the user.
Some companies have other options available, such as basketball and volleyball, as my old employer did. It should be easy to add these as options so that when you work out, they appear at the top of the list. Once you’ve begun working out at work, the types of workouts you do the most will be sorted to the top slots, with others listed below it should you decide to change it up.
The Framework
As show in the diagram above, this is the fifth mode of operation. You can see modules from other modes at play here. On the go, you have multiple types of options, which are defined in those manifests we just talked about. At work, you can run or bike outdoors, you can workout in an on-site gym, or you could go to an outside gym, such as a branch of your club closer to work. Modules from those modes are also used here.
Once the app has been used, it becomes apparent what the user’s preferences are. For example, I did not use my employer’s gym, as it was fairly small, and had few free weights- which are my preference. I lift weights at a better, fully functional gym and do a healthy amount of cross fit as well. I love to run, and running near work gave me some alternative scenery to running at home. So, for me, running was what I did at work.
This can change, of course. In colder climates the user may transition to a treadmill or indoor cycle. Or, perhaps it’s raining today. Or they may decide to go to a nearby club they don’t go to in warmer months. The entire point of this adaptive app is not to restrict options, but to re-sort them to the most likely, and later, most-used, to simplify the user experience and allow them to get down to working out more quickly. This sorted list could even change depending on the weather and season. Perhaps it’s raining today, so it suggests treadmill first. Or it’s colder, and my user doesn’t run below 50°F/10°C.
When you are using your employer’s gym, you won’t have the luxury of an integrated indoor location system like you could have at your normal club. Given that, you likely will need to start and stop the workouts manually. The scenario above simplifies that. And perhaps with a little AI, a smart watch could detect the return of your heart rate back to normal and terminate the workout automatically.
If you are using a heart rate sensor, such as chest strap or Scosche armband, simply removing the sensor at the end of your workout should be a sufficient trigger to end the exercise. Of course you want a little delay to allow for the occasional connection issue with Bluetooth. I see problems on iOS with Bluetooth connections, on rare occasions.
Location, Location, Location
Throughout this series, the underlying theme has been location awareness and application of a context associated with that location. The intent is to let the user start their workout with the absolute minimum fuss, and to accurately record that workout and stop it, again, with little to no user interaction.
The map to the left visualizes the idea- open the app in each location, and the options are sorted differently. And the app has memory- it learns your patterns in each location, even different parks, and understands what the preferred activities are in each place. It also learns these patterns based on weather and season.
And of course, it is completely overrideable. If you suddenly start attending Tai Chi in the Park, then after one or two times, that activity will sort its way towards the top of the list.
Employee Wellness
A Universal Club Application is not limited to standard club chains. It’s also applicable to employee wellness programs. Corporate Gyms can be outfitted with the same systems, to track workouts by indoor location, and usage patterns in the company gym. The analytics generated from that can be incorporated into continuous analysis of the Wellness Program. This helps quantify ROI when you look at impact on health care spending for a particular site.
A big benefit of a flexible, well-designed system is that It allows rapid adaptation to improve outcome. In a larger corporation, it even would allow you to do A/B testing between sites to find which changes resonate with your employees. Once you see a clear preference for A vs B, you can roll out the best practice across all sites. It also allows for regional and cultural variations. Sites in warm clients offer more outdoor options in addition to the club, while clubs in temperate regions may need to have wintertime options to supplement summertime outdoor activities.
A Universal Club Application for employers also gives you a cohesive messaging platform for group challenges and group activities. How about a lunchtime group walk to and around a nearby park? Follow that up with a healthy meal ordered from the cafeteria. You could even encourage lunchtime workouts by instituting cafeteria meal delivery to their desk to give more time for the healthy activities and save waiting in long lines, if that’s an issue at your facility. This could even be incorporated into the app.
This app would still work, with location awareness, at their local gym closer to home. My old employer both paid for gym membership as well has provided an onsite gym. While the Connected Club part won’t work at that offsite gym, it nonetheless would have the location-aware benefit of knowing your preferences for that club. That could also provide the automated start/stop of workout tracking based on arriving and leaving that location.
And finally, through aggregated (depersonalized) data, the employer could see what local clubs are most visited by their employees. This is valuable because if the employer is also paying for club memberships, armed with the data, they could strike a favorable deal with those clubs, saving money.
Series Conclusion
This five-part series was intended to expand on the original Connected Gym concept, that has been in development for several years, and many of those who know me have seen it presented at various tradeshows and conferences. This series is the first major expansion of that concept, with thinking set in motion by the pandemic.
There will very possibly be additional, single articles to cover a specific topic. I’m certainly not done writing about connected fitness.