Fitness First Germany has created a circuit of digital coaches on its gym floors to enable trainers to focus less on relaying instructions and more on delivering personal cues and motivating members.
“Digital coaching is the next phase in gym floor group training” says, Martin Seibold, CEO LifeFit Group, owner of Fitness First Germany. “Group training has been central to our offer for many years and is still extremely popular with our members. The recent move to provide digitally delivered exercise demonstrations at each workout station in a circuit helps ensure all participants are instructed to perform the correct technique, whilst freeing up the trainer to address individual participant needs, creating an environment that is geared towards goal attainment for each and every member.”
The experience has been made possible through a partnership with the Netherlands-based fitness innovator, FunXtion. Multiple screens (provided by FunXtion) are strategically positioned in functional training spaces and are connected to the Virtual Player, a digital platform hosting thousands of professionally shot and perfectly executed video exercise demonstrations. The exercises featured can be programmed to run concurrently, creating a circuit of digital instructors that provides every member with constant visual prompting.
Martin continues: “We never standstill. To maintain our position as an innovation forerunner, we are constantly assessing the market to ensure or offer remains relevant to the lives, expectations, and needs of our members, whilst remaining one step ahead of the competition. This latest investment takes a popular training format and turbo-charges it, helping to maintain the interest and motivation of our members”
The roll out began during lockdown at the end of 2020 and will complete this month, giving all the brands’ members across 50+ clubs, access to the new experience. The Virtual Player and the multi screens are all fully custom-branded, displaying Fitness Firsts own backgrounds, fonts and logo.
Ernst De Neef, CEO FunXtion, says: “Fitness First Germany has been sharing our content via their member app for a while, so all the exercise demonstrations displayed by the multi screens in the sites will already be familiar. Competition in the market is fierce and it is important that brands constantly evaluate their offer and look for new ways to ‘delight’, ‘surprise’, ‘inspire’ and ‘engage’ members. This is exactly what the integration of our Multiscreen, Virtual Player experience has delivered for Fitness First Germany.”
Martin Seibold concludes: “Digitalisation is enabling gym’s to create customer-centric experiences that, even a decade ago, could not have been imagined. In-person coaching by our rockstar trainers will remain a core component on our gym floors, supported by a growing arsenal of digital tools. FunXtion is leading the charge in the creation and implementation of quality fitness content, all which can be custom-branded, so the partnership made perfect sense.“
To find out more about FunXtion’s Multiscreen and Virtual Player solutions visit the FunXtion website.