How To Build A Workout & Personal Fitness Trainer Mobile App: Complete Guide

After the Covid-19 situation, where people are usually locked inside their homes, workout and fitness apps have become a new norm. Today more and more people are aware of their health and try the best measures to stay in good shape and health. After all, immunity is everything, and a good workout session is a catalyst in boosting immunity. And this way, fitness apps are constantly growing at a tremendous rate. These apps were earlier found on the phones of fitness enthusiasts, however Post-Covid, everyone has realized the significance of fitness, and thus these apps are finding homes in almost every smartphone user.

This is why several businesses in this arena have embraced the concept of mobile apps and getting their apps developed to serve their audience better. And if you are willing to create a workout & fitness mobile app and get your market share, you are at the right place. In this blog, we will share step by step guide to developing a great Workout & Fitness Mobile app. It discusses how to create a fitness app, various revenue models, and the cost that incurs in developing this category of app.

Growing Demand For The Workout & Personal Fitness Training Apps

A study was published in January 2019 by Polaris Market Research that stated that by the year 2026, the fitness app market size will be reaching $14.7 billion. It anticipated growth of 23 percent CAGR via the forecast period. As per the Statista report, currently, the revenue in the Fitness segment is 4,024 million U.S. dollars, and it is growing at a rapid pace. And thus, it is expected that revenue will have an annual growth rate of 5.0% CAGR from 2019 to 2023, resulting in a market volume of $20,499 million by the year 2023. This signifies that the fitness app market will continue to grow and expand with several developments in health & fitness features.

Why Investing In Workout & Fitness Mobile Apps After Covid-19 Can Be Beneficial?

Ever since Covid forced people to stay inside the safety of their homes, the health & fitness apps were downloaded 593 million times. It was during the first quarter of 2020. And by the end of the second quarter of 2020, the apps in this category generated 656 million downloads. Whereas in the same quarter of the previous year, the health & fitness apps were downloaded only 446 million times. This increase is mainly due to the pandemic that hit the globe and forced the consumers to stay inside and restructure their workout regime and usual lifestyle practices.

Also, in 2019, there were just 68.7 million smartphone owners in the USA who used at least one health or fitness app at least once a month. And now, it is predicted that in 2022, there will be 86.3 million users of health/workout/fitness apps alone in the United States.

Types Of Workout and Fitness Mobile Apps

For creating a fitness app, it is vital to understand the basics, like you first need to get an idea about different fitness app types available in the market that unique target the health and fitness requirements of people. Below we are shedding light on some of the popular types of Fitness Apps.

Workout & Exercise Apps

This is a broad category, and this type is focused on the workout. It aims to show users what exercises they can do and explains how exactly they are to be done. There are many examples of workout apps, and each of the app types has something unique to offer. Meanwhile, here we have divided the workout apps into three groups: Personal Fitness Trainer Apps, Logbook Apps, Workout Fitness Apps that pair with the devices.

Personal Fitness Trainer Apps

The famous names in this category are FitnessBuilder Plus, iWOD, 6 Week Trainer, and many more. The idea behind this app type is to offer an exercise customized for each user. Here the users need to choose a level of complexity and a set of exercises they like. The app needs to demonstrate how exactly the exercises must be done, or else often the exercises may lead to body trauma or might not have the desired effect. Here, the personal gym trainer apps ensure that people are correctly doing the exercises without paying for the gym or going to the gym, via videos, detailed descriptions, or 3D models that explain how each workout should be performed.

Logbook Apps

These are minimalist apps, which work as a to-do list, and they mainly store information regarding the workouts. Some examples of Logbook apps are Stacked, Fitbod, Strong, and HeavySet. The apps offer preset libraries with the exercises and a wide range of workout routines for its users.

Workout Fitness Apps That Pair With Wearable Devices

These apps work best for sports enthusiasts who cannot get into workout sessions without the wearable devices, like Fitness Bands. Here all the data collected by wearable devices show up immediately on the smartphone display. Also, these apps sync well with smart sports equipment, and they have an admin panel.

Nutrition & Diet Tracking Apps

These apps allow the app users to control their weight as it counts the calories that are consumed & burned, regulates water balance, and encourages healthy eating habits. The apps also help track the caffeine intake and keep the body fat weight and percentage in control. The main focus of these apps is to set personal goals, and if a person has a tough time sticking to healthy eating habits, the app allows creating grocery shopping lists and collecting healthy food recipes. The popular apps for this category are MyPlate Calories Tracker, Calorie Counter & Food Diary, and HealthyOut.

The diet and nutrition tracking apps allow users access to an enormous database of food and help in acquiring a target number of calories based on weight, age, and sex.

Activity Tracking Apps

This kind of app works best even for those who do not go to the gym or are not fond of workouts or sports, but they still desire to move enough to ensure good health and fitness. This category of apps allows in counting the number of steps taken and count the calories consumed. The app offers geolocation that helps to track the distance walked. These apps have some exciting features in the form of Sleep Quality Estimation and Smart Alarm Clocks. These features monitor the users during the REM sleep phase and then wake them up quickly and easily. A number of activity tracking apps can be paired easily with the wearables; however, if the user doesn’t own one, then the smartphone can collect the data just as well.

Monetization & Revenue Strategies That Work For Workout & Fitness Apps

Here we offer some tips on making your app make money and receive profit. Among the many monetization models, you can choose from:

In-App Purchases

If you are willing to launch a free fitness mobile app but make revenue from it, you can try encouraging your users to make purchases in your app. Here you can offer several in-app purchases, from premium app content to healthy diet recipes, or workout sessions with celebrities, just as the Sarva Yoga app tried sometime back.

Sell Advertisements

In this, you can choose to cooperate with other fitness-oriented businesses and enable them to run the advertising campaigns in your workout app. For this, you can charge a cost-per-click or a cost-per-mile commission.

Freemium 

In this model, the app users will receive the basic app features for free; however, you can choose to charge them for premium features. This kind of revenue model is also known as the freemium subscription model. Here the basic app features are free, while the advanced/premium fitness plans or are paid.

Paid Apps

In this model, the user has to buy a subscription to the app to start using it. The app price might differ as per the subscription type, mobile platform, and app content offered.

Sponsored Content

This kind of business model consists of partnering with workout experts & fitness gyms. Here your partners can distribute helpful content to app users, and your app can be enriched with their expertise.

Who Can Benefit From Developing A Personal Fitness Training & Workout Mobile App

• Gym Owners
• Yoga Instructors & Personal Trainers
• Dietitians & Physicians
• Fitness enthusiasts

Popular Workout & Personal Fitness Training Mobile Apps

MyFitnessPal

This app has various features to offer and is considered apt for people who want it all from a single app. The app tracks diet and exercise and uses gamification elements to motivate its users. To track the consumed nutrients, the users can scan barcodes of several food items they consumed or can choose to manually find them in the extensive pre-existing app database.

HealthifyMe

This Indian health & wellness platform offers services, such as fitness coaching, diet & workout plans, calorie tracking, one-on-one nutrition, etc. The app is available for both iOS & Android platforms and has a holistic approach to keeping users engaged.

C25K

It is named Couch to 5K as it contains training plans that slowly progress towards a 5 km (3.1 miles) run over nine weeks. The app is developed by Zen Labs, and it is based on the Couch to 5K running plan from CoolRunning.com. C25K is available for both iOS and Android users.

Nike Training Club

This app helps in reaching your fitness objectives through expert-designed workouts from the top-rated Nike Master Trainers. The app is perfect for training at home, even in the gym, or on the road. It includes everything from bodyweight-only to the full-equipment workouts for everyone at different levels of fitness.

Endomondo

This social fitness network was formed by Endomondo LLC, enabling users to track their health & fitness statistics via a mobile app and a website. It was launched in 2007 to motivate people to lead much healthier lives.

Runkeeper

This GPS-fitness tracking mobile app for Android and iOS users was launched in 2008. In late 2011, this app secured a hefty amount of $10 million in a Series B financing led by Spark Capital. In February 2016, Runkeeper was acquired by ASICS.

Home Workout – No Equipment by LEAP

This app provides daily exercise routines for all the main muscle groups. The app allows building muscles and keeping fit at home without having to hit the gym. It doesn’t need equipment or a coach, as all exercises can be performed with just the body weight. It has workouts for the chest, legs, abs, arms, butt, and also full-body workouts. Here, all the workouts are designed by the experts.

Basic Functionalities Of Workout Mobile App

Mobile Onboarding

Users can signup or sign in to the app by entering their personal information like Name, Date of Birth, Location, Age, Sex, Current Weight & Height, and email I.D. Some apps also allow social signup, where the user can sign in via their social media handles.

User Profile

The user can create their profile and add their choices and preferences, so accordingly, the app would offer them the right kind of desired content, suggestions. The user panel will also reflect progress and workout programs you have attended in past and pursuing at present.

Entering Workout Details

This feature allows for tracking the physical activity of each user. For this, the user can connect the app to a smartphone’s sensors to implement the tracking function using Apple’s HealthKit and GoogleFit via APIs or choose to enter the details manually.

Access High-Quality Workout Videos

Fitness and workout video allow users to access workout programs with a high-quality video where users learn the right way to execute exercises demonstrated by professional fitness coaches.

Advanced Features Of The Workout Mobile App

Once the basic features have been decided upon next, it’s time to work on the additional features to make your app unique from the others. Here are some of the features that can be integrated into the app to attract and retain app users.

Social Signup, Sign-in, Sharing

This feature allows app users to share their results on their social media accounts. This way, their friends can also get to know about your app, enhancing user engagement.

Different workout Programs

The app users can pick which part of the body they are keen to work out first, and here the options may vary from “Full Body,” “Core Strength,” “Upper Body,” “Lower Body,” “Custom Workout,” “Anything Goes,” and much more.

Set-Timer for workout sets

As the user is doing a workout, whether it is Strength Training or Yoga, or Cardio, they can choose the time length to perform those movements, beginning from five minutes. Ten, as they work out, the users can choose to pause, skip the exercises, and turn the sound off and on from the workout screen.

Set goals and objectives

Here, the users are allowed to set goals and objectives. After all, what better motivation can be to prioritize fitness. This feature is a goal tracker that helps the user achieve the fitness objectives without fail.

Push Notifications

This feature allows the app to send alerts and notifications to the app users. This is useful to inform the app users about a new update, and at the same time, it also enhances user engagement.

Track Physical Activity

Here, the app users can track their physical activity to attain their goals better.

Geolocation

This feature is helpful for the app that is for running and for other outdoor fitness apps, so the user and the location of the fitness center can be tracked easily.

Maps & Routes

This again is for the outdoor fitness apps as the app users can use maps and physical routes to reach their desired location.

Meal Plans & Calorie Counting

The app users can plan their meals using this feature and at the same time count their calories. This way, they can be much aware of what they consume and ensure that the unhealthy eating patterns don’t come in their way of attaining their physical fitness goals.

Meal & Water Intake Tracking

This feature allows for tracking the app user’s meals or creating a food log of they are aware of the calories consumed by them during the day.

The app user can track their water intake throughout the day by using this feature. This allows the users to take care of their hydration levels during the day.

Payments Gateways

The app should offer multiple payment methods to the app users to make easy payments using their convenient payment mode.

Barcode Scanner

If you have a diet app, you can choose to integrate your app with a barcode scanner. Bar scanner would help you in shopping by letting you know the Nutrition Feeds of the Food you buying.

Online Consultation & Chat Option

The app can offer an online consultation feature to get personalized recommendations. For that, chat functionality can be integrated as that makes things a lot easier and smoother.

Tracking Physical, Vital Signs Of The User

This feature allows tracking any physical symptom in the user’s health that could be alarming or needs immediate attention to avoid future mishaps.

Gaming Element

The app experience can be further enhanced with gamification. This will enhance user engagement with the app. App developers can apply gamification in various sections such as Leaderboards, Goal Achievers,

Community Integration

People like being part of the community; hence, this feature can be integrated into the workout app to be part of the community and engage with different app users all across the globe.

Integrate With Siri & Google Assistant To Enable Voice Control

This feature will improve the app experience for the users as it will enable voice control and make the entire workout experience a lot better.

It is crucial that while creating the app, both basic and advanced features are given equal consideration to improve the app’s experience. Next, let’s explore how to build a workout app.

Steps To Create A Workout App

Choose A Monetization Model

It is important first to choose the revenue model. There are many to pick, from freemium, advertisements, sponsored content, in-app purchases to paid apps.

Consider Basic Fitness App Features

Next, it is time to focus on the basic app features such as Social Sharing, User Profiles, Geolocation, Notifications, etc.

Hire An App Development Team

To create a workout app, you will need a mobile app development team to turn your business idea into a reality.

Create Technical Documentation

As you make the workout app’s technical documentation, the technical writer prepares the technical specifications of the product based on the clients’ requirements. It consists of platforms, use cases, and other necessary information so that the fitness app developer can start working out the solutions.

Create An MVP Workout App

Each app development project gets started with the product discovery phase. The app owner and the app development team define the scope of the work needed for your project at this stage. Next, it creates a project roadmap and plans out the resources, and sets an MVP budget. The discovery phase takes many weeks, and it involves a functional specification development, visual app prototype, and creation of UX/UI, giving a clear vision of the end product.

Get UX/UI To Enhance The Interface

The design team needs approximately 160 hours (two months) to create an appealing design for the workout app, including both U.I. and UX parts.

Optimize Check-In Process

Users like the app to be high-speed, and thus the check-in process should be more optimized to make the check-in fast and smooth.

Test Your Workout App

Testing and bug fixing is another important aspect of mobile app development. Besides checking the code for bugs, QA engineers test the overall user experience of the project and whether the features work as they are expected to.

Tech Stack For A Workout & Personal Fitness Training App

Also Read: Tech Stack For Developing A Mobile App

Wowza is a Great Choice as Streaming Engine

With the availability of good bandwidth, users can enjoy a lot of high-quality workout videos from almost anywhere in the world. Take a look at the architecture of workout video streaming using Wowza as a streaming engine.

App Development Team Required To Develop A Workout App

The app development team will consist of:

• Project Manager
• iOS/Android Developers
• UX/UI Designers
• Back-end Developers
• Quality Analysis Testers

How Much Does It Cost To Create A Fitness & Workout App?

There are several factors on which are to be considered to determine the cost of creating a workout and fitness mobile app, such as:

• App development platform, whether you choose iOS, or Android, or both
• Advanced Features & Functionalities you choose to include in your app
• Location of the app development company
• UX/UI of your app
• App Security
• Quality Analysis Testing
• DevOps
• Tech Stack

All of these factors mentioned above affect the cost of your mobile app. Other than that, as you plan the app budget, calculate the cost of hosting the app, the cost of publishing the app on app stores, and the cost of updating & maintaining the app. You also require to decide whether you want to build a Native or a Hybrid application. The Native apps are platform dependant where the app created to run on Android only runs on Android, whereas the app developed to run on iOS is only going to run on iOS. The Hybrid apps developed using the frameworks and SDKs, such as Flutter and React Native, are cross-platform applications where an app idea is built to work on the devices across different operating systems.

In the case of the location of the app development company, when the company is located in countries like India or Ukraine, then the cost of app development is comparatively much lower than a company located in the developed nations such as Australia or the USA. After all, the cost of developing an app in the USA is three to four times higher than in other countries. This way, all the factors mentioned above are needed to be considered while determining the cost of building a workout mobile app. To give a rough estimate, the cost to create a mobile app with basic features and for a single platform (either iOS or Android) and developed by an Indian app development company should be around $25000-$30000. While, an app with advanced features integrated and created for both iOS and Android platforms will be double the cost, $50000-$60000.

Just as any other app, creating Workout mobile apps can be pretty challenging. But you can attain success by making sure that the app of your choice consists of the best features that will hold value for the users for the long term. That way, it is bound to stand out and attain success.