Remote coaching: Fitness anywhere, anytime!

Fitness and workout regimes seem to take a back seat in the world where we all run here and there to keep up with our busy schedules.

Anytime Fitness Vikas jain

Anytime Fitness is here with a Remote Coaching feature on their AF Workouts App to address this problem. To understand more about how this feature works and how it will be helpful for the fitness enthusiasts, we spoke with Vikas Jain, MD, Anytime Fitness, India.

Please brief us about your remote fitness coaching by Anytime Fitness?

Remote Fitness Coaching (RFC) is an 'AF Workouts App' feature. With this initiative, Anytime Fitness aspired to offer its members a holistic fitness training experience according to their needs. This program is for people who want to keep up with their regular fitness regime even if they can't come to the gym.

When gyms are closed, or people skip gym sessions because of a hectic schedule, RFC offers Fitness anywhere at any time. In this program, one gets access to over 1100 pre-recorded videos from which you can learn and exercise at your ease.

In RFC, the club members can connect with the designated Fitness Trainer virtually via in-built facilities of the app like video calls, voice calls, real-time chats, etc. With a few Fitness wearables, the Anytime Fitness app and Anytime Workouts app help log the fitness data, measure the goals & outcomes, and one-to-one guidance from the respective coach. The idea of this initiative by AF is to bring Fitness to one's comfort by keeping the privacy of the club members intact.

What is the future plan of Anytime Fitness?

Starting in 2013, Anytime Fitness has grown by leaps and bounds. It is receiving a good response from its users and growing each day. We have been able to open over 100 gyms till now, and this comes out to be as an average of one gym per month. The objective now is to scale the business to an opening at least two gyms per month. We aim to open 24 gyms by the end of this year.

Besides, we are also launching a new campaign, 'Aptitude'. This campaign will promote discussions about clubs and other such things. This is important as with such discussions and awareness, we would encourage the gym culture and Fitness in the post-pandemic era.

When a lockdown is imposed, the first industry that faces the restriction are gyms, spas, and hotels. How are you all facing and coping with the same thing?

We still face the main challenge that gyms are still counted as "luxury". If something is used daily and helps better our health, it shouldn't be designated as luxury. Hence, shutting the gyms was not something our club members expected.

Nevertheless, we did not give up. When we had to shut our gyms, we came up with interesting online programs like 'Remote Fitness Coaching'. We believe that there shouldn't be any halt in Fitness and taking care of one's health. So, we are coping with the losses and working on new initiatives to make gyms and Fitness accessible for everyone.

Any future investment plan?

We work on a franchise model, and the only future investment plan is to open more gyms, as we mentioned above.

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