Great Software

I love the app and think it's a great concept. There's lots of room for improvement. I've been using it for about half a year now and I'm getting more used to it. But it wasn't too easy to figure out initially.

Pros

1. I like the timers for the circuits and the rests. 2. I like the ease of creating the workouts. 3. All the video demonstrations are great. 4. The automated messages, reminders to workout, ability for clients to check-in. 5. Data! Weight charts, measurements, progress pics, tracking stats 6. Love how you can deactivate clients without having to delete their data. 7. The daily recap sent to email. 8. Ability to upload meal plans

Cons

1. I don't like how you can't modify a program from your phone. There are a lot of things you can't do from the phone and have to be at a computer to do. 2. It'd be nice to link the Apple Watch. 3. The check-in and start now is confusing to my clients. There should be one button to start the exercise and that should automatically check you in. 3. It would be nice if there was a fast forward or a skip for the circuits, just in case they need to skip an exercise. Maybe they're injured or for some reason can't do that one. Instead of waiting until the time is up, they can move on. 4. It would be cool for my clients to be able to watch the demo video during the circuit. Instead they have to pause the workout to watch the video. It would be great it the video played while the time continued so they can do the exercise while watching the demo video. 5. Should be a way to add drop sets or a variation of reps. 6. Would be cool to keep a client subscribed to a program and still be able to customize one or two things on their program without unsubscribing them/converting to custom plan. 7. Small issue, but I'll still mention it: on the newer iPhones, it's hard to fast forward the demo video because the slider is very low. The exercise doesn't start until he explains it so usually 5-10 seconds later and most people just want to get to the demonstration part. 8. Inability to send video over the messaging app 9. Would be nice to be able to load multiple meal plans

Does more than most fitness apps

The great thing about Trainerize is that you can add your own exercise videos from your YouTube account very easily, which negates the worst aspect of Trainerize -- it's exercise selection.

Pros

The ability to schedule messages, workouts, check ins, and progress photos is easy and intuitive.

Cons

The built-in exercise options are lacking, and some of them are just unsafe exercises altogether.

So Much Potential, Misses the Mark

I've tried 6 or 7 of the most popular personal training apps and decided to go with Trainerize. It's best at creating workouts quickly and easily, and has excellent client monitoring features. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of bugs. There is nothing worse than logging a whole workout during a session with a client, and then the app won't save it - losing everything. It has essentially forced me back to pen and paper. The integrations with fitbit and myfitnesspal sound impressive, but they don't import activity data. Makes no sense. If you can sync some of the data, why not sync the MOST IMPORTANT data? I have people tracking their activity with fitbit or with other apps - but now they have to enter it one more time into Trainerize. Customer service is frustratingly slow, it takes three days to get a response - even when you purchase an annual plan that promises "priority support" and a "dedicated customer service manager." The response will always be, "our team will consider it." Then nothing. If you want an app improvement, there has to be enough votes collected by the Trainerize community (which most users probably never take the time to visit) to work on it, even if the development team is fully aware of it and knows it makes sense. They remove features without warning. Before, when you created exercises for the app, you could link to a youtube video OR use photos. In many cases, it made more sense to use a photo (stretches/simple exercises). After taking weeks to create, edit and upload all these photos for my exercise database, they removed the feature and lowered the quality of my photos so much that all the user could see was a pixelated mess. Their response was essentially "Too bad, so sad." Without these (and some other) problems, this app would be unbelievable! But with it's continued crashes, it loses it's usefulness and can be more problems than it's worth. Might be fine if you're only using it for online training. Recommendation: It's still probably the best app, but I will revisit the others. DEFINITELY, don't sign up for a year - go monthly for a while and see how it works for you.

Pros

Easy to use, easy to create workouts (and great flexibility to adjust workouts on the fly), many automated features, excellent client monitoring (including a new push notifications system).

Cons

Crashes, losing data, won't sync what counts, requires client to have internet connection, poor communication from customer service that responds to, but does not solve, problems.

Meet your training goals easily with Trainerize

It is always great to know that you are going in the right direction. It lets you share your success with your friends as well which is a real motivator. So, whatever you do, you can always share it with friends and get recognition.

Pros

It lets you keep track of your short-term and long-term goals easily. You can track your calorie intake and match it up with how much you have burned today. Your trainer can instruct you by sharing videos from Youtube or by creating his own demonstration to help to master the right technique for a particular exercise. The best thing is that you can never have a cheat day without your trainer knowing about it.

Cons

Website building feature is not that advance. However, it not that important when your trainer already have a website. There are other ways to build website as it is not for buiding websites.

The good and the bad.

It is decent but always keeping my eye open for someone that offers the features I mentioned which are key.

Pros

It was somewhat easy to navigate and had good customer service.

Cons

NO group reporting for the challenge groups and no live training features in the app