The challenge

The platform is built to solve the main challenges typically faced by gyms around the world:

• Poor member engagement and lack of personalized experience. Gym members often lack a clear understanding of their progress, struggle to follow a structured workout plan, and feel disconnected from the gym community. This can lead to decreased motivation and ultimately, attrition. The challenge was to create a more engaging and personalized experience that keeps members invested in their fitness journey.
• Inefficient workout planning and delivery for trainers. Personal trainers often face time constraints in creating and assigning individualized workout plans for numerous clients. This can lead to inefficiencies and potentially less effective training programs. The challenge was to streamline the process of workout plan creation and delivery, empowering trainers to manage their clients more effectively.
• Limited understanding of member activity and potential churn. Gym owners and managers often lack comprehensive data on member activity within the facility. This makes it difficult to identify trends, understand member behavior, and proactively address potential churn risks. The challenge was to provide gyms with actionable insights into member activity to improve retention strategies.
• Lack of seamless integration between physical and digital gym experience. Members often experience a disconnect between their in-gym workouts and any digital tools or information provided by the facility. This fragmented experience can hinder engagement and make it difficult for members to access relevant information and services. The challenge was to create a seamless and integrated experience that bridges the physical and digital aspects of gym membership.
• Difficulty in fostering a sense of community. Building a strong sense of community and encouraging active participation in group classes and other gym activities can be challenging. Without effective tools, it's difficult to connect members with each other and motivate them to engage beyond their individual workouts. The challenge was to leverage technology to foster a stronger sense of community and encourage greater participation.

The solution

The solution wasn't conceived as a static, final product. Instead, its development followed an iterative and incremental approach, deeply rooted in user feedback and real-world experience.

Initially, the core idea revolved around digitizing the fundamental gym experience. The first iterations focused on providing members with basic access to their workout routines and class schedules via a mobile application. This initial step addressed the challenge of information accessibility and aimed to improve the basic user journey within the gym.

This led to the integration of gamification elements, such as points and leaderboards, in subsequent iterations. This evolution directly tackled the challenge of member engagement and aimed to foster a more competitive and rewarding environment.

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Furthermore, the observation of user behavior within the gym provided crucial data. Consequently, the solution evolved to include features that could identify these at-risk members, enabling proactive interventions and personalized communication from the gym. This iterative step directly addressed the challenge of member retention

The evolving needs of gym trainers also played a significant role in shaping the solution. Feedback from trainers highlighted the time-consuming nature of creating and managing individual workout plans. This spurred the development of features that streamlined the process of assigning and tracking training plans, making their workflow more efficient.

Over time, the solution continued to evolve, incorporating features that facilitated seamless access to all gym services through the mobile application. This addressed the challenge of a fragmented user experience, creating a more unified and convenient way for members to interact with the gym.

Technical approach

The development of BH GYMLOOP's ecosystem presented several key technical challenges from the outset.

The decision to pursue cross-platform development for the end-user application, initially leveraging C# within the Xamarin framework and subsequently transitioning within the Microsoft ecosystem, aimed to maximize code reusability and accelerate deployment across both iOS and Android. However, this approach introduced the inherent complexity of navigating platform-specific nuances and ensuring a consistent, high-quality user experience on diverse mobile devices and operating system versions. Maintaining feature parity and addressing platform-specific bugs across two distinct mobile environments demanded rigorous testing and a deep understanding of each platform's SDK.

Furthermore, the global deployment of both the iOS and Android applications, along with the back-office system, required robust multilingual and multicultural compatibility. This presented the challenge of designing a flexible architecture capable of supporting a wide range of languages, regional formats (dates, numbers), and cultural considerations in user interface elements and data handling. Ensuring accurate and contextually appropriate localization required careful planning, implementation, and ongoing maintenance as the user base expanded.

The web-based back-office, built with Angular, faced the challenge of providing a seamless and responsive user experience across a range of devices, including traditional desktops and tablets. This required a responsive design approach that could adapt fluidly to different screen sizes and orientations, ensuring optimal usability and information presentation regardless of the device being used by gym administrators and trainers. Balancing feature richness with performance and responsiveness across these varying form factors demanded careful front-end development and optimization.

The product faced a significant layer of technical challenge in its seamless integration with diverse gym hardware. This encompassed the entire user journey, from member access control at the entrance to the tracking of individual exercise data on various fitness machines.

As a result the platform is the first natively integrated tool for all gym equipment, including cardio, strength, and indoor cycling.

Its gamification system, coupled with its ability to identify members at risk of dropping out, empowers centers to improve user engagement and consequently reduce dropout rates.

Gym members benefit from a mobile app where they can access their full workout routine and exercise history, as well as browse and book their preferred classes.