FitSW Blog

New Online Workout Creator Features

We recently released new Online Workout Creator features including superset capabilities, click & drag re-ordering, and a new layout for both desktop & mobile viewing of fitsw.com.  Check out the below video for a demo of all the features.

New Online Workout Creator Feature Details

Create Supersets with Ease

You can now easily create supersets in your workouts with as many exercises as you would like.  See the above video for an example or follow these instructions:

1. Once you have added your exercises, click on the “Superset” button that is right next to “Add Cardio”
2. You will then see checkboxes to the left of all of your exercises.  Check all the ones that you would like to superset together.
3. Click the orange “Superset Selected” button which will create a superset of all the exercises you selected with an orange border around it.  See below:
4. If you want to create another superset, repeat the same steps for your other exercises.

Drag & Drop to Change Exercise Order

You can now quickly re-order exercises using drag and drop.  Simply click on the arrows to the left of each exercise and drag to where you would like to move the exercise.

New Workout Creator Layout

The new workout creator layout enables you to clearly understand each field for each row whether it is an exercise, cardio or superset.

Selecting the exercise is also improved and allows you to view the demo of the exercise as you are adding it.  There is also a tab at the top called ‘Add New Exercise” which allows you to quickly Add a New Exercise on the fly while you are creating the workout.

Standard Workout Creator Features

The above improvements augment the following features which already existed:

• Repeating Workouts: You can easily create workouts that repeat on any schedule you would like.  Every x days, or certain days of the week.
• Exercise library: We have a library of over 500 exercises with demo’s.  Use these or easily create your own exercises with your very own demo’s.
• Sharing workouts with clients: There are numerous ways for you to share a workout with your client.  Automatically email it at the click of a button, print the workout easily, or enable clients to pull it up on their computer, phone or tablet through FitSW.com or our iOS app or Android app.
• Copy existing workouts: Save time by copying existing workouts to new clients and easily making the customized changes that are needed.
• Favorite Workout: Create a list of favorite workouts which can easily and quickly be copied and customized to any of your clients.
• Track workout completion with the “Complete” checkbox and comment/share feedback on workouts along with your clients through the website.
• Mobile Optimized Views: We have recently created a special optimized layout for mobile so that it’s easier for you and your clients to view information on FitSW.com through a phone or tablet.

New FitSW Android App on Google Play Store

We have had beta testers testing the private version of the new FitSW Android App for the past month and have received a lot of great feedback. If you provided feedback, thank you very much!  Please keep it coming.  We have now put the Beta version of the FitSW Android App on the Google Play Store for everyone to test out and provide feedback.  You can access this version here on the Google Play Store.

We plan to release an updated version every week for the next few weeks incorporating any bug fixes users find, so please let us know if you have any issues.  We would also love to hear your feedback on improvement suggestions so that we can add them to our ToDo list.

Current Features of FitSW Android App

The FitSW Android app has similar features to the FitSW iOS app and we will be adding more that we have prioritized based upon your feedback.  Please continue to provide us with that feedback. Here is what is included in the current version:

Client Management

You can add clients, create an account for them and store all of their information including: email, display name, date of birth, goals, likes, dislikes, injuries.

Workout Management

Create, track, and record multiple fitness clients’ workouts online in one central location. Utilize our extensive exercise database with exercise demos.

Goal Management

Create goals or tasks for your clients that can be tracked by both you and your clients as completed or incomplete.  Receive notifications when goals are completed.

Progress Tracking

Track and chart client fitness progress on anything, from body-fat to waist-line to bench-press max. Charts are fully customizable.

Nutrition and Diet Planning

Easily create meal plans, record food intakes, and keep tabs on fitness clients by allowing them to create food logs.

Create Before and After Fitness Photos with New Fitness Picture Manager

An image can convey so much information, especially when it comes to your client’s fitness progress.  That is why we recently released our new picture & image manager at FitSW.com that will help both you and your clients visualize the results of their hard work.  We have now made it extremely easy to upload and manage fitness photos.  On top of that, you can now quickly create before and after fitness photos based off of two individual photos you would like to compare.

We have also added a feature that lets you quickly share these images to social media if you would like.  Some clients like having their progress posted to social media to show the results of their hard work to their friends while others may like the fact that FitSW also allows the photos to be shared just between them and their trainer.  Here is an example photo created using FitSW with our old friend AC Slater 😉

How to Use FitSW to Upload Photos, Create Before and After Comparisons, & Share on Social Media

Check out this demo video to see how to use FitSW’s Pictures feature.  You will see how to upload photos, create before and after fitness photos, and share on social media.  Read even more details below.

Uploading Fitness Progress Photos

In order to keep clients motivated and help see how they are doing, many trainers will take photos periodically.  FitSW has now made major improvements in our system to allow you to quickly upload these photos, store them, and add date & caption information.  The system can provide your clients automatic access to these photos without you having to do a thing.  This allows both of you to monitor and proudly review your clients progress.  Pulling out that old photo to show the client how far they have come is often a really good tool. It can help renew motivation as soon as you sense your client approaching a plateau.  FitSW makes it easy for you as it stores all these photos on the Gallery tab of your Pictures page for a specific client.

Create Before and After Fitness Photos

You can take it a step further by creating comparison photos to get a good visualization of what areas of the clients program have been a success and really hammer home the point of how much progress your client has made.  FitSW allows you to create before and after fitness photos with just two clicks – one to select the first comparison photo and two for the second comparison photo.   FitSW then places the images into a single image side by side with each one’s specific date and caption information displayed.  Picture manager stores these images on the tab called Comparison Photos which is right next to your Gallery tab.  You can access these images whenever you need to. FitSW also makes it easy for you to download these images to your device.

Sharing Before and After Photos

Sharing Before and After Photos on social media can be a great tool for some clients.  Posting fitness before & after photos to a clients facebook page may lead their friends to comment things like “Wow – those are awesome results!” or “Amazing Job!” which can be incredibly motivating and provide a lot of support to your client and keep them on track.  It is also a great opportunity for you as the trainer to highlight your capabilities to a broader audience of all your client’s friends and acquaintances. This is the perfect way to show them the results you can help your clients achieve. Just make sure your client is ok with you posting on their social media first.  FitSW makes it very easy to share on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

Create Your Own Personal Trainer Blog & Content Management System

Have you ever wanted to share content (videos, images, text, instructions) with all your personal training clients at once but keep it only to your clients and not public?  Or have you ever wanted your own Personal Trainer Blog & Content Management System without wanting to have to deal with some of the more complex or heavy, slow software out there?

FitSW’s new Personal Trainer Blog & Personal Trainer Content Management System (free on all accounts!) solves both of these problems and more.  It allows you to quickly create posts or content of any type and designate who can view these posts / content on a per post basis.  Check out the Demo here:

The link to this video is https://youtu.be/wKjmSsZ8J6E

Easily Select Who Can View Your Personal Trainer Blog Posts or Content

When your clients login to FitSW they can see the posts or content you would like them to see without having to do anything special – they just click on a button in their menu that says “My Trainer -> Blog”.   If you have designated a post or content as being shared with “Clients Only”, no one else can see it but your clients.  You can also give clients the ability to comment on posts.

At the same time you have the ability to share other posts or content with people in addition to your clients.  For example, if you are writing an informative article that you think would be helpful to others and could potential bring in more clients, you could post this to your public content that anyone can see as long as they have your blog address.

Choose Your Own Custom Blog Address

Speaking of your blog address, you can easily customize this so that people can find you.  Let’s say your business is called FitnessFirst – create your blog at www.fitsw.com/FitnessFirst/blog/.  This makes it very easy for people to find your page and it has a professional look.

Simple, Fast Content Management & Personal Trainer Blog Posting

On top of all this, our Blog / Content Management System allows you to create these posts quickly and seamlessly.  It is extremely simple to upload an image or video compared to a lot of the other software out there.  See the video at up top for a demo.

Just a few ideas of what types of posts you could share on your page:

• Motivational Content
• Custom Instructional Content
• Valuable Health & Fitness Information
• Special Classes or Events
• Promotions – discounts and sales
• General Info & News
• Client Success Stories
• Touching Base with Clients

New Personal Trainer Scheduling Software Features

FitSW has just released new personal trainer scheduling software at https://www.fitsw.com/scheduler.  This scheduler / calendar adds several new features over the existing scheduler.  Improvements include:

• Clients can now request appointment times on a Trainer’s calendar and the trainer can accept or decline.
  • Trainers can block off Personal / Unavailable times to prevent clients from requesting times that don’t work
  • Clients can see a Trainers schedule but they will only see their appointments with a trainer.  All other times (Personal or other appointments) just show as Unavailable.
  • Clients can see open times and request an appointment at the click of a button.  Trainers are notified via on their calendar and via email of the request.
  • Trainers can Accept or Decline an appointment request.  Clients will be notified on their own schedule and via email.
• Day, Week and Month views are all available.
• New repeating appointment options are now available.

How To Use the New Personal Trainer Scheduler

1. Access the new scheduler at https://www.fitsw.com/scheduler.
2. To create an appointment or event double click on the area of the calendar where that appointment should be (on a desktop computer you can also use click and drag.)
3. Optional: Enter in your unavailable times (utilize the Repeat Event function to make this easier).
4. Create any appointments you would like for you to have with specific clients.
5. Let your clients know that they can access their version of the scheduler at the same address with their login: https://www.fitsw.com/scheduler.  They will see any appointments that you have created with them.
6. If you want them to schedule appointments with you, tell them to find open times on your schedule and double click to create a request.  You will receive an email notification of an appointment request.  If you login, you will then see these requests on your calendar.
7. Double click on event requests (they will be green) and you will have the option to Approve or Decline.  Your client will be notified of the decision.  If approved, the appointment will stay on your schedule and turn from green to blue to signify going from an appointment request to a confirmed personal training appointment.  If declined, the appointment will be removed from your calendar.
8. To edit an appointment, double click on it and make changes.  Your client will see the changes in their schedule and be notified via email.
9. To delete an appointment, double click on it and click delete.  Your client will receive a notification and the appointment will be removed from their calendar.
10. To View Day View, Week View, Month View, just click the buttons in the upper left.
11. To View a different week, click the arrow buttons in the upper right next.

Trainer and Client Schedule Views

Below is what the Trainer sees:

• Black are their unavailable times they have created
• Blue are their appointments with Clients
• Green are the appointments that Clients have requested but the personal trainer has not yet approved.

Below is what the Client sees:

• Gray are the times that their trainer is not available (notice details aren’t shared with the client like they are on the trainers calendar)
• Blue are their appointments that this specific client has with their trainer
• Green are the appointments that this Client has requested but the personal trainer has not yet approved.

Demonstration of Personal Trainer Scheduling Software

Here is a demo of the personal trainer scheduling software in action.  This video show the calendar from the Personal Trainer’s view and from two of the Trainer’s Client’s views.  Make sure to watch at full-size at max HD so that you can see the details clearly.

The link for this video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUgTCGmMkdI

New Version of FitSW iOS App Released: 1.34

We have released a new version of our FitSW iOS App that can now be downloaded on the app store here,  This version adds improvements for Diets, made certain buttons more clear, fixed a few bugs, and removes the instabug “shake to report problems” pop-up that some of our users felt was intrusive.  Since we have removed the “shake to report problems”, please contact us directly at admin@fitsw.com.   We are hard at work on more improvements for our 1.35 release with many of the features and improvements that you have suggested to us.  Please keep those suggestions coming.   Summary of updates in the FitSW iOS App 1.34 revision include:

FitSW iOS App version 1.34 Updates

• Remove Instabug “shake to report problems” pop-ups
• On the Diets tab, enabling correct counting of calories for foods based on the specific quantities entered by user.
• In Diets tab, we now require the quantity entered to be a number which we then use to calculate the calories of the foods in the diet.
• Within the Workouts tab, fixing issue where when editing workout demo link would sometimes be incorrect.
• On iPhone 5s, we fixed the issue where the notes section, when editing a workout’s exercise, was not displaying properly.
• In Clients, Workouts, Diets, and Assessments tabs, updated Done buttons to make it more clear as to what is being done (Adding a new instance or Updating an existing one).

Future FitSW Fitness Software Improvements

We are still on track to release our brand new Android App at the end of this month.  Our testers and some users are currently testing a beta version.  If you would like to be a beta tester please email us or leave a comment.  We also have many updates on the web version of the app coming too that we will keep you updated on.  Please keep sending your suggestions on this as well.