How Stretching Before Bed Can Improve Sleep Quality

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Most people have a regular bedtime routine, even if you don’t necessarily think of yours in that way. At the very least, your routine probably consists of teeth brushing or removing your contacts — but are you doing anything to get your muscles and brain ready for bed? In a review of Chinese and American studies from the medical journal Sleep Medicine Reviews, meditative movements like yoga and tai chi before bed proved to improve sleep quality, and also enhance the overall well-being of an individual’s physical and mental health. As a matter of fact, yoga has turned out to be highly beneficial for those who struggle to fall asleep at night due to either sore muscles, or a restless mind. 

In a survey by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, over half of the people who engaged in yoga before bed said it helped them get more restful sleep. However, you don’t need to be a die-hard yogi to reap the benefits of yoga. There are several gentle yoga poses almost anybody can do that help contribute to a better night’s sleep by relieving tension in muscles and promoting the practice of meditation. As you hold certain positions, you’re forced to focus on your body and your breathing which helps relieve stress, and teaches you to be more mindful of your thoughts. It’s not easy to dwell on your stressful day at work while you’re concentrating on holding your form. After your light yoga session, you should feel calmer, more relaxed, and ready to hop into bed. 

On a personal note, incorporating yoga into my bedtime routine has helped relieve the pressure in my joints and hips after sitting at my desk for close to eight hours per day. Previously, as a person who spends a lot of time sleeping on their side, I’d wake up feeling tight and sore the following morning after 7+ hours of non-stop pressure against my hip, even if I slept on a plush mattress.

Here are a few simple, but effective stretches you can do in the comfort of your own home to help you improve sleep quality. 

1.) Butterfly Pose

butterfly pose

This is a great pose to do before bed because it’s a meditative movement. It allows you to gently stretch your inner thighs and lower back, while you focus on your breathing and enter a state of relaxation. 

Sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you, then bring the soles of your feet together. Without bending your spine, pull your feet in towards your body and deepen the stretch. Rest in this pose for as long as you see fit. 

2.) Child’s Pose

childs pose

This is another less demanding, meditative pose that engages your muscles and your mind. Child’s pose relieves tension in your back, neck, and shoulders, and it’s a good stretch to resort back to in between other stretches. Especially if you start getting more advanced with your movements.  

For this stretch, you’ll want to sit with your knees on the floor hip-distance apart and lean back so your behind is resting on your heels. Lower your head to the ground so your forehead is touching the ground, and reach your hands straight out in front of you with your palms facing down. Hold this position for five minutes. 

3.) Seated Side Stretch

improve sleep quality with side stretch

This is another simple sitting pose that’ll make your body and muscles ultra-relaxed before bed. The seated side stretch will target your obliques while you also work on strengthening your core and lengthening your spine. 

Sit on the ground starting with your right leg extended outward, and the other one crisscrossed. Using your left arm, reach it over your head toward your extended leg while you remain seated. You should be feeling the stretch on the left side of your body. Keep your left arm lifted above your ear, and rest your other arm resting on the floor. Hold for 10 breaths, and switch sides. 

4.) Bridge

We aren’t talking about the fully extended bridge you’ve probably seen professional gymnasts do, we’re talking about the before-bed bridge. This one is easier to accomplish, but you still get a good stretch in your glutes, core muscles, hamstrings, and adductors. 

Lay on the ground facing the ceiling with your feet flat on the floor, and bend your knees. Keep your arms at your sides with your palms facing up. Incorporate your abs and press into your heels, bringing your hips and back off the ground. Hold the position for 10 slow inhales.  

5.) Low Lunge 

improve sleep quality with low lunge

This is an ideal pose for those of you who work at an office where you spend the majority of your day sitting down because it’ll loosen the tension in your hips and make them feel less tight. Aside from your hip flexors, you’ll also be targeting your hamstrings, glutes and your groin area. Also, keep your chest open while you lunge to help relieve back pain and pressure in your shoulders. 

Start on all fours, and step up with your right leg, placing it on the outside your right hand. Next, bring your left knee back so it’s behind your toes on your right foot. Keep your hands on the floor for balance, or lift them up towards the ceiling. Hold for 10 slow inhales, and switch legs. 

6.) Corpse Pose 

Yes, laying flat on the ground is actually considered a yoga pose. You won’t be stretching out any muscles during the corpse pose, but you’ll certainly be relaxing the mind. Save this position for the end of your stretching routine, because you’ll likely find yourself asleep by the end of it.

Crawl into bed and lay on your back with your legs spread out in front of you about hip distance apart. Your arms should remain at your side, with your palms facing up towards the ceiling. Close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. Hold this position for about five minutes, or until you slowly drift off to sleep.

McKenzie Dillon is a blogger and sleep enthusiast for The Slumber Yard, a review site that focuses on bedding products. When she’s not sleeping, McKenzie likes attending music festivals, reading fiction novels and practicing yoga.

FitSW Wants Your Feedback On How Stretching Before Bed Can Improve Sleep Quality

If you have any feedback or comments on how stretching before bed can improve sleep quality or anything else, contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, support page or on our blog!

Workout Creation For Client’s – Usability Improvements

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We recently released two updates to our web software which include the ability to draft workouts for your clients and new features to our workout creator. Now, we are happy to announce we had released more usability improvements and features to our workout creation for clients feature! This update includes an easier way to add exercises to your workouts, updating the design of our workout screen, and a more seamless way to copy exercises.

Easier Way To Add Exercises To Your Workouts

Adding exercises to your workouts is a vital part of your personal training business and we’ve just made it easier. Now, when you click the “Add Exercise” button, our exercise list will automatically appear. You no longer have to click the exercise in the workout creator. It will appear instantly when you want to add an exercise.

workout creation for client's - adding exercises

Design Improvements

design improvements for workout screen

Our workout creation for clients got a new design improvement! When scrolling over a workout, diet, or task you will notice that the workout will be highlighted. We have also changed up the coloring of the workout creation for clients page, making it easier to read exercises.

Seamlessly Copy Workouts

copying workouts modal window example

A new modal window will appear when copying workouts, diets, or tasks. This makes it faster and easier to copy your events to additional clients. Simply pick the clients you want to copy it to, the name of the event, and the date you want it to occur on. You can also choose to save it as a draft or publish it immediately and whether you want it to repeat It’s that simple!

Once you click the copy button, you will receive a success message on the top of your screen (see the image below). If you would like to edit the workout, simply select the text “click here to view”. This will take you to the workout creation for clients screen and you will be able to update it. If the selected the workout to repeat, you can also update one or all of the workouts for the new client!

workout successfully copied message

FitSW Wants Your Feedback On Our Updates To Our Workout Creation For Clients

We are very excited to have released these improvements to our software and would love your thoughts! If you have any feedback or comments on this or anything else, contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Bug Fixes and Updates Announcement

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bug fixes related to recent feature release

Recently, we added new features to our software that included the ability to draft workouts, workout creation updates, and many more features. However, with these updates came some new isolated instances of bugs. Thanks to the feedback from our trainers, we were able to release bug fixes for these issues!

We’ve received a report of supersets not saving and workout information not being saved as intended in certain situations. After rigorously testing our software and using the feedback provided, we were able to identify and quickly fix the problem. Additionally, we have updated our web application with the necessary fixes and all of these bugs are fixed. If you are still experiencing problems or have any feedback to share, we would love to hear it! Your bug reports help us identify the problem faster and expedite the process significantly.

The bugs that we have solved in this update include but are not limited to:

  • Supersets not saving correctly. If you took a specific sequence when adding your exercises to your workouts and then proceeded to make them into supersets, they would not save after saving your workouts. This issue has been rectified and is now functioning as intended.
  • Workout information saving differently than entered data. A user reported that some of their workout data would change after saving. This bug was associated with the superset problem and has now been resolved.
  • Workout orders saving incorrectly. A trainer reported that after saving a workout, their exercises were saving in the incorrect order. This bug was also associated with the two issues above and has been solved.

Leave Us Your Feedback On These Bug Fixes!

If you have any additional bugs to report or other information to share, do not hesitate to let us know! We take our user feedback very seriously and will find a fix as soon as possible. Please contact support@fitsw.com, or reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

How To Track Client’s Progress and Why It’s Important

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track clients progress featured image - personal trainer software progress tracking graphs

Tracking progress, whether it’s for yourself or for your personal training clients, is an important part of obtaining each party’s respective fitness goals. Additionally, with the rise of personal training software, its easier than ever to track clients’ progress. In this article, we’ll go over the different types of progress tracking, the reasons why it’s so important, and how to track your personal training client’s fitness progress. Here are a few reasons why tracking fitness progress is so imperative:

  • Helps you keep your clients’ goals at the forefront of your mind
  • Shows how your client is performing
  • It can be used as a great motivational tool
  • It can help you hold your clients accountable

Different Forms Of Progress Tracking

There are multiple ways you can track your client’s progress. Better yet, it has become much easier in the past few years with the use of personal trainer software. Below you will find the 3 main ways you can track your client’s progress.

Exercise Progress Tracking Graphs

Tracking your client’s workout results are an important part of making sure they stay on track, as well as showing them how much they are improving. When you first start training a new client, it’s imperative you get a baseline of data to start with. After this, you can adjust their workouts and weights accordingly. Once your client has completed a few workouts and entered the results of those workouts, that data will be automatically inputted into exercise progress tracking graphs. Both you and your clients can see these graphs. Additionally, you can print or email them any time!

Body Measurements & Assessment Tracking Graphs

how to track clients progress using assessments

Taking initial body measurements and performing assessments is another great way to track your client’s progress. Body measurements include things such as bicep, calf, hip, forearms, hips, and waist. Additionally, assessments include items such as flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular fitness. These are all essential items you should do with initial clients and track over time. It will show both you and your clients how much they are improving, what areas they need to work on, and helps them see how close they are to obtaining their goals.

Progress Photos

Progress photos are a great way to track client’s progress. Not only is it a fantastic way to show how much they are improving, but it can also be a powerful tool to use to grow your business. Posting these photos (with your client’s permission of course) will show other potential clients that you can actually help them reach their fitness goals. Progress photos are great for you, your clients, and for your fitness business.

How To Track Clients Progress Using FitSW

Tracking client’s progress using FitSW is simple and takes less time than you think. Whether it’s our exercise progress graphs, body measurements & assessments, or progress photos, its simple to track your client’s progress.

Exercise Progress Tracking Graphs

When your personal training clients enter their data for an exercise, our system will automatically put their information into beautiful looking graphs and tables. All you need to do is look at the data, it’s that easy!

Body Measurements & Assessment Tracking Graphs

While you or your clients have to take the initial body measurements and assessments, you can enter this data with a few clicks of a button! After you enter these assessments, our software instantly puts into graphs and data tables that you can print or save to your devices.

Progress Photos

Progress photos are a great way to prove to your client that you are getting them results. Furthermore, it’s a fantastic tool to use for social media because it increases your credibility. Using FitSW, you can upload and compare photos in seconds. Either you or your clients can upload progress photos, so you never have to have back and forth emails or messages in order to upload one.

Give Us Feedback On How To Track Client’s Progress

We highly value our community and take your feedback seriously, So, if you have any feedback or comments on how to track client’s progress or anything else, reach out to us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Workout Creator For Clients – Updates & New Features

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A couple of days ago we released a brand new drafting workouts feature! Included with those new features, we also released a lot of improvements to our workout creator for clients. We’ve made a lot of changes that make creating workouts even easier, saving you more time than ever before! We will go into the specific improvements a little later on, but they include an easier layout for adding exercises, exercise progress data saving even after editing your workouts, and the ability to ungroup supersets.

Workout Creator For Clients

Improvements To Workout Creator

Using the feedback that our users provided, we’ve added improvements to our workout creator for clients. Additionally, it still has all of the old features, though it is structured in an easier to use layout. Previously, we had the options Add Exercise, Add Cardio, and Add Superset. However, we have removed the cardio option, integrating it with our exercise list. This means you can simply click the Add Exercise and add your cardio exercises from there. You no longer have to click a different button to add cardio! We also made it so that the Add Superset option will appear only after you have added 2 or more exercises, as it cannot be a superset without multiple exercises.

workout creator for clients cardio updates

Exercise Progress Data Saved After Editing Workout

Tracking progress is an important part of personal training. We’ve always had the ability to track both exercise and assessment progress. Now, we’ve made it so your exercise progress data will save after you edit a workout. You can now freely edit and update your workouts that already have exercise progress data, without worrying about losing your exercise history data!

Ability To Ungroup Supersets

We’ve added a new category (outlined in red in the picture above) when dealing with supersets in the workout creator for clients. You can now ungroup or delete supersets! Previously, you could only delete supersets and you would need to re-add the superset. However, you can now easily ungroup and edit your existing supersets to your liking!

FitSW Wants Your Feedback On These Updates!

We are very excited to have released these improvements to our software and would love your thoughts! If you have any feedback or comments on this or anything else, contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Drafting Workouts For Clients and Other Updates

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We recently released a fully redesigned Android app and are excited to announce that we have released new features to our web application. These features include the ability to draft workouts for clients, status updates for your workouts, and a new easier to use format for our workout creation screen. Our workout drafting feature also extends to both diets and tasks as well! While this feature is only on the web software right now, it will be coming to our mobile apps very soon.

Drafting Workouts For Clients

drafting workouts for clients - example workout in workouts screen

You now have the ability to save drafts of your workouts, diets, and tasks! Additionally, if an unexpected event happens, like your internet going out, your event will automatically be saved as a draft. This means you never have to worry about losing all of the hard work you put into creating a workout if your FitSW session ends abruptly! Additionally, your clients will not see any drafted events you are working on. You will be the only one that can see and access these workouts, diets, and tasks!

In addition to this, we have also added a “Status” section to the workouts, diets, and task screen. This new section will show the status of your event. Or in other words, this message will show you if your workout, diet, or task has been saved or not. Our software automatically saves your data, though this makes it easy to ensure that your event has been saved! Please refer to the image below for an example of what it looks like.

status section screenshot

Design and Layout Improvements

Using the great feedback that many of our users provided, we have redesigned the layout of our workouts, diets, and task creation pages. You now have 3 main sections when creating an event:

  • General information: Add the date, name of the event, and any notes you wish to add.
  • Exercises/Foods: Add the exercises/foods for your event.
  • Additional: Choose whether you want the event to repeat, any additional clients you wish to apply it to, and whether you want to add it to your schedule. This is also where you have the ability to delete, save as a draft, or publish the event.
additional section associated with drafting workouts for clients

We Want Your Feedback On Drafting Workouts For Clients & Other Updates!

We are very excited to have released both our new drafting workouts for clients and other updates and would love your thoughts! If you have any feedback or comments on this or anything else, contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Personal Trainer Android App – Design Updates

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We are excited to announce that we have just released a newly designed personal trainer Android app! A few months ago, we released a freshly designed iOS app. After getting some positive feedback, we have been working hard on updating our Android app as well. The entirety of this app has been redesigned and we are very happy with the result! We just released this new version, though it will take around 3 hours to go live. Thus, if you are reading this within the first few hours that it is published, you will not see the changes until around 8:00 or 9:00 PM MST on 10/5/2019.

We’ve updated and redesigned almost every aspect of our Android app. However, do not worry! This will not affect any of your data. In fact, this will make FitSW and the events your clients see appear more professional than ever before.

Old FitSW Android Design

We’ve updated every screen of our Android design, so it may be hard to remember what our old design was! So you can see how much has been improved, here is an example of our old Android app:

old personal trainer android app design - fitsw

New Personal Trainer Android App Design Examples

Workout Screen

android personal trainer app new design workout screen examples

Client List

personal trainer android app client list examples

Exercise List

exercise list new designs

Exercise Progress Tracking Graphs

exercise progress tracking graphs for personal training clients

We Want Your Feedback On Our New Personal Trainer Android App Design Changes!

We are very excited to have released our new and improved Android app and would love your thoughts! If you have any feedback or comments on these new design changes, contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Personal Trainer Payments – Now Supported In 30 Countries

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We are excited to announce that our personal trainer payments feature has gotten a massive update! Previously, you could only use Stripe to accept payments if you lived in the United States or Canada. You could accept payments from all over the world (and still can), though you needed to live in the US or Canada to begin accepting payments. Now, we are excited to announce that our system allows you to accept payments even if you are not in the US or Canada. As long as you are based in one of the following countries, you can now accept payments through our platform:

  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hong Kong SAR China
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Singapore
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

For a picture view of all the supported countries, please refer to the image below.

personal trainer payments update - country locations

To learn how to set up your payment profile and start accepting your client’s payments, visit our blog article on accepting payments from personal training clients! It will give you all of the information you need to start getting paid! Better yet, we have a full payment dashboard that you can use to see what clients have made a payment, when they did so, and we give you a payment ID to keep your financials organized. Furthermore, your clients also have a full payment dashboard to see if they have paid you or not! Go to https://www.fitsw.com/payments/ to get started or view your payments dashboard!

We Want Your Feedback On Our Personal Trainer Payments Update!

We are very excited to have this new capability for our personal trainer payments feature and would love your thoughts! Therefore, if you have any feedback or comments on this or anything else, please contact us! You can do this by connecting with us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or support page! Additionally, you can leave a comment on this blog article! After that, we typically reply within a day or so!

Why You Should Use Online Personal Training Software

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online personal training software example

Online personal training software is designed to make both you and your client’s lives easier. Whether it’s tracking progress, building workouts, creating meal plans or managing your schedule, personal trainer software makes managing your fitness business effortless. That’s why more & more fitness professionals are ditching paper forms and making the switch to personal training software. Here are a few ways that software can make running your personal training business easier.

Online Personal Training Software Makes You Look Professional

Online personal training software not only helps you manage your clients more efficiently, but it makes your fitness business look more professional. When your clients log in to their accounts, they can see all of the events you created for them in seconds. Your clients won’t have to lug around a bunch of papers or remember everything you tell them. They’ll have a comprehensive fitness plan in the palm of their hands. It also makes your business more organized, which makes clients feel like they have more structure.

Increases Client Retention & Motivation

A personal trainer app will help you increase both client retention & motivation, as you can keep better tabs on your clients. By assigning them tasks and monitoring their events, you have the ability to hold them more accountable for their actions.

Your clients will also receive notifications every time you create a new event. Also, you can choose what events they get notified about! You can also get notifications when they complete (or don’t) one of their events. This makes it easier to track their progress and hold them accountable during their fitness journey.

Online Personal Training Software Saves You Time

Whether you are building workout programs, tracking your client’s progress, scheduling appointments, or anything else, online personal training software will save you a great deal of time. You can save your favorite workouts, diets, tasks, and paste them directly to your clients. Also, you won’t have to spend hours on end filling out paper forms or entering data into an excel spreadsheet. Saving time makes running your personal training business. Additionally, you’ll have more time to focus on your clients.

Available On All Platforms

Personal trainer software is available on every platform, so you never have to worry about a client having one device or another. Better yet, all of your data will transfer from one operating system to the next. This makes it easy to manage all of your clients wherever you are, regardless if you are on iOS, Android, or on your computer!

Custom Branded Fitness Apps

Personal trainer software, such as FitSW, offer fitness coaches custom-branded iOS & Android apps, as well as fully customized website applications. This makes it appear as if you have created your own personal trainer software, without having to actually create one. Better yet, your app will have all of your companies logos and colors, increasing your brand recognition. This also ties in with making your business appear more professional. If you have your own custom app, it shows your clients how seriously you take personal training.

Come try out FitSW for 30 days completely free! Sign up today and see how we can help you manage & grow your fitness business.

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How To Hold Clients Accountable – Personal Training

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hold clients accountable personal training

There are so many reasons that personal training clients hire fitness professionals to help them on their fitness journey. Whether it is to have personalized workouts, meal plans, enhanced progress tracking, or to motivate them, personal trainers offer so many advantages compared to working out alone. Additionally, a personal trainer who knows how to hold clients accountable can have a lot of success in the personal training industry.

Give Your Clients Homework

Giving your clients homework is a tremendously powerful tool when you are trying to hold them accountable. After your sessions, your client still has more than 20 hours to do whatever they please. Giving them homework will ensure that they are staying on-track outside of the gym. Additionally, this will add more value to your clients, as you are making their fitness journey even more personalized. You should give your clients homework that aligns with their goals and what they hope to achieve. Homework such as running up a flight of stairs 2 times, doing 20 seconds of step-ups, or even just doing some modified pull-ups can add a lot of value to your training and will help you hold your clients accountable.

Motivate Your Clients

Motivating your clients can help you in many different ways, especially if you are trying to hold them accountable. If they are motivated, they will want to stay on-track more than an unmotivated individual. Additionally, there are many different ways to motivate your personal training clients. Each one of your clients is different, but finding a way to motivate them is a great way to ensure they stay on-track when they are not with you.

Keep Logs Of Workouts & Nutrition

workout logs to increase client accountability and motivation

Keeping track of what your clients are eating and how their workouts are going is a vital tool for holding them accountable. If you do not know how they are progressing or what they are eating, then you cannot hold them accountable when they are straying away from their fitness plan. FitSW offers you the ability to see Complete, Not Met, or Not Met for every workout, task, diet, and event that you create. This makes it easy to keep track of your clients progress and whether or not they are performing up to their standards. Furthermore, FitSW shows percentages for each of these categories so it’s even easier to keep track of your clients data.

Be Consistent & Organized

Consistency can greatly help you to hold clients accountable, as it is easy to see differences from week to week. For example, training at the same time every session will make it clear when your clients miss a session. Having paper forms can make it hard to be organized, so we would recommend investing in a personal trainer software. Both you and your clients can use these softwares and they make organizing your fitness business easier than ever.

FitSW Can Help You Hold Clients Accountable

FitSW Can Help You Hold Clients Accountable

FitSW offers you all of the tools that you need to hold your clients accountable. You have the ability to:

  • Progress Tracking Graphs – FitSW has graphs for both assessment data and exercise history. This enables you to track your clients’ progress comprehensively. Additionally, these graphs will show you the complete history of your client’s data, meaning you can dive deep into the data and how your clients accountable if they aren’t performing up to their previous sessions.
  • Workout Builder / Programs – Not only does FitSW have a detailed workout builder, but we also recently released a brand new workout program feature! You can create detailed fitness plans for your clients for up to 365 days! Plus, you can edit them at any time and see the results as soon as your client enters it!
  • Nutrition & Diet Planning – If you want to hold clients accountable, it is important to monitor and guide their nutrition. FitSW offers a comprehensive and detailed nutrition planner. Additionally, you can add your nutrition plan to their workout program. This makes it easy to stay organized when created your fitness plans!

Feedback On How To Hold Clients Accountable!

We want to help you grow your personal training business and hold your clients accountable! From the day FitSW was founded, our goal has been to help personal trainers grow their client base. We offer a “Trainer of the Month” promotion in which we select one trainer a month and share their stories with the world! All you need to do is email support@fitsw.com and answer the questions they provide you! It’s that simple! Once you are chosen, we will post all of your information to our blog and social media accounts. If you would like an example, please check out this featured personal trainer article! Additionally, if you have any other feedback, we would love to hear your thoughts! Reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or on our support page!

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