Fitness And Sports Industry: How Technologies Are Transforming It

As technologies are gradually entering all industries, it is quite obvious that the sports industry is not an exception. And what is really very interesting is that software apps are popular in both segments: professional sports and fitness segments for a wide audience.

One of the strongest boosters for the development of various software tools for the sports and fitness industry was the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of people all over the globe lost the ability to visit gyms and attend their favorite sports events. Sports clubs and fitness centers needed to find a way out. And modern technologies seemed to be a perfect response to all the challenges that our society faced.

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When it comes to the most popular uses of digital solutions by the professional sports industry, we should mention applications for providing fans with the possibility to directly interact with athletes and teams, live broadcasting, and virtual experiences for fans. There is also such a use case as virtual training. However, right now, its popularity is not very high.

As for fitness lovers, here sports apps developers can offer a wide range of solutions for individual training sessions at home, various trackers, as well as apps that help to keep on a diet, track calories, and find different ideas for healthy nutrition.

In this article, we offer you to take a look at the most popular technology trends that are shaping the future of the sports and fitness industry today.

Wearables

Today such devices as fitness bracelets are known practically to everyone. Even those people who are not huge fitness lovers sometimes have such devices. These wearables can help them to calculate the number of steps made per day or track the quality of sleep. And this functionality can be interesting to a very wide audience.

But modern solutions can offer much more than that. Bracelets may have various regimes for different types of training sessions so that a user can monitor all types of physical activities and their effectiveness.

There are also other examples of wearables such as smart sneakers that by this moment haven’t received a very wide adoption. Nevertheless, it is expected that in the future their popularity may grow.

In general, users’ interest in wearables is quite clear. It is convenient to have such a device that can help you to track your state without any special effort from your side. And in combination with the good analytics functionality of software apps that can process the gathered data, it is really a perfect match.

Online Coaching

Sometimes it can be rather difficult to find time for visiting a gym. Physical training at home can change the situation. But very often people do not have enough motivation when they need to train on their own. However, when they have an online coach who can help to control the process, that’s a completely different story.

Moreover, such platforms that offer online coaching services can be also enriched with a wide range of different features for increasing the efficiency of all the efforts. There can be functionality for creating individual dieting and training plans, chats with other users, helpful blog posts, and tips from experts. All these things can motivate people to train more.

Gamification

Gamification is another cool thing for motivation. When users can get in-app awards or have a chance to see their names on a leadership board, they are ready to invest much more effort in achieving their goals.

It is also a good idea to build such features that allow users to compete directly with other users. This game-like environment can make the process of training much more interesting and engaging.

Do Traditional Gyms Have A Future?

With these tech innovations, owners of traditional gyms are worried whether their businesses will survive amid the growing competition from the side of digital solutions. However, given the ongoing market conditions, it’s better not to compete with new rivals but to adapt to the changing reality.

Traditional gyms can launch their own apps for their clients that will diversify their experiences and offer powerful tools for keeping fit and healthy. Online training programs, mobile apps with social features, platforms with interesting articles, and webinars. All this can be taken as ideas by traditional gyms for creating their business strategies.

But of course, it is clear that building all possible solutions at once will be a rather expensive and, moreover, not very sensible initiative. Before creating a fitness app for their clients, gyms should carefully study the needs of potential users, their expectations, and preferences. Also, it will be very useful to conduct market research in order to better understand what solutions already exist and what features can make their own products unique.

This digital transformation can bring benefits to all the participants of the fitness industry, including sports clubs, gyms, coaches, and sports lovers.