The 8 Apps Every Personal Trainer Needs
As a personal trainer, you've got tons of apps available that can make your life easier, save you a massive amount of time, and help you grow your business. Yet most trainers barely use any of them, and that's a huge missed opportunity. The top trainers we work with at Gymkee don't just coach well. They also run their businesses efficiently using the right tools. We've picked the 8 apps that will genuinely help you every single day to be more productive, save time, and make more money. Let's break them down.
App 1: VEED for Video Editing
Every major social media platform is going all in on video. YouTube, Instagram with Reels, TikTok, and even X is pushing hard on that format. These platforms are betting on video because that's the type of content people want to consume today. As a personal trainer, you've got to produce content, and you've got to go all in on video if you want to get as much attention as possible.
If you want to reach as many people as possible, your editing needs to be on point. You've got three choices: pay an editor to handle it, learn Adobe Premiere which is the biggest tool on the market but has a steep learning curve, or use VEED. VEED is easy to use and lets you adapt your videos for every platform to make sure they reach the widest possible audience. It'll run you about $18 a month, which is a fraction of what you'd pay a professional editor.
App 2: Canva for Design
When you scroll through Instagram, you'll occasionally see some incredible designs used for carousels and infographics by fitness trainers. What app do you think they're using? About 90% of those designs are built on Canva.
Again, you've got three choices for your design needs: hire a designer, learn Photoshop, or use Canva. Canva is really easy to use, and you'll create your first design in just a few minutes. The templates are solid, the drag and drop editor is intuitive, and you can customize everything to match your brand. It's either free or about $13 a month depending on the features you need. For the level of quality you get, it's a no brainer. If you're not using Canva yet, you're making content creation harder than it needs to be.
App 3: Gymkee for Coaching and Client Management
You need an app to build your programs and manage your clients, period. Say goodbye to spreadsheets and PDFs. In today's world, you simply can't deliver a good coaching experience through a spreadsheet. Your clients are used to using polished apps for everything in their lives, and your coaching should be no different.
If you want to deliver the best coaching experience possible while saving yourself a ton of time and growing your business, Gymkee is built for exactly that. You can add your own video exercises, build fitness programs, create meal plans, send assessments, and track your clients' progress, all in the same app. Everything is designed to be as easy as possible for both you and your clients.
Thousands of trainers worldwide are already using Gymkee. On average, it saves trainers about 2 hours per client per week. You can try it free for 14 days with no risk, and the first three trainers to sign up through the link in the description get 50% off their first subscription.
App 4: Typeform for Client Intake and Feedback
Typeform is one of those tools that's useful for everything. We use it at Gymkee to collect feedback, run customer support satisfaction checks, onboard new employees, and more. The thing is, too many trainers are still using Google Forms. Google makes great tools, but Google Forms isn't one of them. The forms look dated and feel clunky.
With Typeform, you can build beautiful, branded forms that actually look professional. But the real magic isn't the design, it's the system. Typeform shows one question at a time, which makes it simple and friendly to use. That approach genuinely makes a difference in completion rates because your clients don't feel overwhelmed by a wall of questions.
Just be smart about how you build your forms: start with multiple choice questions, keep the flow natural, and put any text based questions at the end. People are much more likely to finish when they can tap through options quickly at the start. Typeform costs about $20 a month and has a free plan to get started.
App 5: Notion for Productivity
Most people on YouTube won't recommend Notion to personal trainers, and they're wrong. Notion is one of the most powerful productivity tools available, and as a trainer, it can genuinely help you be more organized and save time.
You can use it for two main things. First, managing your content: build a content board with every post you want to publish, track publication dates across every social platform, and never miss a deadline. You can see at a glance what's been published, what's in progress, and what's coming up next week. Second, onboarding new clients: if you've got documents they need to complete, forms they need to fill out, or information they need to review before starting coaching, Notion handles all of it cleanly in one place. For personal use it's completely free. If you need the full feature set for what you're doing as a trainer, it's about $5 a month.
App 6: Social Media Scheduling
Earlier we covered tools for creating content. Now you need one for publishing it consistently. As a personal trainer, you've got to be organized if you want your social media to actually work. Managing clients while producing content is time consuming, and if you're not organized, you'll end up not publishing because you don't feel like it or you've got nothing ready to share.
One of the best things you can do is plan your publications using a scheduling tool. We use one at Gymkee to publish across multiple platforms, and it changed how we approach content. You sit down once, plan your content for the next week, and everything goes out automatically, even on days when you don't feel like posting. It removes the "I don't feel like it" problem entirely because the content's already queued up and ready to go.
Options range from about $49 a month for premium tools down to free alternatives like Meta's Creator Studio or Buffer. Pick whatever fits your budget, but the important thing is that you have something automating the publishing so you're not manually logging in to post every single day.
App 7: Google Workspace for Professional Email
This one might seem like a small detail, but the differences are in the details. Too many trainers use their personal Gmail to communicate with clients. Think about it: if you reached out to Amazon for a support question, would you expect a reply from [email protected]? Of course not. Same goes for your clients.
Having a professional email address makes you look more credible. It's a small detail, but clients notice these things. A professional email tells them you take your business seriously. And beyond looking professional, it helps you separate work from personal life so you can actually disconnect when you need to. When client emails come to your work inbox instead of your personal one, you can close the laptop and truly be off the clock. It'll cost you about $6 a month, and it's worth every penny.
App 8: Google Calendar
The last tool is free, and it's still massively underrated. So many personal trainers don't use a calendar, and that's a shame. It really means they don't own their time. As a personal trainer, you need to be as organized as possible to succeed.
If you want to be organized, you need to own your time. The calendar is the most impactful tool you can use. It'll help you take back control of your days, your weeks, your months, and your years. To use it correctly, set up your work blocks so every hour of your day has a purpose. Block off client sessions, content creation time, admin work, and personal time. When something is on the calendar, it happens. When it's not, it gets forgotten.
The difference between a trainer who's constantly overwhelmed and one who's calm and productive often comes down to this one tool. It's free, it's powerful, and there's genuinely no excuse not to use it.
Your Tech Stack as a Trainer
So there you have it: the 8 apps that will save you time, make you look more professional, and help you grow your coaching business. VEED for video editing, Canva for design, Gymkee for coaching and client management, Typeform for client intake and feedback forms, Notion for productivity and content planning, a scheduling tool for consistent social media posting, Google Workspace for professional email, and Google Calendar for owning your time.
You don't need to set them all up in one day. Start with the ones that solve your biggest pain points right now. If you're still using PDFs and spreadsheets to coach clients, Gymkee should be first. If your social media is inconsistent, get a scheduler. If you're editing your own videos and it's eating 3 hours per post, try VEED. Build your tech stack one tool at a time, and within a few weeks you'll be operating like a pro.
