May 22, 2017

Member engagement is the reason the renowned Sportpiù fitness group adopted Uptivo in its six facilities in the Bergamo area. These top fitness centers have been using Uptivo to enable their monitoring program “Più Zone” for almost a year.

Brothers Alberto and Luca Gamba, the owners of the Sportpiù brand with their father Dario (also founder of the company), share the ambitious program of converting 100% of their members to the use of the monitoring technology.

«We strongly believe in cardio monitoring – for safety reasons for a start – and we are committed to explaining its advantages to both long-term fitness enthusiasts and people who are approaching fitness for the first time. Uptivo raises members’ awareness with regard to the training approach we are proposing» says Luca. «It’s not uncommon that new members come to us after dissatisfying experiences, after months of hard training that didn’t deliver the expected results», adds Alberto.

Today, Uptivo is one of the strongest motivational tools in Sportpiù’s arsenal.

Uptivo allows the club’s staff to properly evaluate the effectiveness of training plans also for expert members and long-term fitness aficionados, whether they are Personal Training program subscribers, booked in HIIT groups or just working out in the weight room. Alberto confirms:
«Intensity is always an individual matter, even during group training, and every member has different needs to anybody else. Uptivo users can constantly be reassured they are working at the right intensity by taking a look at the monitors in real-time. Many of them go check their Uptivo email reports right after training».

Gamba’s vision is that a professional approach to fitness and member retention are two sides of the same coin. They see many signs that are proving this vision to be good: their yearly retention numbers are up by 7%, which is an outstanding result for the Italian market – especially considering the country’s financial issues and price competition. Uptivo users at the Bergamo clubs attend the training facilities 2.7 times a week on average, compared to an average of less than 2 for members that have not embraced the new technology yet.

360° coverage of members’ training activities

In addition to workout monitoring in the weight room and group training areas, Uptivo also provides a Trainer App for Android tablets and iPads. Trainers have the freedom to take advantage of the good season and bring their group workouts into the open air. Uptivo also features a free of charge App as a smartphone personal tracking solution for members who are willing to test their limits, or who are in need of additional training activities to reach fitness targets set by their trainers.

«Uptivo’s complete coverage of our members’ fitness activities – whether they work out at the club or at home – gives our staff all the information they need to help them achieve the results they are expecting. All you can measure, you can improve quickly», says Luca Gamba.

Motivation, motivation, motivation!

Far from being just technological help for measuring and sizing performance, Uptivo is, more than anything, a key instrument to make the time spent working out rewarding and motivating. When the solution is used for group training, it’s common to see small crowds coming together at the end of a session to laugh and to mock each other in a friendly way. It’s not uncommon for trainees to post training results on Facebook and to send their workout summary out to their buddies to brag, ask for an opinion, or just get a joke back. Trainers are used to Uptivo too, and have made the platform part of their profession’s daily routine. «We normally spend a few minutes with the guys at the end of a group workout to comment on what we’ve been doing and what we’ve tried to achieve», says Andrea Comini, trainer at Sportpiù.

Why Uptivo

«Until about a year ago, we were using a North American monitoring product; the reason we switched is that Uptivo is an open solution that works with plenty of heart rate sensor brands. We do sell Uptivo Belts to our customers today as they are compatible with the gym equipment and with fitness apps for smartphones and wearables, but some of those customers already own Polar, Suunto, Garmin, or Wahoo sensors; asking them to replace those sensors to train at the club would be impractical» says Davide Provenzi, Marketing Manager at Sportpiù.