Overflow: no standard programs, the session corrected while it runs

The studio in Brianza

Overflow is a personal training studio with two sites in Brianza, north of Milan: Besana Brianza and Lissone. Giacomo Galliani co-founded it, and what it sells is not access to a room. It sells a programme, delivered one to one, in pairs or in small groups, with a trainer present for every session.

Why nothing here is standardised

Giacomo puts the difference as the one between a suit bought in a department store and a suit made to measure. Each programme starts from the client's own goal and is then adjusted to the body in front of the trainer: joint and muscle history, what the person can do this month, what they came for in the first place.

Overflow is not a traditional gym: it is a personal training programme made to measure, not a standardised workout.

Giacomo Galliani, Co-founder of Overflow

Variety is part of the method rather than a nice extra. Sessions are written so that today is not a repeat of last time, which is also what keeps people coming back. Alongside the individual work the studio runs Hybrid sessions, strength and endurance in the same block, at high intensity. And the place is meant to be one where people feel at home and give time to themselves, not only to their shape.

Different people, different programmes

The people training at Overflow have very little in common. Professional athletes, people coming back to fitness or losing weight, people working through rehabilitation.

In one to one training that spread is handled from the first session, because the work is built on the person anyway. The classes needed a different answer: participants are split by level and by goal, so that a group is made of people who need roughly the same thing. Putting a returning beginner and a competing athlete through the same block is the mistake the split exists to avoid.

Uptivo arrived before Overflow did

Giacomo was already working this way before the studio existed.

I brought it in myself, before Overflow even opened, when I was working as a personal trainer in my own studio.

Giacomo Galliani

He wanted two things from it: something more to give the client, and more information for himself while the session was running. It earned its place with professional athletes who had to stay inside precise heart rate ranges, and with clients whose condition meant the work needed watching closely.

What the trainer sees during the session

Today every format at Overflow runs on it: individual sessions, pairs and classes. The trainer sees the client's heart rate live and the zone it falls into, and reads what the effort is actually producing instead of guessing from the outside.

It is real time telemetry: we see the person's heart rate and their reference zones, and that lets us manage and adapt the session according to what we are seeing moment by moment.

Giacomo Galliani, Co-founder of Overflow

The correction happens while the work is still going on, not the day after in a report nobody reads.

Why it fits the way they work

In a studio built on personalisation, monitoring is not a separate service sold on top. It is the same principle applied to the hour itself: look at the individual, and adapt the work to what you see.

If what you sell is attention rather than access, that is the argument for personal training software: it makes the attention visible to the person paying for it.

Talk to us about heart rate training in your studio.