The last six months have shaken the Fitness Industry like no other period since people started going to gyms to work out. When the COVID pandemic came along, nobody expected to see states locked down longer than a few weeks, or people told to stay home for months at a time. Gyms, restaurants, and bars were closed by governmental decree, and our industry saw the loss of much of the close personal interaction between Fitness Trainers and their clients.

There has been so much information about how to proceed through this mess, and a lot of it is confusing and contradictory. One thing we do know: because of the mandatory mask mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns that are in place, rightly or wrongly, many people are now reluctant to come back to their gym with an “exercise as usual” attitude. So you, as owners and operators of these facilities, have to step up and find novel ways to reach your clients. Ways that will re-personalize your relationship with your members, and strip away the masks and the distancing, at least in their minds.

Money Movers Inc. has responded to the challenge for you by adding an incredible new feature to our OBM Gym Software that allows you to use ZOOM to put on live-streaming classes through the Internet and sell and book the classes inside OBM. The ZOOM feature is simple and easy to set up and use. Once you have a paid Zoom account you can set up a class and schedule it on the OBM Public-facing calendar. When the first client signs up, your ZOOM account creates the meeting. At the same time, OBM emails a link to the class to everyone who signs up. When it’s time for the class, you simply start the ZOOM meeting and all the participants join in.

That’s how it works on our end. On your end, in order to put on professional, easy to follow classes with clear and intelligible audio, you are going to need to do some upgrades to your equipment. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: the equipment you need to enhance your online streaming classes is easily affordable and simple to set up. So consider spending a few bucks and getting some additional equipment you can attach to your computer.

Hint: You can put on ZOOM classes using your smartphone video camera, but the audio on your iPhone, laptop, or device is usually not sufficient to give you a real person-to-person experience.

Camera: Most of you already have a very good camera in your iPhone or Android. You can use it with a tripod. There is a great selection of phone tripods available on Amazon or at your local camera shop.

Let me give you a few equipment suggestions.

Computer: Use the fastest computer you can. For best results, use an Ethernet cable to connect your computer to your network. I am a Mac user, so I use a high-speed MacBook to do my ZOOM sessions. This enables me to stream my classes or prerecorded videos at a high speed to avoid glitches or buffering pauses. If you are using a PC make sure you have plenty of memory and the most up-to-date operating system.