Building A Mobile App for Personalize Fitness Coaching

A Capstone Project Proposal

Presented to: The Faculty of College of Information and Computing Sciences Zamboanga
Peninsula Polytechnic State University

In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Information
Technology

By:
Marcelino, Liliana
Aleria, Arjay
Sisican, Kyle Axl Guile
Sialana, Renjene

____________
Adviser

April 2023
Chapter 1

Introduction

Welcome to the world of personalized fitness coaching! In recent years, mobile apps have
revolutionized the way people approach fitness and wellness. After the covid-19 situation, where
people are usually locked inside their homes workout and fitness apps have become a new born.
With the rise of technology and smartphones, building a health and fitness awareness mobile app
can be an excellent way to provide users with a customized fitness experience, including
workout plans, motivation to help users to achieve their fitness goals, improve their health, and
live a more active lifestyle.

Building a Mobile App for Personalize fitness Coaching helps to cater the busy schedules of
people who wants to work out from the comfort of their homes. Personalized fitness coaching is
a growing trend in the health and fitness industry, and there is a lot of potential for a mobile app
that can offer this service in a convenient and accessible way.

1.1 Project Context

The context for building a mobile app for personalized fitness coaching could be to provide a
platform for users to select customized workout plans to their individual goals and preferences.
The app includes features such as, exercise demonstrations and different exercise levels.

The primary goal of this app is to help users achieve their fitness goals by providing them with
personalized guidance and support. Whether someone is trying to lose weight, build muscle, or
simple improve their overall health and fitness, the app will help the users to create a workout
plan that works for them and provides them with the motivation and accountability they need to
stay on track.

Building this mobile app for personalized fitness coaching could be a valuable tool for helping
people achieve their fitness goals, live healthier and more active lives.
1.2 Purpose and Description

The purpose of this capstone project is to design and develop a mobile application that provides
personalized fitness coaching to its users. The app offers virtual coaching through videos and
tutorials, allowing users to learn proper technique and form for various exercises. Additionally,
the app also includes a progress tracking feature, allowing users to track their progress over time
and see how they are progressing towards their goals.

The personalized fitness coaching app have several key features including:
-User profile that will allows the user to select workouts according to their exercise level, profile
with their personal information, fitness goals and other relevant details.
-Motivation and feedback, the app will provide motivational messages before & after exercise
and feedback to the user to keep them motivated and on track.
The app will be developed for both iOS and Android platforms and will be designed to be user-
friendly and easy to navigate.

1.3 Objectives
The objectives of this study are to develop an easy-to-use mobile app that provides personalized
fitness coaching and provide a comprehensive library of workout routines and exercises that
cater to different fitness levels and goals.

1.3.1 Specific Objectives

 To Develop an app that creates personalized workout plans for users based on their
fitness goals, current fitness level, and preferences.
 To develop a friendly user mobile app that allows users to exercise/workout anytime they
want using personalize fitness coaching app.
 To help people stay healthy, physically and mentally fit.
 To let the user’s stay motivated by the guidance and support from the app and
motivational message/quotes.
 To develop a marketing strategy to promote the app and attract a large user base using
social media campaigns.
1.4 Significance of the Study

This research lies in the potential to improve the health and well-being of individuals by making
fitness coaching more accessible and convenient. The Personalize fitness coaching app potential
is to improve the health and well-being of individuals by providing convenient, personalized, and
cost-effective fitness coaching.

Personalize Fitness Coaching app benefits are:

 Convenience - A mobile app that allows individuals to access personalized fitness

coaching from anywhere, at any time. This can be especially beneficial for busy
individuals who may not have the time go to the gym or attend regular in-person
coaching sessions.
 Personalization - A mobile app can offer personalized coaching based on an individual's
goals, fitness level, and preferences. This can help individuals achieve their fitness goals
more effectively and efficiently.
 Cost-effective - Mobile apps can provide a cost-effective alternative to in-person
coaching sessions, making fitness coaching more accessible to individuals who may not
have the financial resources to attend regular sessions.

1.5 Definition of Terms

The following are the terms used by the researcher in the study to have parallel understanding
with the readers.
Covid 19. The covid 19 pandemic has impacted many aspects of our lives, including exercise and
workout routines. Problems related to covid 19 people may face are gym closure, changes in
routine, fatigue and stress.
Mobile app. A mobile application is a software application designed to run on mobile devices
such as smartphones, tablets, or smartwatches.
Personalize fitness coaching. A fitness coaching approach that is tailored to an individual's
unique goals, fitness level, and preferences. It involves creating customized fitness plans and
providing individualized guidance and support.
User interface. User interface (UI) refers to the graphical and interactive elements of a mobile
app that allow users to interact with the app. It includes features such as buttons, menus, and
screens that enable users to navigate and use the app.
Health and wellness. refers to the state of being physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy
and well. It encompasses various aspects of well-being, including fitness, nutrition, stress
management, and mental health.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND SYSTEMS

Those in this chapter helps in familiarizing readers with knowledge that is relevant and
similar to the current study. This section will clarify how this project is connected to existing
research, approaches, and technology. As a result, based on the reviews and evaluation from the
existing system, it will serve as a guideline for developing the system and providing greater
function.

2.1 Related Literature

2.1.1 Development of a Fitness Mobile Application – According to Maria Zabinska (2020)

This research is all about healthy lifestyle, diet, physical activity, mobile development & android
development. The aim of this thesis is firstly to find out and define what it means to live healthily
in terms of diet and physical activity. Secondly, it is the development of a mobile application that
can motivate and encourage people to improve their health, diet, and physical activity by
providing challenges.
(https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/349640/Zabinska_Maria.pdf?sequence=2)
2.1.2 Fitness Plus – Health and Fitness App - According to Qayyum Kadri (2020)
Fitness Plus is a health and fitness platform that offers a range of services and resources to help
people achieve their fitness goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle. The platform typically
includes a combination of nutrition guidance, and wellness coaching. The system is aimed to be
used by peoples in rural areas where there are no designated qualified dietitians. This project
demonstrates the use of an Android Smartphone. The project enlightens how it can be used to
produce better functionalities for the ease of human lifestyle.
(https://www.academia.edu/43693827/
FITNESS_PLUS_HEALTH_AND_FITNESS_APP_SUBMITTED_BY_QAYYUM_KADRI?
fbclid=IwAR14H3a99XHYrwPOEWJFjGNNbVwzAUeHfNeEAn4OFIkZGMQdofSlGrrwWig)

2.1.3 Smartphones Applications for Patients’ Health and Fitness (2015) - According to John
P. Higgins MD, MBA, MPhil (2015)

In this research they seek for the effectiveness of mobile application in promoting healthy
nutrition behaviors. As more and more people start to use smartphones, they may provide a tool
to help improve a patient's health and fitness. Specifically, fitness applications or “apps” on
smartphones are programs that use data collected from a smartphone's inbuilt tools, such as the
Global Positioning System, accelerometer, microphone, speaker, and camera, to measure health
and fitness parameters. The apps then analyze these data and summarize them, as well as devise
individualized plans based on users' goals, provide frequent feedback, personalized coaching,
and additional motivation by allowing milestones to be shared on social media. Healthcare
providers are always seeking ways to monitor and improve their patients' health and fitness, and
smartphone applications may fill this niche. Health and fitness apps can help people with
exercise, diet, weight management, stress relief, and sleep monitoring.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002934315005379)
2.1.4 Home Smart Fitness System Integrating Fitness Program and Product Design -
According to Shengzhao Yu , Ming Lei , Yuqi Zhan (2021)
The purpose of this study is to propose the product interaction and design direction of intelligent
fitness system in home application scenarios under the concept of hybrid design, in order to
avoid the blind fitness of individuals based on fitness applications and enhance the intelligent
fitness in the home environment to bring more scientific guidance and richer experience. The
system consists of application carrier module, exercise prescription database, fitness APP and
interactive experience module. Furniture provides the possibility for the application carrier of the
system, and the huge sports prescription database provides suitable exercise prescriptions for the
users to choose according to their fitness environment.
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3501409.3501693)
2.1.5 Design of Metaverse-Based Physical Fitness Service for the Enhancement of Exercise
Capability for Youth - According to Jangwon Lee ,1Hyoung-Ki Yoon,2and Dongho Kim
(2023)
This study explains the case study to develop a metaverse-based training system for the
management of the physical fitness of youth. The study targeted developing a smart mirror-based
AR physical fitness system and a bone age-based physical fitness management service to
enhance exercise capability in youth.
(https://www.hindawi.com/journals/misy/2023/7272781/)

2.1.6 Chatbot for fitness management using IBM Watson - According to Sai Rugved Lola,
Rahul Dhadvai, Wei Wang, Ting Zhu (2021)

In this research the authors propose an idea to develop a chatbot for fitness management using
IBM Watson and integrate it with a web application. We proposed using Natural Language
Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) along with frameworks of IBM
Cloud Watson provided for the Chatbot Assistant. This software uses a serverless architecture to
combine the services of a professional by offering diet plans, home exercises, interactive
counseling sessions, fitness recommendations.
(https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.15167)

2.1.7 Human Digital Twin for Fitness Management - According to Barbara Rita Barricelli,
Elena Casiraghi, Jessica Gliozzo, Alessandro Petrini, Stefano Valtolina (2020)

Authors works describes a team of human Digital Twins (DTs), each tracking fitness-related
measurements describing an athlete's behavior in consecutive days (e.g. food income, activity,
sleep). After collecting enough measurements, the DT firstly predicts the physical twin
performance during training and, in case of non-optimal result, it suggests modifications in the
athlete's behavior. The athlete's team is integrated into SmartFit, a software framework for
supporting trainers and coaches in monitoring and manage athletes' fitness activity and results.
Through IoT sensors embedded in wearable devices and applications for manual logging (e.g.
mood, food income), SmartFit continuously captures measurements, initially treated as the
dynamic data describing the current physical twins' status. Dynamic data allows adapting each
DT's status and triggering the DT's predictions and suggestions. The analyzed measurements are
stored as the historical data, further processed by the DT to update (increase) its knowledge and
ability to provide reliable predictions. Results show that, thanks to the team of DTs, SmartFit
computes trustable predictions of the physical twins' conditions and produces understandable
suggestions which can be used by trainers to trigger optimization actions in the athletes'
behavior. Though applied in the sport context, SmartFit can be easily adapted to other monitoring
tasks.
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8981975)

2.2 Related Systems

2.2.1 Fitness Trackers - According to Darby Siscoe (2019)

Fitness trackers is a wearable smart watch that tracks specific data such as heart rate, steps
taken, sleep, and calories burn. It provides users the opportunity to monitor their lifestyles and
physical activities through visual representations, as well as provide ubiquitous connectivity to
their health.
(https://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/201716/SiscoeD_2019-
2_BODY.pdf)

2.2.2 A Personal Mobile Fitness Trainer - According to Saeksarn Sinnaso A/L Pla Set (2013)
A personal mobile fitness trainer specifically designed for Android users. It aims towards
contributing to regular physical activity and a healthier lifestyle. This project demonstrated the
potential to reach training goals and well-defined eating norm in a more efficient and effective
way to support maintaining long-term results. It is value added features with minimal to no cost
involved as compared to hire a 10 trainer in person.
(https://utpedia.utp.edu.my/id/eprint/13526/1/A%20%20Mobile%20Fitness%20Trainer
%20%20(Saeksarn,%2013773).pdf)
2.2.3 FitCoach: Virtual Fitness coach empowered by wearable mobile devices - According
to Xiaonan Guo, Jian Liu, Yingying chen (2017)

FitCoach is a virtual fitness coach that leverages the power of wearable mobile devices to help
individuals reach their fitness goals. The system combines data from wearable devices, such as
fitness trackers and smartwatches, with personalized coaching to provide users with a
comprehensive fitness experience.
With FitCoach, users can set fitness goals, track their progress, and receive personalized
coaching to help them stay motivated and on track. The system provides real-time feedback
based on the user's performance, which can help them adjust their workouts and improve their
overall fitness level.
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8057208)

2.2.4 A Low-Cost Smart Glove System for Real-Time Fitness Coaching - According to
Yongpan Zou, Dan Wang, Shicong Hong, Rukhsana Ruby, Dian Zhang, Kaishun Wu (2020)
This purpose of this research, they propose a novel low-cost system named iCoach, to provide
real-time monitoring and coaching service for strength training participants. Specially, they
design and implement a smart fitness glove, which can be seamlessly equipped with a pervasive
inertial unit. With this customized but low-cost device, it can recognize various training
programs, detect nonstandard behaviors while exercising, and assess exercising qualities of a
user. Their primary experimental results show that iCoach can recognize 15 sets of training
programs, detect three common nonstandard behaviors, and assess the quality of training with
high accuracy and reliability.
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9046259)

2.2.5 A Robotic Fitness Coach for the Elderly - According to Binnur Görer, Albert Ali Salah
& H. Levent Akın ( 2013)

The ultimate goal of ambient assisted living is to help elderly people live a healthy life in the
convenience of their homes by making more intelligent technology bring them a set of required
assistive tools. In this paper they describe a robotic fitness coach that learns a set of physical
exercises from a professional trainer, and assists elderly subjects in performing these gestures.
The gestures were selected from an actual training programme at an elderly care home. When
demonstrating gestures, the robot performs the learned gestures to the best of its abilities, and
while monitoring the elderly subject with an RGB-D camera, provides verbal guidance to
complement the visual display, correcting gestures on the fly. They provide a detailed description
of the training programme, the gesture acquisition, replication and evaluation algorithms, our
solution to the robot stability problem, and a set of preliminary user tests to validate our
approach.
(https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-03647-2_9#Abs1)

2.2.6 IoT-based intelligent fitness system - According to Binbin Yong a, Zijian Xu a, Xin
Wang a, Libin Cheng b, Xue Li a, Xiang Wu a, Qingguo Zhou a (2018)

In this research, authors design an Internet of things (IoT) based fitness system to monitor the
health statuses of exercisers. The system provides guidance for exercisers. When
exercising, the exercise data is collected by sensors and fitness band. Subsequently, these data
are sent to the system to be analyzed. With the help of artificial intelligence technology, the
system can extract useful guidance information for users’ body building.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0743731517301570)

2.2.7 Personalized Digital Fitness Coach - According to Leon Rothkrantz (2021)

A Personalized Digital Fitness Coach is an AI-powered system that uses data analysis, machine
learning, and personalized coaching to help individuals achieve their fitness goals.
In this research paper a digital coach will be introduced providing digital support and
supervision. The digital coach offers personalized fitness program, supervises athletes during
fitness exercises and provides a supporting system concerning injuries. A prototype of the
developed system can be downloaded as an app on a smart phone.
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3472410.3472412#sec-cit)