Pocket Trainer: A personal trainer in your hand

Updated 10:23, Jan. 14, 2010.

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Eric Hess and Robin Ruwe want to put a personal trainer in your hand.

The two invented Pocket Trainer — a smartphone application that creates for you a personalized exercise program, keeps track of your progress and even challenges you to do more next time.

“The problem is, there are not a lot of people out there who are able to afford hands-on personal training,” Hess said. “The fitness industry has not developed a system that … effectively addresses this problem.”

Lack of knowledge, reliable information and proper guidance about exercise training is a big part of the problem. “People don’t know what they’re doing wrong. They don’t know what article to trust,” Ruwe said. “Sometimes, people don’t realize they aren’t healthy. They don’t know what it feels like to feel good.”

Hess and Ruwe think they’ve solved these problems — for a one-time download fee of $12.99. At the moment, Pocket Trainer works only on BlackBerry smartphones and is soon to be released for Google’s Android phones. You can buy the app at BlackBerry App World for $7.99 for a limited time. The two American Council on Exercise-certified trainers are working on applications for other mobile platforms.

They are trying to tap into the $100 billion-a-year wellness industry, which is growing by leaps and bounds largely as an answer to rising health care costs. A brief browse of the Internet revealed several apps that track your training routine — even certain types of routines, like strength-training or yoga. There are even apps that prescribe for you a training diet.

But Pocket Trainer appears to be unique in its ability to craft a routine just for you — based on how you answer questions in your profile — and then automatically track and update your routine as you gain proficiency or change locations.

“First of all, people go in, we ask them some questions to set their user profile,” Ruwe said. “We ask a little bit about their body, their goals, what kind of equipment they have, where they want to train.”

Users can change their routines daily to account for travel, caring for a sick child at home, or duration of workouts. “Life happens,” Ruwe said.

The two designed Pocket Trainer to work especially hard on your core muscles, which include abdominals, back and pelvis. Strengthening these muscles helps your balance and stability. Pocket Trainer will help you warm up, tell you which exercises to do, how many times. “There is a lot going on with Pocket Trainer, but it’s simple to use,” Hess said.

It will show you a written description of the exercise and a video of how it should be done. “We’re sticklers on form,” Ruwe said.

At Pocket Trainer’s Web site, potential users can view a segment of cable show The Balancing Act that features the app or read reviews at BlackBerry App World.

The two trainers, who train at the same facility, got the idea for their application early last year. “We knew right away that we wanted to utilize smartphones as the medium,” Hess said. “People want something that’s quick, easy with them right now.”

The two sketched their screen designs on paper, Ruwe said. “We filled up a notebook of what we wanted it to look like.” They hired contractors to program the app, design its graphics and market it.

They even found a couple of angel investors to invest in their company, CORE Interaction Inc., Ruwe said.

Since launching their app in October, they have released several updates, adding a “Tutorial/FAQs” feature and educational information to its Web site, Hess said. “We have a huge vision” for getting this app to the masses and using it to promote health and wellness, he said.

“We have a long road ahead of us,” especially when it comes to getting insurance companies to use the tool to promote health, Hess said. But already, Pocket Trainer “is ranked 13th out of 124 health and wellness apps” at BlackBerry App World, he said.