New Technology - Progio

Have had the great fortune to be offered a Progio Training companion to road test by a friend of mine, Darren Hughes over at Satellite Fitness in Melbourne. It's a virtual training device for use by personal trainers, their clients or anyone looking for great workout advice without the cost of a personal trainer.

As a Personal Trainer you can create workouts to give to your clients if they are travelling for extended periods of time. One of the best tools I've come across to help you create these is PTontheNET , but there are others. Basically, you design the workouts, upload them to the training companion loaded with the Progio software and hand over to your client to do their stuff. Your clients can then record and upload their workout records for you to check and provide feedback.

The Progio software is compatible with Windows Mobile devices - yes, that's right, your Phone/PDA can also become your virtual personal trainer with Progio. The only drawback I've come across is that my 3 year old imate just doesn't have enough memory to take on the software AND training sessions (must be time for an upgrade - hehe).

The device looks a bit bulky and at first you wonder how you're going to go for a run with it, but the design cleverly and securely fits into the palm of your hand and isn't noticeably heavy: resulting in a surprisingly great user experience! I've run, walked, done sprint sessions and many combinations of the above and never had the worry of it slipping out and off my hand - so it's not a distraction.

The Progio Training companion also incorporates Polar compatible heart rate monitoring software, and can be bundled with a Polar chest strap. You can load your own music onto it, too! It has the capacity to handle video images of activities, whether they be animated or live video, so you can see what you're supposed to be doing as opposed to what your interpretation of the written instructions might be. Having said the written instructions are very clear with the HyperStrike workouts I've downloaded, but as a Trainer, I'd like to know that as little as possible is left to my Clients's imagination, especially when I can't be there.

All in all, I thinkit's a gerat innovation,a fantastic tool and opens up soo many more possibilities with regard to helping people be active - there are getting fewer and fewer excuses to not be "on the move". GO PROGIO!!