Fitness professionals
use our mobile applications
to stay on top of things.

Gymdeck founder Alena Dundas is pleased to announce the company’s successful acquisition by US-based OptimisCorp, which brings mobile apps to the provider’s diversified healthcare technology and services.

Gymdeck was initially self-funded and together with OptimisCorp, we’re bringing together our shared passions for empowering fitness and sports health professionals in providing the best services possible. Leveraging a cutting-edge development team, we’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries of great mobile apps for the fitness industry.

Here’s to the amazing journeys lying ahead of us all!

So one of the interesting challenges we’ve had since Gymdeck launched in beta a few weeks ago was the unexpected demand from places like the United States: California and New York, to be precise. Though not at all surprising given both the Golden State and the Big Apple’s passion for health and fitness!

While this is great news for us, it means we’re now planning to charge in US dollars instead of British Pounds. This will take a few extra weeks to get into place as credit card companies aren’t fans of keeping things simple. So to make sure we do this properly we’ve decided to make Gymdeck completely free* until the end of May (instead of April as originally planned) – which is even better news for you, our customers!

*After this, Gymdeck will continue to offer a free 30-day trial period for new customers

Something pretty awesome happened at last week’s 2011 GeeknRolla conference: Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe’s editor, completely took us by surprise by personally announcing Gymdeck to the 500+ packed house of technology founders, venture capitalists and press. And the 3000 folks visiting on the live stream. Needless to say, it was slightly overwhelming and we’re just delighted that the response Gymdeck is getting has been so positive. Thank you Mike!

Check it out here!

Gymdeck is a new mobile app aimed at disorganised personal trainers

Gymdeck is a new mobile app that allows fitness professionals like personal trainers to manage their diaries, clients and payments in one app. It’s launching on iPhone & Android, with plans to roll it out across other platforms and is targeting the combined £70m US / UK market of fitness professionals. The company is self-funded.

Click here to read all

To help personal trainers stay ahead of the curve, we’re pleased to announce the beta launch of Gymdeck in beta! We’d really love it to hear your feedback & its free until the end of April! We’re already celebrating with workouts

The Guardian recently wrote that the UK’s obesity problem is so widespread that the country’s ambulance fleets are having to buy specialist equipment to cope. The cost is around £15,000 ($25,000) to refit existing ambulances and no less than £90,000 for new “bariatric” ambulances for morbidly obese people.

Sure, updating infrastructure to reflect demand is necessary. But wouldn’t some of these funds be better spent on prevention and fitness schemes? At a time when government budgets are being slashed and the public are having to adapt to “austerity” measures, it strikes me as absurd that the issue of obesity isn’t being tackled head-on. Tough measures are being brought in across the board where costs are too high, so why can’t the same be done for the obese?

Considering the widespread redundancies NHS staff are facing and the banning of certain operations as part of the plan to save up to £20 billion over the next 5 years, simply throwing money at a problem like obesity is crazy. With nearly two thirds of British adults and one third of children overweight or obese, the UK is Europe’s fattest nation. If continued unchecked, obesity in the UK will cost the state £32 billion per year.

Here’s an idea: how about spending half of these funds allocated for a single “bariatric” ambulance, £45,000, on setting up local fitness schemes for obese people? If the average personal trainer costs £40 per hour, then 1 hour a week over 40 weeks would cost £1,600 per person. Throw in 2 hours a week participating in a mandatory community fitness class and you’re on track to significantly improve the health and fitness of almost 30 obese people . In small local areas, wouldn’t that figure alone reduce the need to make these expensive, unnecessary ambulance upgrades?

In fact there are likely to be many personal trainers who, if contracted by the local council, would happily train 40-45 obese people a week for that kind of fixed income. Definitely more the kind of investment I’d happily see my taxes being used for.

Things have been incredibly busy here at Gymdeck the past few weeks. Our amazing developers have been working like crazy to launch the beta of our mobile application and the previews we’ve just seen look incredible. The product focuses on solving all the daily challenges that personal trainers have to deal with when managing their busy schedules and unpredictable clients. Stay tuned, we’ll be publishing more details as soon as we can!