Coaching and Services•Features•Product Upgrades and Releases Inside the ABC Trainerize 2026 Roadmap: New Tools for Coaching, Growth, and Scale

Melisa Gjika

In this ABC Trainerize Product Chat, Sharad Mohan, Co-Founder and President at ABC Trainerize, is joined by Mo Iqbal, Chief Strategy Officer at ABC Fitness, and Kelly Card, SVP of Product at ABC Trainerize.

Together, they unpack where the coaching industry is headed and how the ABC Trainerize app will evolve in 2026.

🍿 Watch it in full here!

A Look Back at ABC Trainerize Product Updates in 2025

Throughout 2025, ABC Trainerize shipped updates focused on four core areas of running a modern coaching business: client experience, coaching delivery, business growth, and operational efficiency.

Together, these releases strengthened how coaches engage clients, deliver holistic coaching, and scale sustainably.

Here’s what we dropped in 2025:

Coaching and Programming Depth

Client Experience and Business Growth

Operations and Compliance

Wearables and Health Data

These updates laid the groundwork for our 2026 roadmap, where hybrid coaching, longevity, AI, and business growth come together more intentionally.

Quick Perspective: Where’s the Fitness Industry Headed?

Fitness is no longer experienced as a standalone product or a short-term program. It is becoming an ongoing relationship. 57% of clients come for health and physical outcomes, but what keeps them engaged over time is connection, accountability, and a sense of belonging.

That shift is showing up clearly across coaching models, community-driven experiences, and hybrid delivery. 

Belonging has now become the key currency of engagement. We see it across all data points: when people feel part of a tribe, attendance and retention increase, and churn drops.

ABC Trainerize deliberately focuses on this. We believe that connection can be engineered, not left to chance. Through product features, coaching workflows, and education, our roadmap is centered on helping you create shared goals, consistent touchpoints, and meaningful community at scale.

Overall, coaching businesses that can foster belonging will outperform those that only deliver programs. At ABC Trainerize, we’re working to support the next era of relationship-driven coaching.

🍿 Enjoy the full conversation here!

A Look Ahead at ABC Trainerize’s 2026 Roadmap: 6+ Product Updates Incoming

Coaching does not look the way it did even a few years ago. It is no longer linear, short-term, or tied to a single delivery model. It is hybrid, relationship-driven, and increasingly long-term. The signals are already here:

  • 70%+ of ABC Trainerize coaches now run hybrid businesses, blending in-person, online, and async coaching
  • 57% of clients come for health, but stay for connection, making belonging a primary retention driver
  • 42% of coaches actively use community tactics like challenges, groups, and shared accountability
  • 56% of coaches already use AI to support programming, nutrition, messaging, and operations
  • Referrals convert 40% higher than other acquisition channels
  • Referred clients have 30% higher lifetime value
  • More than 55,000 training businesses use ABC Trainerize every day, shaping feedback at scale

The sections below break down how each of these shifts shows up in the product and what it means in practice.

#1: Expanding Into Holistic Health and Longevity

Longevity is moving into the mainstream, and coaches are becoming the primary way people access it. The focus is shifting from short programs to long-term health, or better yet, from “the next 12 weeks” to “the next 20 years.”

So, for ABC Trainerize, this means expanding beyond workouts into holistic health signals such as HRV, mood, and energy. These inputs help connect training stress, recovery, and daily readiness to long-term outcomes. 

This direction builds on recent Apple Health and Google Health integrations and pushes the platform further into longevity-focused coaching.

What this means in the product:

  • HRV support to link stress, recovery, and performance
  • Continued evolution of check-in forms and habit tracking
  • Holistic well-being as the organizing principle
  • AI-assisted programming to support sustainable, long-term plans

The end goal to help you deliver longevity-focused, high-ticket programs without adding complexity.

#2: Community as a Coaching Multiplier

Community can be a powerful driver of motivation, but only when intentionally designed.

During the conversation, Sharad called out what does not work: massive, anonymous groups where participation feels invisible. His Peloton example, being rider 6,500 out of 8,000, illustrated how scale without connection can be demotivating rather than inspiring.

Community works best when it amplifies coaching, not when it competes with it. We will continue our work on treating the community as a growth multiplier, engineered intentionally through:

Challenges in 2026 will lean into both coach-led and client-led formats, designed to create momentum and shared effort directly inside your app. The shift is away from one-off competition and toward challenges that reinforce consistency, accountability, and connection.

The goal is not to rank clients against each other. It’s to give you a scalable way to activate community around shared goals that support long-term progress.

  • Groups built for long-term outcomes, not short programs

Group training is evolving from short, outcome-based programs into spaces anchored in ongoing coaching relationships. Rather than focusing on surface metrics like reps completed or calories burned, groups increasingly rally around recovery, stress management, consistency, and longevity markers. 

With habits, check-in forms, HRV, and mood and energy tracking coming into play, groups become a place to build relationships and shared identity over time, not just temporary motivation.

#3: Client Acquisition as the Top Business Problem

Coaches consistently report that getting clients is harder than delivering coaching. Most personal training programs run 3–4 months, which caps the average client relationship at around 5 months. Growth, not coaching quality, is the bottleneck.

To address this, ABC Trainerize Business Add-ons are positioned as the growth layer inside ABC Trainerize, designed to help coaches acquire and convert clients without leaving the platform.

  • Referrals as the core growth engine

ABC Trainerize data shows referrals convert at a 40% higher rate than other acquisition methods, and referred clients have ~30% higher lifetime value. Trainerize Business leans into referrals as a repeatable growth engine rather than a passive feature.

  • In-app prospect and trial journeys that convert

Trainerize Business brings prospect flows, trial products, and tiered memberships into the coaching app itself. Referral trials are designed to create a flywheel, turning existing clients into acquisition channels while keeping the entire journey inside one system.

#4: Continuous, More Powerful Wearables Integrations

The value of wearables is not more data. It is better conversations, better decisions, and stronger coaching relationships built around real-life context.

With around 75% of ABC Trainerize’s user base on Apple devices, Apple Watch integration remains a practical default, especially for entry-level clients. Fitbit was also called out as a strong starting point, while ring wearables like Oura stand out for sleep and overnight recovery tracking.

The bigger point from the panel was not which wearable wins, but how the data is used. Any wearable is better than none if it creates awareness and nudges behavior, whether that’s hitting steps, prioritizing sleep, or staying hydrated. What wearables still lack is interpretation.

This is where the coach becomes essential, and where ABC Trainerize is aiming:

  • Meet clients where they already are

Clients will choose different devices. The platform’s role is to connect coaches to those signals, not force a single ecosystem.

  • Turn data into a coaching context

Wearables generate numbers, but coaches provide meaning. Bringing signals like HRV into ABC Trainerize allows stress, recovery, sleep, and energy to be interpreted through coaching, accountability, and personalization.

#5: AI Capabilities that Augment Coaching Work

Around 56% of coaches are using AI across their businesses, from programming and nutrition to messaging and operations. Clients are doing the same, using tools like ChatGPT from situational guidance to even holistic coaching. The shift is happening faster than expected.

The panel was clear on the line that matters. AI replaces admin and busywork, not the coach. Context, empathy, accountability, personalization, and voice remain human. AI’s role is to remove friction, not identity. This is how it will show up in the product:

  • AI workout builder

Workout building and editing are among the biggest time sinks for coaches. The AI workout builder is designed to create strong programs using client context while preserving the coach’s style and decision-making. 

Early alpha results show a 75% reduction in build time, with a target of 80–90%. File uploads also allow coaches to bring in existing programs and build on past progression instead of starting from zero.

  • AI as a scale and quality multiplier, not a replacement

We’re working on extending AI applications to nutrition, too, not as a replacement for coaching, but as a scale and quality multiplier across meal planning and tracking. The 2026 direction includes:

  • More flexible meal plans
  • Reusable templates
  • Daily calorie and macro configurability
  • Coach-controlled meal logging notifications

AI-supported nutrition also expands into easier photo-based food logging and AI-assisted meal plan generation, helping coaches move faster while keeping personalization and accountability in the coach-client relationship.

#6: Reducing Operational Complexity With an All-in-One Platform and a Redesigned Client App

Running a coaching business as a solopreneur or small team creates friction fast. The panel was explicit that tool sprawl and context switching are holding coaches back. 

Building on the work done in 2025, we’re continuing to bring business, coaching, and client experiences into one system, so you don’t have to stitch together multiple tools to operate.

This simplification shows up in two visible ways:

  • More workflows living inside ABC Trainerize

We are designing business tools like referrals, trials, tiered memberships, messaging, habits, check-ins, nutrition, and reporting to work together instead of as separate layers.

That’s why many of the updates discussed here seem to overlap. They are intentionally interconnected. Signals like HRV, for example, don’t just shape 1:1 or premium longevity coaching, but also inform group experiences, habits, and how community is built around shared progress. 

We want to digitize or engineer how coaching systems actually work. 

  • A client app redesigned around real usage, not assumptions

The client app redesign was driven by a mobile usability study focused on how fitness consumers actually behave in apps. Changes included clearer navigation, updated spacing, and interaction patterns that match modern mobile standards. Feedback has been largely positive, and we are actively using negative feedback to drive ongoing iterations rather than ignoring it.

You’ll have more control over client communication with upcoming messenger upgrades, including pinned messages, threads, and scheduled posts.

Conclusion: Hybrid Reality, Holistic Signals, and Simpler Growth

With over 70% of ABC Trainerize coaches now operating in hybrid models, our product team is locked in to building best-in-class capabilities that support in-person and online experiences together, at scale.

As coaching evolves, short program cycles are giving way to longer-term relationships. Coaches will increasingly use holistic signals like HRV, mood, energy, and recovery to build sustainable, high-value services that extend far beyond a few weeks.

Growth remains a core focus. We’re here to support your business directly through referrals, prospect journeys, and tiered memberships, while the broader platform continues to simplify operations and reduce tool sprawl for solopreneurs and small teams.

Therefore, the goal moving forward is not to add more features, but to reduce friction. Fewer disconnected tools, clearer signals, and systems that reflect how coaching businesses actually operate today inside ABC Trainerize.

Help Us Improve!

Finally, we encourage you to stay active in the ideas forum! Vote on feature requests, and share detailed feedback through NPS surveys. Your feedback directly shapes the roadmap and determines what we build next.

🍿 Catch all the insights on what’s next for ABC Trainerize coaches here!

What do you think?