Online training: tracking your clients for real

Tracking online training clients is real when it does not depend on the client writing to you: every week you collect the same data, review it in a fixed slot in your diary and reply with a decision. It is not about being available at all hours, but about knowing who needs your attention today and giving it to them.

Tracking is not answering messages

Replying quickly is fine, but it does not tell you whether the client trained on Tuesday or how their week went. Tracking that works has three parts:

1. Data that arrives by itself, without you having to ask for it piece by piece.
2. A review on a fixed day, always the same.
3. A reply: adjust the plan, encourage or wait, and tell the client.

If any of the three is missing, tracking depends on your memory and your message inbox. And with every client you add, memory fails sooner.

What data to track (and what not to ask for)

More data is not better tracking. What matters is always asking for the same things, so you can compare one week with the previous one:

• What they train: the sessions they log against the ones that were planned, with what they record in each.
• What they tell you: how their week went, told by them in a short report, the check-in.
• Their measurements: weight and circumferences, as often as you have agreed.
• Progress photos: only if the client wants them and with their consent, which we cover below.

A useful rule: do not ask for data you are not going to look at. Every field the client fills in and nobody reads teaches them that filling it in is pointless.

The weekly check-in: closing the loop

The check-in is the report the client sends you every week. It works when it meets three conditions:

• Short and always the same. The same questions every week allow comparison; a form that keeps changing does not.
• On a fixed day. If all your online clients send it on the same day, you can reserve a block of your diary to review them.
• With a reply. If the client sends their check-in and gets nothing back, it is easy for the next one to be filled in with less enthusiasm.

The reply does not have to be long. What matters is that the client can tell someone has read what they wrote and that, if needed, their plan changes.

Organise your tracking week

Tracking holds up if it has a place in your diary. A simple outline:

1. Every day, a few minutes: see who has not trained, who has sent you their check-in and who has no plan, and write only to whoever needs it.
2. One fixed block a week: answer the check-ins, one by one.
3. From time to time, client by client: compare their measurements and photos with the previous ones and decide whether the plan stays the same or changes.

That third step is your professional judgement, and we do not go into it here: what matters is that it has a date and does not depend on you remembering.

Photos and health data – what the GDPR says

Part of what you collect when tracking can be information about your client's health, and the law protects it in a special way.

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the GDPR, known in Spain as RGPD) defines “data concerning health” as “personal data related to the physical or mental health of a natural person, including the provision of health care services, which reveal information about his or her health status”.

Its Article 9.1 prohibits the processing of several categories of data, among them “data concerning health”, and its Article 9.2.a) provides that this prohibition does not apply, among other cases, where “the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes”, except where Union or Member State law provides that the prohibition “may not be lifted by the data subject”.

Article 7.1 adds that, where processing is based on consent, the controller “shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data”. And Article 7.3 says that the data subject “shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time”.

Which data in your tracking falls within that definition and what you rely on to process it depends on what you collect and why; if in doubt, consult a data protection professional. If you rely on their consent, in practice it is worth:

• Asking for consent before collecting that data, explaining what you will use it for.
• Keeping a record of when they gave it and whether they have withdrawn it.
• Treating body photos separately, with their own consent, and not using them for anything you have not agreed.
• Being clear on how you give them a copy of their data or how you delete it if they ask.

When to write to a client

Set your own thresholds and stick to them: how many days without logging workouts worry you, how many planned sessions missed in a week seem too many, or how long without a check-in is too long. They depend on each client's plan: a slack week is not the same in a plan with many sessions as in one with few.

When someone crosses a threshold, start with a short, specific message, along the lines of “I saw you couldn't train this week, what happened?”, rather than a reproach. If it keeps happening, perhaps the plan does not fit their life and it is time to talk about it. How to spot in time who is about to quit is covered in how to retain your clients.

How Entrenify handles it

This is what Entrenify does in each part of the tracking, kept separate from what the law says:

• Check-in: in the weekly check-in the client sends you their weight, how much of the plan they followed, their mood, their energy, their hours of sleep and their notes from their app, and you can reply. The fields are fixed: there are no customisable questionnaires.
• Check-in notifications: when a client sends you their check-in you get a notification, and when you reply they are notified. If they have not sent it, you can send them a reminder by email and push notification, with no health data in the message.
• Measurements: weight and circumferences (waist, hips, chest, arm, leg) and body fat percentage, which the client or the trainer can record.
• Progress: in each client's record you see their charts for weight, circumferences and sessions per week.
• Photos: progress photos, with a separate consent for body photos, and a comparison tool between two dates.
• Consent: until the client gives explicit consent to the processing of their health data, their measurements cannot be recorded (including those you take) and they cannot send their check-in, and the trainer cannot accept on the client's behalf. The client gives it from their app and the date is recorded.
• Their data – the client can download a copy of their data themselves, and erasure is handled by the trainer, who can delete their client's data.
• Chat: trainer-client chat with an inbox, attachments (images and PDF), voice notes, groups and search within the conversation. There is no video in the chat and no built-in video calling.
• Daily alert: a single alert a day, at your chosen time, with everything together: clients who are not paying, who have not trained for days, who have no plan or who have a new check-in. You set the thresholds, and if there is nothing to report, nothing is sent.

Entrenify does not connect to bands or watches: what you see is what the client logs or tells you. How your client experiences all this from their phone is covered in the app for your clients, and the rest of the product is on the Entrenify home page (in Spanish).

Sources consulted

Checked on 9 October 2026. We link to the original source so that you can consult the current text.

• Reglamento (UE) 2016/679 del Parlamento Europeo y del Consejo, de 27 de abril de 2016 (Reglamento general de protección de datos): artículos 4.15, 7 y 9. BOE (DOUE).