5 Industry Voices Share What Connected Fitness Means to Them

MoveLab builds the software that connects fitness hardware to the people training on it. Our platform, MoveLab Connect, gives equipment manufacturers, gyms, and fitness startups a ready-built connectivity library and app infrastructure, so a rowing brand or a boutique studio can launch a connected product or experience without building that engineering layer from scratch. Since 2010, that work has put us inside a wide range of connected fitness products, from elite rowing hardware to rehabilitation devices to real-time coaching platforms.

That vantage point exposes us to a lot of different definitions of "connected fitness". A rowing coach thinks about it differently than a hardware manufacturer, who thinks about it differently than a media company building community around the sport. So we asked five industry partners working in this space one direct question: what does connected fitness actually mean to you?

Here's what they told us.

1. Neil Bergenroth — Power Ten Development, LLC

"For me, connected fitness means using technology to make coaching more human, not less human. In rowing, the data from a workout only becomes valuable when it is connected to the athlete’s technique, physiology, mindset, goals, and training history. I see connected fitness as an ecosystem of feedback: the athlete does the work, the system captures what happened, the coach interprets it, and the athlete learns how to train and perform better the next time."

Neil is a rowing coach and the founder of Power Ten Development, where he's building a real-time coaching platform that pairs live force-curve data with video for rowers training on RP3 machines. What surprised him most while building it was how quickly a technical question turned into a coaching one, once the data was flowing, the real challenge became how to deliver it without overwhelming the athlete.

2. Ben Duggan — WaterRower

"Connected fitness means enhancing the fitness experience through data tracking, instruction, and entertainment."

WaterRower has been making water-resistance rowing machines for decades, and its connected products carry that legacy into the digital era. For Ben, what's stood out most while building in this space is simply how fast connected fitness keeps changing.

3. RP3 Rowing

"For us, connected fitness means more engagement with our hardware."

RP3 builds dynamic rowing machines used by elite athletes and national teams, the same machines behind roughly 70% of the medals rowed at the Paris 2024 Olympics. For a hardware company like RP3, connected fitness starts with the machine itself: software that makes people want to spend more time on it.

4. Kris Humbarger — HAEYVEN B.V.

"To me, connected fitness means machines and workout data linked with the rest of a facility's customer data."

Kris is behind HAEYVEN and the ANTAGONIST®. His view of connected fitness comes from that same operator's lens: the value isn't a single workout's data, it's linking that data to everything else a facility already knows about a client.

5. Salty Lemon Entertainment (EXR)

"Connected fitness means shared, enjoyable suffering built through online community and responsibility."

Salty Lemon Entertainment take is less technical than the rest of the group and more about the feeling connected fitness creates. For them, what makes that “suffering” enjoyable is the layer of engagement connected fitness adds on top of it, the sense that you're not doing it alone, but alongside an online community.

The thread that runs through all five

Read back through those five answers and they are not only one thing. Connected fitness is making coaching more human, turning hardware into something worth spending time on, tying a single workout into everything a facility already knows about a client, building a community strong enough to get you through a genuinely hard workout. Connected fitness, put simply, is a relationship between a person and their experience on the equipment they're standing on.

Want to build something like this with us? [Get in touch with MoveLab]