2015 IEEE International Symposium on Nanoelectronic and Information Systems
A Smart Gym Framework: Theoretical Approach
Abhay Jain
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology (BHU)
Varanasi, India
abhay.jain.cse11@iitbhu.ac.in
Abstract In this paper, we propose a framework for a smart
gym. The framework consists of a simple model and prototypes
which can be implemented in a gym. The framework is
basically an implementation of the smart city based on IOT.
The foremost objective of the proposed framework is to
develop an intrusive technology that will not only provide
valuable and innovative services to the user by integrating the
user and the smart devices but also provide an efficient
utilization of the resources present in the gym.
Keywords- IOT; Sports training; Tele training, Smart Gym;
I. INTRODUCTION
Of late design and development of smart cities has attained
great significance especially in the context of urban
development in developing as well as least developed
countries. Smart cities comprise of ubiquitous devices
which provide a new generation user-centric services
affecting the way, the user communicates with the
surrounding environment. Following are the major issues
and challenges which one confronts in the course of
development of smart cities:
a) Design issues: At the inception of the development
process, the major challenge faced by the developer is
concerning the design of a prototype that fits and satisfies
all possible requirements of every smart city. But
practically, a single model cannot be emulated in all locales
due to varying social, cultural and economic conditions in
different smart cities. Therefore, we need to provide rather
localized design patterns, according to the different
prevailing conditions as well the availability of resources to
different smart cities.
b) Commencement cost: Smart objects involve
sensors/devices which communicate with users and services
and perform various computations. These communications
and computations with a high level of accuracy and
intricacy increase the cost of the system manifold. So, one
of our main objectives is to implement the system as
frugally and economically as possible.
c) Running cost: In general, we require small
footprint technology which can be embedded in various
978-1-4673-9692-9/15 $31.00 2015 IEEE 191
DOI 10.1109/iNIS.2015.32
ubiquitous devices. This technology must ensure a reduced
power consumption which will make it energy efficient so
as to support low carbon economy.
d) Privacy concerns: IOT being a pervasive
technology usually produces a large amount of private and
sensitive information about the user. In order to thwart any
possible attack on the user privacy by intruders, we need to
maintain a strict check and protection system. This will
maintain the integrity of the information as well as resolve
the privacy concerns of the user.
This work provides a conceptual framework of a smart gym.
The major problem faced by a user or a customer going to a
gym is regarding maintaining a gym schedule. This schedule
is based on basic user objectives and progress made in the
direction of those objectives. The user inputs and the
progress depend from user to user. The personalization of
workout schedule for a user becomes a costlier affair as it
involves expert manpower which eventually increases the
cost of the schedule. Another problem faced by the user is to
maintain the past history of the progress made by the user
which affects the present and future schedule. Further,
during the execution of the workout schedule, proper
utilization of the gym resources are one of the challenges
faced by the gym owner/instructor. The proposed
framework attempts to address these issues.
II. RELATED WORK
With steady progress in the field of IOT, new applications
which are meant to improve the quality of life of an
individual are emerging. The proposed framework is based
on previous studies done in the field of strength training and
computer science. For instance, work has been done to
enhance the tracking of the user and keeping the trainer up
to date about the accuracy of movements performed by the
user, using motion sensors [1]. A similar proposal is given
in [2] with the main difference that the conception takes into
account gathered data from sensor-equipped machines to
propose a fuzzy logic based evaluation of strength training
exercises. In [3] the authors proposes an application with a
music recommendation and exercise scheduling system on a
light and small smartphone which is used to prompt
participation in the interval training without any large or
expensive equipment. Moreover in [4] and [5] the authors
developed a low-cost framework for golf training using
inertial sensors and body sensor networks. In [6] the authors
propose a motion analysis framework which uses wearable
sensors to track the orientation of athletes body
movements. Moreover, a normative data is generated which
is compared to the subjects motion data for any deviation in
order to identify potential injury related factors.
Fig1: Class Diagram
III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The system has been designed to achieve the following three
objectives:
Personalized workout regimen: To provide user with
personalized workout suggestions which are generated by
the system based on the vital statistics, machine feedback
and the workout history of the user so that the user obtains
optimum gains according to his/her fitness goals.
Personalized bookkeeping and comprehensive tracking: As
suggested in the previous objective to raise the level of
effectiveness accomplished by the exercises it is necessary
to track the user activities in a comprehensive manner as
well as maintain individual history records of each and
every user.
Improve the user involvement: We need to adjust the
workout regimen according to the available resources and
thereby increasing the involvement of the user with the
surrounding environment.
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In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives we have
designed various modules in our system (Fig 1).Following
are the main components of our system:
Fitness Device: The fitness device acts as a communication
interface between the user and the system. It recommends
the user about the next set of exercise he needs to perform
from different exercises which form a part of his dynamic
workout schedule. Along with this, it also keeps track of any
abnormalities in the vital stats of the user like blood
pressure, the rate of pulsation etc.
Gym Equipment: Gym equipment is the representation of all
the smart machines present in the gym. These smart
machines record the number of sets and repetitions
performed by the user, the force applied and the time-
elapsed. It acts as an interface between our system and the
workout machines present in the gym. Whenever other
components require any information regarding the
occupancy of the machine or the feedback of the machine
with respect to any user, they can interact with the smart
machines using this interface. Other system components can
also prescribe appropriate load to workout machines using
the Gym equipment module.
History Management: After a user performs exercise on a
particular machine all the information regarding the sets and
repetitions of the exercise is stored in the database. This
procedure resembles a typical bookkeeping procedure.
Whenever a new schedule is to be formulated it takes
cognizance of the past records of the user.
Identity Management: The Identity management module
manages the ID of different users by providing new users
with new IDs and by deleting the IDs of old users.
Whenever a user enters a smart gym environment the
identity management identifies the user and retrieves any
appropriate information about the user from the database.
Level Management: The Level management module
manages all the levels which are present in our system.
These levels are dynamic and have completely flexible
boundaries. The flexibility of these levels is managed by the
level management component. In addition to this, the level
management module is also concerned with promotion or
demotion of users to different levels based on their
performance on the set targets.
Workout Management: Workout management is the part of the
system where the dynamic workout for each and every user is
generated using the information retrieved from other system
components. The information comprises of the history related
information along with the machine scheduling and feedback
related information. The level management module puts the
user into a particular level and provides this level regarding
information to the workout management component. The
workout management utilizes all this information and creates a
dynamic workout for the user.
Occupant recognition: Occupant recognition component
identifies whether a machine is in idle state or not. If an
occupant is present, the occupant is recognized using the
unique user ID and the time since when the machine is
engaged by a particular user is also identified.
of the machine. This prediction along with precedence
constraints of the exercises is used to formulate a dynamic
workout for the user. For the purpose of implementation, we
divide our proposed framework into 3 different parts (Fig2).

Feedback generator: Feedback generator generates the

feedback based on the number of sets and reps the user
ought to perform and the number of sets and reps that the
user actually performed.

Scheduler: Scheduler component schedules the workout

such that in a multiuser and multi-machine environment, the
most time efficient workout is recommended to all the users.
In addition to this, it takes care of particular exercise
preceding another exercise as a necessary constraint.

Machine Management: Machine management module

interacts with the gym equipment directly and retrieves
information which it further supplies to occupant
recognition, feedback generator, and scheduler module.
These modules format the information according to their
requirements and provide the machine management module
with the formatted information. All this information is
supplied to the main module whenever asked for.

Main module: Main module directly interacts with the user

via the fitness device. It provides the user with
recommendations along with the dynamic workout which
the user needs to perform. In addition to this, it also
manages different information from other components.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION
The aforementioned components in our system work in
tandem in order to provide a reliable workout schedule to
the user. Whenever a user registers for a gym membership,
his/her fitness device is provided a unique ID and a
relationship is established between his/her fitness device
and the gym equipment. A new database entry is made for
the user which contains the users age, height, weight, BMI,
Body fat% and other relevant information. Initially, the user
is asked to perform a set of predefined exercises to identify
his/her capabilities. The system contains various flexible
levels ranging from complete beginner to advance which
are managed using the level management module. The
assessment of the user ability identifies the appropriate level
in which the user must be placed. Every level has a
predefined weekly schedule which comprises of a set of
exercises to be performed on the daily basis. There are
various constraints on the performance of exercises such as;
an isolation exercise must be preceded by a compound
exercise which in turn must be preceded by a full body
warm-up. These constraints, if any, are explicitly mentioned
in the predefined weekly schedule. The history information
of the user, as well as the machine feedback, is utilized to
make the workout schedule much more user specific. The
sequence of the exercises to be performed is not completely
rigid and the schedule is more or less dynamic. Whether a
particular machine is occupied by another user and if so,
since when, is used in order to predict the future availability
Fig 2: Connectivity Diagram
A. INTERFACE
The gym equipment modules, as well as the fitness device
module, provide the machine and user interface
respectively. The fitness device gives specific instructions to
the user regarding the exercises he/she needs to perform
along with the recommended repetitions and sets. If any
workout machine on which user needs to perform exercise
according to the schedule is already engaged, then in that
case the user is not concerned about the occupation of the
machine and our system recommends another machine
based on the workout schedule. This recommendation is
made keeping in mind any precedence constraints related
with the machine. The occupancy related information is
accessed by the occupant recognition module from the gym
equipment module which acts as the general interface
between the system and the gym machines. The gym
equipment module provides other information regarding the
user such as the machine feedback about the user
performance, the load used etc.

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 B. Server
The server part of the implementation deals with the
management and various computations required to
formulate a user-centric workout. First of all, the user is
identified by the identity management module which
manages distinct user entries in the database. These entries
contain user specific information regarding the user history,
user level etc. Level management module manages various
levels defined in the system which are very dynamic and
flexible in nature. It assigns an appropriate level to the user
based on his/her past performance. The user level changes
with any change in user performance parameters. The
workout management module formulates the user workout
schedule based on various inputs from other modules. Any
history regarding information is obtained from the history
management module. The user workout formulated by the
workout management module is not completely rigid in
nature. Rather it takes into account machine occupation,
user related machine feedback and other machine related
inputs in order to incorporate various changes in the user
workout. The scheduler helps in machine scheduling so that
in a multi-user multi-machine environment all the resources
are utilized to their optimum level. The main module
integrates various processing related system components
while the machine management module integrates various
workout machine related components. All these modules
working in tandem formulate a comprehensive workout and
accordingly provide recommendations to the user about the
next exercise to be performed.
Table 1: Detailed biographical characteristics of the participants, experience level and used load for each set
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C. Client
The client part of the implementation consists of the user as
well as the gym machines. The Gym machines which are
equipped with Motion detection sensors and time detection
sensors among other things count the number of repetitions
performed by the user, force exerted by the user, and the
time elapsed and provide this information to the machine
management module. This is utilized by the feedback
generator and the occupant recognition to calculate their
respective outputs. The user is provided the
recommendation regarding the sets of exercise he/she needs
to perform next. Entire workout schedule is not provided to
the user in advance. Rather the user is informed about the
exercise that he/she needs to perform next so that he/she
doesnt need to bother about future exercises.
V. EXPERIMENTATION
To validate the above-proposed framework 15 participants
with varying degree of experience performed 10-12
repetitions on different loads on a squat machine (Table 1).
According to the training data, so collected we divided the
individuals into 6 different levels based on their age,
experience, sex, height, weight, and performance, assigning
similar individuals to the same level.
a) Beginner male: Subjects 7, 8, 9.
b) Beginner female: Subjects 12, 14, 15
c) Intermediate male: Subjects 13,10,5
d) Intermediate female Subjects 1, 3, 6
e) Advanced male: Subjects 2, 11
f) Advanced female: Subject 4
Based on his age, sex, height, weight and other performance
parameters the system assigns him to the beginner male
level. The workout on any particular day for Legs exercise
for a beginner male is 3 sets of squats of 10-12 reps in the
load range 60-80 kg and 3 sets of leg presses of 8 reps each
in the load range 70-85 kg. There is no constraint on the
precedence of the exercises and both the workout machines
are free so we do not need to worry about the scheduling
part. The Squat machine and the Leg press machine are
equipped with sensors as shown in figure 3. The user is
informed about the current set of exercise along with the
number of repetitions: both remaining and to be performed
(Fig 4). The sensors embedded on the machines calculate
the displacement, force and time-elapsed and provide these
parameters to the system at regular intervals with the help of
gym equipment module which acts as a communication
interface between the system and the workout machines.
Using these parametric values, we draw a Displacement-
Force-Time curve. Load Range is automatically set
according to the feedbacks provided by the machine at
regular time intervals, based on the user performance. Fig 4:The user interface
While managing the load range we try to make sure that the
Force-Displacement-Time curve remains as smooth as
possible.
We see that whenever an individual performs the exercises VI. CONCLUSION AND PRACTICAL CHALLENGES
based on the recommendations of a human trainer then in
In this paper, the theory for IOT based smart gym has been
that case curve is similar to the improper execution
proposed to fulfill the said objectives in section 3.The major
curve(Fig 5a).This is because the trainer is not able to judge
advantage of this implementation is the creation of a
the exact capability of the person and thus is not able to
personalized workout schedule for the user, for which a
adjust the load and the repetitions accordingly. The
tremendous amount of manpower is needlessly being used
improper execution curve exhibits variable displacement
these days. We can save a lot of man hours and money in a
paths and bigger force fluctuations. On the other hand, in
clear juxtaposition to the meager initial investment. The
case of system recommended exercise routine, the curve has
framework can be successfully applied at any well-
very little variations in force and displacement and is overall
established gym where the user and machine data are
smooth and consistent (Fig 5b).This shows that the system
already available. The framework requires highly
recommends a highly user-specific schedule which the user
sophisticated machines which can be equipped with IOT
is able to perform smoothly. This reduces the chances of any
sensors. Like other IOT implementations, the success rate of
injury to the user. In addition to this; we found out upon
a smart gym depends in the accuracy and efficiency of the
medical examination of the user, that the system
IOT devices and sensors.
recommended workout was much more efficient in burning The major challenges that can be faced during the actual
calories in comparison to the human trainer recommended implementation of our framework in a full-fledged gym can be
workout. multifaceted. The availability of the initial data required to train
the framework poses a great challenge here. Exception
handling is also one of the major concerns in this framework as
the interaction between man and the machine is highly
unpredictable. To attain and maintain the efficiency and
accuracy of the scheduler not only at the user level but also at
runtime is a gargantuan task. A good scheduling policy along
with an efficient synchronization technique is the foremost
requirement for the success of our framework. Also generating
a user-centric schedule, keeping in mind know-how in the field
of medical science together with that of physical education
imposes a tough challenge.

FIG 3: SENSOR EQUIPPED SQUAT AND LEG PRESS MACHINE

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 Fig 5: The Execution Curve
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