Gyms are here to stay in 2021 and beyond.
A response to Fast Company’s “Gyms aren’t coming back. Here’s how you’ll work out in the future” article by Elizabeth Segran
A response to Fast Company’s “Gyms aren’t coming back. Here’s how you’ll work out in the future” article by Elizabeth Segran
Let me first start off by saying I respect the points the author is making, and understand her perspective of the industry as a whole. Reading through all the stats & percentages she lists to support her claims it seems like her perspective I just missing the mark a bit. I am going to take portions of her article and respond to them in the order she has written, but I highly suggest you actually read through her 7 minute article if you have yet to read it. I linked it in the subtitle but HERE IT IS AGAIN.
Acknowledging My Own Bias
I am a career self employed personal trainer since 2009/2010 and have worked in a variety of settings from physical therapy offices, boutique studios, regional health clubs, and managed luxury condo spa & fitness facilities.
I also started FITLETE as a company that has a main objective to strictly assists professionals in the fitness industry.
I’m deep in this gym & fitness business game for better or worse. lol
Now We Start…
“76% of people have tried working out at home during the pandemic — and crucially, 66% prefer it”
I was initially curious about these numbers when I read them, because I might have missed something while spending time in my own echo chamber. However, after just a brief look at the survey slide I don’t understand the significance of this survey question. Especially the 76% part.(Slide 55 here).
In the beginning of lockdowns from Covid-19 there was quite literally no other options available than to workout out at home! I’m more surprised the 76% number isn’t higher! All gyms of any type were closed pretty much nationwide at the same time. Private One-on-one studios, outdoor one-on-one sessions, boot camps in the park, boutique class based studios, and big-box type gyms were all considered equal to one another and locked down across the board. In my current city of Miami, FL it took them until July to allow instructor lead activities in the parks, and even later in July to allow gyms to even consider accepting members back at low capacity percentages. Most private condo facilities in Miami were still closed for some time after this. With no other option than an at home workout I don’t see how this statistic is important to the message of the article.
66% prefer it to what, not workout out at all? Making an appointment to gain access to their gym in order to comply with the capacity limitations? Making a capacity restricted appointment with a restricted maximum time limit? Wearing a mask while working out in the gym? If I was a participant in this study I would have said I tried working out at home(in my 1 bedroom apartment), and that I preferred it not to working out at all, working out with a mask, making an appointment, and having a hard set time restriction at the gym! Those are additional barriers that really decrease the “attractiveness” of going to the gym for a workout. I don’t know if I am considered a millennial being born in 1986, but I do know that “trendiness”, ease of access, and a baseline convenience that is “easy” are HUGE drivers for participation in the millennial demographic; the rest of the slides in the Trends report support that fact 100%.
The Perfect Storm
I can’t argue that. It truly was the perfect storm on a few fronts.
It was a perfect storm of truly well intended officials making rules, regulations, and restrictions without actually understanding the industry they were demonizing from the get-go. I’m not saying gyms should have never closed.
No one knew what was going on in the beginning. I don’t fault the officials for doing this early on, but the fact it was not re-examined as more information came out is a huge factor that lead to the full on closure of long standing, successful, community favorite facilities that just couldn’t wait any longer. The restrictions surrounding gym shutdowns were almost astonishingly arbitrary and quite puzzling.
Firstly, and I think most importantly. Gyms were grouped together as if they are all exactly the same in everyway possible, and that is just outrageous.
It didn’t matter if it was a 400sqft dark basement spin studio with no windows packed with 30 riders, or a 10,000sqft sports performance facility with 30ft ceilings with open windows, and large warehouse doors on 3 of the four sides with the 30 athletes inside. Even more ridiculous, a 1-on-1/small group training gym with maybe 2-4 people in the facility at once was lumped together with a big box gym that might have 50–100 people at a time in their space. HOW?!
They were all apparently equal to one another...
On top of that:
Small gyms had a difficult time getting enough or any PPP loan relief/support to keep paying rent, debts, or keep their staff.
Gyms were grouped into the last phases of reopening, but only with intense capacity restrictions even if everyone was masked.
Gyms were grouped together, or even behind other industries like nightclubs, salons, tattoo parlors, movie theaters, large Festival gatherings, casinos and malls. All with significantly higher numbers of people in enclosed spaces for longer periods of time than a typical workout.
In New Jersey gyms had to remain closed while martial arts, dance, and gymnastic studios were allowed to operate at a reduced capacity. Literally makes no sense.
As of a few weeks ago New York City is still fighting for even capacity restricted group classes to resume . Even though their own state contact tracing data from December 2020 shows a 0.06% spread from gyms...
As I am writing this LA County just opened gyms with 10% capacity. 10%…really? It’s March 2021 already.
Even as we gather more information on gyms not being significant factors in spread when appropriate levels of sanitization are attained, we still get quotes based on someone's own personal fear-filled opinion like the one you shared here: “We all learned what a petri dish gyms were to begin with,” says Franklin Isacson, cofounder of Coefficient Capital. I’m not saying gyms should be open without an restrictions, but with appropriate guidelines the majority of small business gyms that are still around can open as safe, if not more safe than other industries already open nearing full capacity. Especially the Small gyms that are probably owned, managed, and coached by the same person and maybe a small team of coaches. It’s much easier to follow tight controls with a smaller team and loyal community base of members.
WILL GYMS GO THE WAY OF THE ARCADE?
Ha! Not a chance. I understand why someone at Pelton would say “We once played video games in malls, but then people discovered they could play at home and experience the same connection…”, but I don’t think this is a quality analogy to the fitness industry & it’s facilities. To me this quote assumes that the only/main reason someone goes to the gym is because of their loyalty to the branded equipment, and that’s just false.
The vast majority of people who really care about the equipment in a gym are the owners of the space, and other coaches who might see the facility; literally no one else. The equipment brands live almost anonymously within their respected facilities, and haven’t been a selling feature/magic element to close new customers for years(since maybe the invention of the Nautilus equipment line back in the 1970’s). On the other hand the arcades of the past did rely on massive public notoriety of brands, consoles, & specific games to bring in customers.
New “revolutionary” equipment, and new technology have claimed to be at the throat of the gym industry for YEARS. The main innovation up to this point with at home workouts has really just been the evolution of the magazine, to VHS, then DVD sets, to YouTube workouts, to mid2000’s on-demand video classes(from gyms), to App based workouts, and now more on-demand Video classes. Only this time the video classes are tied directly to 1 single piece of equipment that costs a paycheck + monthly subscription to participate. I think they can 100% find a space to live within the industry, but at the replacement of gyms is a big stretch.
Once pandemic fears subside “all the time at home workouts” become a singular and isolated activity that is no longer forced upon the user. This fact alone has turned home equipment of the past into tomorrows expensive clothes drying rack. Arcades had their draw because you could have many different gaming experiences in one place that was literally impossible before. The at home console didn’t kill the arcade until it was able to offer that multigame experience along with a cost that would also allow it(enter the gaming cartridges, 4 controllers, and LAN parties). Where do you see “the at home fitness equipment equivalent” to the gaming cartridge, controllers, and LAN parties? Sure, it’s convenient like at home gaming currently is, but it’s too expensive for more than 1 piece, occupies too much floorspace, and has barely a fraction of the social element of the most popular online games today.
You could build a full kit home gym at anytime before the pandemic with or without the new technology! Only a select few actually did this, and some probably had both a home gym set up and a gym membership like my brother in-law does. Again, both for convenience.
When it comes to this arcade analogy it just misses the mark, because the selling factor of a gym has always been the overall helpful guidance of coaches, the environment, the culture, and community within the facility that made the gym a destination. The equipment is just the tool within the facility the the vast majority of participants.
If there are any demographics these new pieces of equipment might effect it’s people who were:
Already working out at home a lot prior to the pandemic.
Prefer to workout alone.
Specific upper class individuals who will have these at home pieces to be trendy/just because.
All of which are relatively small demos within the gym going fitness industry.
“…Industry insiders believe that gyms and fitness studios as we know them could become a thing of the past.”
Probably the only major piece of the article I 100% agree with, but only if “as we know them” is included. I am not alone in this thinking within the industry either. The big box gym model and the gym relationships with instructors has been in a major state of flux well before the pandemic ever happened; both sides just don’t know how to handle it yet.
1.. At scale, the “big box gym” sector of the industry has failed to create a model that is beneficial for the business, the trainers, AND beneficial for its base of members up to this point.
These articles from (NPR)(The Motley Fool) show us a model that is built on members not showing up rather than members using the space. The members that don’t show up and still pay their membership actually support the members that show up frequently; it’s how companies like Planet Fitness can have huge facilities on expensive real estate while offering the lowest prices in the industry to membership.
According to an article in Club Industry: Planet Fitness trainers get paid minimum wage only at all times, and LA Fitness trainers get paid minimum wage when not training, and a flat rate of $6–7.50 per half hour session. That means If a trainer works their ass off for 40 training hours a week they MAX their yearly salary at $24k-$31k. This is not a sustainable working opportunity.
2.. Personal Trainers & Class instructors are having a growing influence/power in an industry that has no idea how to handle it in it’s current state of operation. Fitness professionals have always been entrepreneurs without realizing that they were starting their own brand & business. The pandemic just unapologetically hit a lot of people in the face with this reality. Some regional franchised gyms have aggressive non-compete clauses, and before the pandemic often tried to restrict trainers from seeing/procuring clients outside of the gym even when these clients would never step foot in that facility to sign up for training. Both parties are equally to blame, and the same goes for the lack of technological resources specifically made for the industry. Even through the pandemic the “remote training technology” for trainers was only loosely slapped together, and didn’t really make the “new lives” of the gym owners/trainers life easier to work in; everyone just ended up using Zoom classes.
Closing thoughts and Opinions
At the end day I understand the reason the article was written the way it was. I just don’t think it represents the industry in it’s entirety by making it seem so fragile. These new home equipment companies will also have to find a way to maintain their share of the market outside of incredibly restrictive pandemic conditions that bloated their actual influence on the industry(Peloton reported 92% retention in December 2020). The subscription retention is going to be a huge ongoing cost on top of the new technology that will give trainers outside of their platforms even more power.
Their relationship with the professionals(trainers and Instructors)within the industry at large might be what sets them apart from what physical gym locations can offer. Right now the trainers/instructors associated with these companies are largely full-time employees of the companies themselves. While this might be good for initial scale, there are 1,000’s of more professionals ready to upgrade their service offerings to these new standards as well.
In the future the biggest competitor to these equipment companies will not be the physical gym location itself, it will be the the locations + technology made specifically for these small gym businesses and solopreneur trainers who can offer an experience outside of the restrictions of their own equipment.
Gyms aren't going anywhere.