2021 State of Affairs of the Fitness Industry Post-Covid

In this episode, Matt and I discuss the state of affairs in the fitness industry. What’s hot and what’s not? Check it out!

This week, we reach a major milestone in the podcast. We are on the 100th episode…. And what a better way to mark this milestone than to discuss where we are headed in the fitness industry post-Covid and what this means for the Alloy Personal Training Franchise brand and others.

As gym owners and the fitness industry the pandemic hit us badly; nobody could have prepared for the disruption we witnessed. However, with the successful rollout of the vaccines and the fact that people are getting out more and being comfortable going back to the gym, there are important evidence-backed observations we are seeing in our brand and across the industry.

The first thing is the growth of small group personal training. Across the industry, we are seeing more and more brands pivoting to this model. The accountability, specificity, and community that this model offers are what the customer wants.

We reviewed the numbers from the Alloy facilities which show like the quick recovery and growth locally and globally. Some of the bigger brands we still work with through Alloy licensing are all seeing the same growth. Interestingly, what we’re helping them with is building brand and selling coaching/training. Training can be with small group personal training, which is what our Alloy Franchise specializes in now, the larger group fitness classes, and then there’s one-on-one personal training. For most of the big clubs, small group training where you charge a different rate to attend is too confusing because it’s harder to differentiate from the larger group training classes. Even finding the space to train four to six people when you’re not in a studio setting can be a bit of a strain in a big box club because the goal is to have as many people working out based on larger square footage. So in that setting, just do the larger group classes and one-on-one personal training. What’s interesting is the thing that we do well with our bigger clients is teach them how to sell and service other classes or personal training.

What they are seeing right now is all of big box clubs are seeing a low engagement for their larger group fitness classes but really high engagement for personal training. Maybe this is related to some Post-COVID desire to not be in crowds, but this is good news for Alloy as a brand. As a personal training brand, at Alloy we’re seeing major growth because of the smaller personal training group and one-on-one personal training focus. ,

This speaks to what’s relevant coming out of COVID. People realize they need more accountability and more coaching like with personal training, and maybe there is still some fear based on big groups in small spaces.

The statistics show that with the people that weren’t active all throughout COVID, there were 50% of the people gained weight and the average weight gain was 29 pounds. For the people that gained weight. If half the people in the country gained weight, and of the ones that gained weight, the average weight gain was 30 pounds. There’s many people out there who weren’t the customer archetype for boutique class based concepts anyway, which are people that already like to work out.

Now consumers are engaged and understand health is a priority. COVID has taught us you need to get on top of your own health and wellness, because you can control your own immunity, you can control your weight, you can control supplementation like Vitamin C, D3, and Zinc levels to mitigate your own risks. With people recognizing that, we’re seeing their desire for coaching and accountability with personal training to help come out of this. They don’t want the class based thing, but they want to find somebody who’s going to hold them accountable, build them a plan of attack, tell them what to do, how to eat, how much rest to get, and what exercises to do. If they have an injury, they want to know how to work around the injury to recover. So not only are we seeing one-on-one training increase in the large clubs, but we’re certainly seeing it at Alloy as well. We knew there was a gap in the market pre-COVID, but it’s more relevant coming out of the pandemic.

At Alloy, we have been doing this for a long time, and as Matt and I have always said in this podcast, this is the model of the present and the future. We are happy that the fitness industry and the customers are coming around to it.

Listen in to hear our thoughts on the state of affairs of the fitness industry and what the data we are seeing tells us!