Will:  

So if I can implore you to do anything it is, don't get too hung up on statistics that you see and don't get too worried about trying to predict what the future will hold. Because at this point in the pandemic at this point, and the changes have gone on with the world, we just need to be able to roll with it. 

Will:  

Hey, I'm Will Brereton, founder of SH1FT Fitness and this is Group Fitness Real Talk, a show about how to survive and even thrive in group fitness in 2021 and beyond. Hello, and welcome to Group Fitness Real Talk. It is our final episode of 2021 and what a year it has been. So the concept of this episode is I made three predictions at the beginning of this year. And I thought that I would review those predictions and see how they turned out. Now, of course, I planned this a few weeks ago, and if you are anyone living in the world, particularly in Europe, but generally in the northern hemisphere, you will be aware that in the last couple of weeks, things have gotten a lot more grim. It looked like things were pretty good during summer. And we were hopeful that COVID was over. And now thanks to omachron We are back in the depths of it. I actually just got back to Paris, from London. And it was an amazing trip to London because for the first time we did a full SH1FT shoot with our instructors. So we had a big contingent of instructors, all appearing in our workouts for 2022. Across M1ND, R1ZE, L1FT and SH1FT, was really, really exciting to see and spend time with our instructors get to know them a little bit better. We had some laughs It was a great weekend had by all and I managed to make it back to Paris the day before the borders to the UK shut. So if you are someone living in the UK listening to this podcast, and you had a skiing holiday planned in France or Germany, I am sorry that your holiday is not canceled. It seems like this Christmas and New Year's is going to be somewhat of a repeat of the last, which obviously was not the best Christmas on record. So while I love this podcast to be both informative and uplifting, as it says in the name, the most important thing is that it's real talk. And I think the realest thing that we are all feeling right now is a little bit of uncertainty and a lot of fatigue. 

Will:  

Let's start by acknowledging that at the end of 2021. This is not where we hoped we would be. But it's where we find ourselves. Vaccine programs in most countries have gone really well. And well, this winter is probably going to be tougher than we wanted it to be, we know that we will come out the other side, I can't predict what restrictions will come into place in the location that you are listening to this from. There might be some that might not be. But what I can say is that, at least now we know that we can get through it. It's tough, no one wanted to be here. But we are we are aware of the strategies that we can employ to still reach our class members to get through these tough times. And so a little glimmer of hope is that it's not going to be as bad as it was. It's not as good as it could be. I'm going to admit that right now. But you know, compared to last Christmas, this is an improvement. 

Will:  

Before we get into reviewing the three key predictions that I made, in my very first podcast of the year, I thought I would talk a little bit about just how uncertain it is for everybody, and how if you're feeling like it's really difficult to plan for anything, you are not alone. We simply don't know how things are going to pan out. And I know that you're probably listening to this because I like to bring you experts from the fitness industry who can give you ideas about how you can react to what's going on in the world. But the thing that we have realized now, after more than 18 months of the pandemic is that it's really, really difficult to plan. And the one thing that we can know for sure is that this wasn't a temporary blip. What happened at the start of 2020 was not a single block of a few months where people's behavior changed. And now it's going to come back. The changes in behavior have now existed for coming up two years by the time we get out of the depths of this winter. And that means that people's behavior has changed. We know that there's been a great resignation in the United States and other places. We know that many people have relocated in the UK we know that the high street has been in decline for a long time and this will have only accelerated that change. So if I can implore you to do anything it is don't get too hung up on statistics that you see and don't get too worried about trying to predict what the future will hold because At this point in the pandemic at this point and the changes that have gone on with the world, we just need to be able to roll with it. One of the reasons that I think it's important to take everything you say with a grain of salt and to not get too stressed out about what you are seeing is that I have recently seen some egregiously bad use of stats, and from previous companies that I've worked for great companies that provide a great service, but have released statistics that are just not good. Today I read the ClassPass Trend Report, which stated at the very top pet, the past year has been an incredibly encouraging one for the fitness and beauty industries. And since January 2021, fitness reservations have grown by 329%. So, fitness reservations have grown by 329% from the very depths of the worst part of lockdown when everything was closed. That is a perfect example of a statistic that you should just be ignoring. And the next one is Les Mills. In September, they released a report which stated that gyms worldwide were making strong recoveries with class attendances at 120% of pre-COVID levels and markets where restrictions have lifted. I saw a lot of chat about that on various Facebook groups and messenger groups, if anyone from listeners is listening to this podcast, and they can give me the data where they pulled that statistic from, I would love to know because it is not at all what anyone has experienced in my network. Absolutely, people have come back to live classes, people want live classes. But we are definitely not in a position where things are better than they were prior to the pandemic. And I think that releasing statistics like that only serves to create a little bit of depression or unhappiness with people who aren't finding it. So if you're finding that your classes are coming back, and people really want it, but you're not at pre pandemic levels, that's totally normal. Again, if you're from the listeners marketing department, and you can give me the reference and citation for that statistic, I will love to make a retraction on the first episode of the podcast in 22. But I call bullshit on that stat. It's been tough. And while people are definitely coming back, it's been a lot harder and a lot slower than we hoped and expected. So here's the Group Fitness Real Talk approach for this final couple of weeks of 2021. I'm going to give you the real talk. If you need to sit and marinate in the fact that this is a bit of a crappy time, allow yourself to do it. Give yourself the opportunity to mourn the fact that we've lost another Christmas period to uncertainty and to COVID. And just know that it is going to get better in the new year. And that there's heaps of opportunity left for us to take advantage of. 

Will:  

So on that note, I'm going to leave the morose part of the podcast behind and I'm going to jump into a review of the three key predictions that I made at the start of the year, and how they have panned out. Okay, so on to the predictions. In keeping with one of the biggest Netflix hits of the Squid Game, I'm going to give myself either a green light or a red light, depending on whether my prediction came true, or whether it was wrong. 

Will:  

So first prediction that I made in the first podcast of the year was that the future is phygital. So the future of fitness would be phygital. And for this, I'm going to give myself a green light. Although to be honest, phygital didn't quite take off like I'd hoped. But the concept is 100% true. Now, here's an example where the statistics are accurate and do speak for themselves. All of the references to the stats that I'm going to give you in this podcast are contained in the show notes. So if you're curious to find out where these came from, check out the show notes and you can grab them, I'm not going to reference them within the pod, but they are there. So 90% of people who started exercising at home during the pandemic say that they have stuck to it. So this is a massive behavioral change that is not going away. We know this for certain. Now combine this with the fact that 88% of consumers say that they should have the right to work remotely. And this is something that's consistent across gender, income group location, vaccine status, all this sort of stuff. And you have fertile ground for people working out from home and wanting a solution that allows them to work out in person and to work out at home. Indeed, Helen Durkin, who's the Executive Vice President of Public Policy for ERISA, which is the International Health racquet and sportsclub Association, a big industry body based out of the United States said herself how difficult it was for fitness clubs to forecast just how radically the pandemic was transforming the industry, but the need to be omni channel has something is something that has been talked about for a long time and many people have been planning for it already. So whether you refer to this as phygital, so a combination of physical and digital or you call it hybrids. or you call it omni channel and omni channel seems to be the term that people are coming to use. It's the same term that people use in retail. So that makes sense. What it means is that your customers expect to be able to use your products your services in a variety of ways, both online offline, physical and digital. So we know that digital fitness is here to stay, and that it will form part of what your consumers are looking for. However, if you're one of the many instructors that's found maintaining momentum with your digital teaching difficult, you are in good company. Now this may be a surprise to anyone that hasn't followed the news recently. But it has been a really, really rough second half of the year for connected fitness. So we'll get the strong players out of the way first, Apple fitness plus just celebrated its first birthday and it appears to be going strong. They have such an amazing, happy joyful group of diverse trainers. It makes me smile every time I see them pop up on my Instagram feed. And they have launched into 15 new countries just recently. But I searched the 82 page Apple Inc year end report for this financial year. And Apple fitness was referenced in only a single paragraph like two lines out of 82 pages. So the fact that Apple's whole business is up 29% means that they are blowing it out of the park and everything else and fitness remains a really tiny part of their business but it's safe to say that Apple's fitness foray will continue. So they're doing well. However, it is not such a rosy outlook for some of the big names. Some of those companies that you will have heard of doing amazing things either last year at the start of the year are really struggling now. And if you're an instructor who has been chipping away at digital and has created the community this provides an opportunity for you because some of these big players may not even be around and they're certainly not doing as well as they need to do. So let's look at peloton for example. So outside of the Sex and the City reboot issue which of course had Mr Big dying of a heart attack after going on as peloton and then had Mr. Big doing a last minute advertisement where which was turned around in 48 hours and then had Mr. Big being accused of sexual harassment in a me too moment. It's not been the best moment for peloton recently, but that is all outside of the catastrophic final quarter they had financial performance wise. So since the beginning of the year peloton has lost 73% of its value as a company. Now no one's going to be crying for peloton who is still worth $15 billion. But they're down from $45 billion at the start of the year and their CEO John Foley has gone on record as saying that the rapid growth that they had during the pandemic made them undisciplined. So peloton right now there is a hiring freeze, they've had issues with recalls of their treadmill. And then of course, they've had the most recent issues with Sex in the City. And just like that, their value dropped by three quarters. So if you're feeling a little bit troubled, trust me that some of the biggest players are troubled as well. So we move on to another company that had a really, really successful IPO earlier in the year. Another company that I have close connections to Beachbody, so they went public mid year, but when they released their quarter three earnings around the same time as peloton did the same, they had sadly had two thirds wiped off the value of the company in only about three months. So Beachbody is now worth 74% less than than its initial spec price, so the price that it was hoping to achieve when it went public. And there are articles in financial publications that suggests they may need to go out and raise more money soon further diluting the value for investors. So let's tough times for Beachbody. And then lastly, the news last week, that Lululemon, who paid 500 million for mirror earlier in the year or late last year, have had to significantly downgrade their sales targets by more than half. So all connected fitness is struggling and Lulus CEO stated that 2021 has been a challenging year for digital fitness, with increasing pressure on customer acquisition costs that are affecting the whole industry. And then just to round it out, you might have seen the news that John Michael Fornia, who was the head of Les Mills on demand, Les Mills, media has actually moved from Les Mills to Beachbody. So these mills has lost the boss of their digital, he's gone to Beachbody who are also struggling. Mira is struggling peloton is struggling. Everybody is finding the end of 2021 to be really, really tough. And the key thing that they are all pointing to is customer acquisition costs. Now, you may know what this means, but what it basically means is that even though subscribers paying these big companies to use their content, those companies are having to pay to acquire those customers through marketing through free trials in a way that means that they are just not generating enough profit. And this is where as an independent instructor, you have a massive opportunity. Because if you have a small group of people that you can get really engaged with your product and with your community, and you can get them to talk to their friends and get their friends to talk to their friends, use some of the strategies that we've talked about in previous podcasts of this year, you can acquire more customers without the cost and you can make a good living because some of these companies may not continue in their current form. It's that serious. But what you can guarantee is that digital fitness and people working out at home as well as in person is not going away. 

Will:  

So this brings me to my second key prediction that I made at the start of the year, which is that things will be different when in person gyms return. Now, most of my focus on this was around the need for safety. And the fact that your job as an instructor, if you're working in a facility was going to include a lot more focus on safety and security in order to make people welcome and happy. I have to say that from an anecdotal perspective, what I've actually found is that the people who are concerned about safety and security in the fitness context, tended to stay away and focus on still working out at home, in the people that did jump back into the gym was so happy to be in a live environment that they weren't actually that focused. I think we all know of people within our own community who are more hesitant around the risks associated with COVID. And less hesitant, and the less hesitant cohort are the ones that have jumped back into life classes, and for sure, where restrictions have opened up, people have jumped back into the opportunity to use gyms, but not quite in the way that they were using them before. I came across a great quote by an industry observer called Ray Algon, who stated that for a long time, he believed that too many health club leaders around the world assumed that they have the full and undivided attention of the exercising consumer and that the gym sits at the top of an exercise industry hierarchy. He continues on that what we've learned in the pandemic is that while gyms may have had this sort of temporary monopoly, this is absolutely over the pandemic has demonstrated that consumers can locate and enjoy different gym substitutes, as we've already talked about in key prediction number one about phygital, omni-channel, hybrid digital. So what the pandemic has done has it's made these gym substitutes more visible all these people that never thought about working out at home have now been forced to do it. And they've liked it for various reasons. So it does represent a significant inflection point, because the global industry has never been challenged in this way. So let's look at what we've seen. Planet Fitness has grown by 7.2%. Now if you're listening to this podcast, you know that we've talked about it before. It is definitely a success story of the pandemic. And that is because people have changed in their habits. Now again, I am reading into the stats rather than providing you with facts. But if you have started working out from home, but you still want to go to the gym, do you want to pay $150 to go to the full service gym if you're only gonna be using it two or three times a week and combining it with peloton at home or perhaps some other type of outdoor activity? Or do you want to supplement the workouts that you're doing outside of the gym with a cheap, low cost gym membership, where you know that there's loads of equipment and that you'll always be able to do the thing that you want. And again, speaking anecdotally, this is absolutely the approach that I've taken. At the start of the pandemic. I've always worked out from home. I've always practiced choreography at home I've always had weights at home. But now at home I have a sort of full set of weights and I also have a spin bike and my membership at the gym is now at my local basic fit that are a low cost provider based out of Paris. I can go off the peak times everything is orange and looks terrible but the equipment is fantastic. And then I also have a ClassPass membership for when I want to go to something a little bit more boutique II like reformer Pilates or yoga or strength conditioning class at a nice sort of chic boutique. There's recent news that crunch is at 128% of pre-pandemic membership levels, crunch again, they are not a super high price chain. They are accessible and that is probably why that growth is there. And then you look to Europe and pure gym. They're at 94% of 2019 membership so they're not quite back up to where they were but they're pretty close. So that Europe second largest chain with 500 clubs across the UK, Denmark and Switzerland. But boutiques are struggling and I'm really really concerned that in Europe if January is taken away from The ability of boutiques to operate either by compulsory lock downs or the fact that people are having to isolate or are choosing to stay home, that it could spell the end for a number of boutiques who are already on a knife edge after an incredibly difficult 18 months. And in the USA, the stats are there. 25% of clubs in the USA have shopped since March 2020. That's opposed to just under 2% of clubs in Europe, where financial aid was more forthcoming. So for this one, I'm going to give myself an orange because I don't know that I predicted exactly what would happen. However, the gym environment has absolutely changed. But this is the one part where it's really really difficult to see how this is going to turn out for sure. Budget gyms are here to stay and budget gym plus digital membership, and potentially even high cost digital membership like a peloton where there's a big equipment cost is something that more people are going to be buying into in the future. This is where I will be spending a lot of my focus and figuring out early in 2022 Because I think it's the one where we know the least. But it obviously forms such an important part of the fitness industry. We've talked about it right at the start of the year was Shannon Fable, the locus of people's fitness journey is no longer the gym. It might be their smartwatch, it could be their whoop, it could be their phone, but the gym still forms an integral part of people's fitness journey. And it's going to be extremely interesting to see when restrictions finally in women to get past this awful COVID period, how things settle out for the fitness club industry, the standard full service fitness club. I for one, am very, very interested to see how things will turn out. 

Will:  

Okay, so key prediction number three. And like I said at the very top, there's a lot of bad news out there at the moment. But this is the one thing that I think we should all be positive about. Even if we do need to take a couple of weeks to be a bit grumpy. Key prediction number three is that health and fitness will be more prevalent than ever before. And this is something that I think we all know is 100% true. If you've listened to my podcast this year, you'll know that this is the one that I'm also personally most interested about. I turned 40. This year, I'm starting to think about my fitness and my health in a different way to how I thought about it when I was younger. I care about longevity, about keeping my body mobile about keeping my body fit, and less about aesthetics and how I look, I'm not going to pretend like I don't care how I look because I can be vain, just like anybody. But I'm certainly far more interested in making sure that I can live a long and good life. And the good thing about the pandemic is that so many more people now realize how important it is to be physically fit. We've talked about this on many podcast episodes. But the biggest risk factors for COVID or for any future pandemic or for any illness in general is an activity, any type of movement, any type of activity is good. One of my favorite quotes of the entire year was Professor Chris Whitty, who is the Chief Medical Officer of the UK, speaking to UK active which is an industry group here in the UK. And he was speaking in November of 2020, which was a time when obviously things were starting to go on the downhill slide at the end of last year. But what he stated was that, and I quote, There is no point in life where doing more exercise does not improve health in multiple ways. So he continued that as we come out of the COVID crisis. And I think he was hoping that will be next year. But obviously, it hasn't been. He noted that it's very important that we try to get people who've got out of the habit of regular exercise back into a situation where they're doing so and encourage others who've taken up exercise in a way they previously hadn't to continue to do so. He finished with the statement that I think is the most integral thing that we should all be focusing on, which is that it is central to a happy and healthy old age that people continue to exercise. You only need to go back to my last podcast episode which was with Kelly from Balanced to know that this is an area that I'm really, really interested in. Because whether we like it or not, the industry the fitness industry of today of yesterday and probably tomorrow is always going to focus on young people. It's going to focus on Gen Z and millennials it views these as the ripest market to go for. So gyms massive digital players like peloton are always going to be trying to appeal to the younger market. As an individual instructor. Your opportunity is to reach people that really need it. And this is another quote from Mr. Elga, who said that older adults are underrepresented across the global health and fitness club industry. And this is something that needs to change. And I could not agree more. Over the next 10 years there could be at least 1.4 billion adults over the age of 60 up 30% From now and here's the deal. There's no growth in adults under 34. This is a massive bubble of population that is ripe for fitness. And as an instructor, this is an area that I would really love you to consider focusing on because not only is it some way that you can make money, because you're not competing with the other gyms and big players and digital fitness companies, but it's also the area who need the most encouragement because they may have gotten out of exercise, who need an instructor who will shepherd them through their fitness journey. And it's also the biggest change that you can make, because you are going to be creating health in your community by focusing on this group. The other thing is, is that older adults often possess the financial resources along with compelling reasons to harness exercise, and to help them to enjoy the wonder of a healthier and longer life. So tied to prediction number two, I think we're gonna see gyms really trying to tap into that older market. And as an instructor, I think you should too. So stop focusing on super high intensity workouts and think about how you can create certain elements of fitness that will bring more people in. I've said this before, but if you're a community instructor, I think you should have a walking group once a week, and the walking group is for your participants so they can get some social activity in, you can also get them to bring along their parents, you can get them to bring along anyone who's deconditioned, who hasn't been into exercise. And you use it to create a network of like-minded people that want to be fitter, with the simplest, easiest activity that everybody can do. 

Will:  

And there you have it. Those are my ratings on my key predictions, I'm going to give myself a green, an orange, and a green and the biggest green is for health and fitness becoming more prevalent than ever before, with older populations. And people that know they need to be fit to keep themselves safe, healthy and alive in the world of the future. And this is something that instructors can harness to build their businesses but also to make huge change in their communities. And that is where I am going to leave you for the year. I am signing out of 2021 It has been a rough year for many. It started tough, it was pretty good during the middle and then we've had an unfortunate late run. But I'm really really hopeful about what 2022 will bring. So I will be bringing you more group fitness real talk in the new year, more experts, more learning more opinions. And I hope that whatever you're doing for this holiday period, you get to spend some time with either family or friends, whoever is closest to you, you get the chance to recharge and in the new year, you can come back with a real strong idea about how you are going to improve the fitness of your community in 2022 and beyond. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitness.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.