INDUSTRY INSIGHTS


The highly evolved health club


PHILLIP MILLS, FOUNDER AND CEO, LES MILLS INTERNATIONAL The health club of the future will be fun, social and a provider of broader wellness W


e’re a long way from the days when the gym instructor’s main job was to hand out magazines to people to try and alleviate the boredom of


exercise. Where we once had just a bike, we now have group cycling classes in beautiful studios with great music, audio- visual displays and superbly educated instructors. Barbells have evolved into today’s sophisticated fi tness machinery. Even the humble step has become a relatively hi-tech piece of equipment. Personal training has grown into a sub-industry that helps millions and employs hundreds of thousands. The gym has entered the mainstream and is now a cultural


institution. Combining business genius with passion and personality has created many exciting, growing companies that make the world a better place. Yet what excites me most is what will happen next. I


believe we’re on the cusp of even more dramatic change as the fi tness industry transforms and the lines blur between fi tness, health, science, technology and gaming.


A ‘GYM’ OR A ‘HEALTH CLUB’? Ironically, many health clubs don’t understand the full importance of the word ‘health’ for our futures and for our business model. Probably three-quarters of the global health crisis is caused by stuff we do to ourselves – poor diet, lack


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of exercise, environmental pollution and so on. It’s widely understood that what the modern healthcare system actually provides is illness alleviation as an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Our industry has the potential to be the fence at the


top of the cliff. Yet in the developed world, no more than 17 per cent of adults belong to health clubs in any single country, with market share much lower in most places. Membership turnover, typically, is very high. And just as the global health crisis creates the need,


and opportunity, for deeper and more complex services from health clubs, the fastest-growing segment is in fact the stripped-down budget club. In such an environment, as our recent The Future of


Fitness white paper noted: • It’s not safe to assume that minor adjustments to current business models will keep the fi tness industry abreast of changing times. Other industries – health insurance and health delivery, for example – are already moving. So are government regulators. • If we don’t solve the health crisis, someone else will. How can we make sure we’re not swamped or bypassed by solutions that are more effective, or require less effort, or that are more popular because they’re simply more fun. I see three solutions. We must make fi tness more fun. We


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