White paper

THE FUTURE OF FITNESS

IN TRANSFORMATIONAL TIMES

Commissioned by Les Mills International

May 2009

“It is time for wholesale re-imaginings”

Tom Peters, quoting the US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, said “If you don’t like change you are going to like irrelevance even less”. Peters believes “It’s time to re-imagine positively everything….we need new business models, new methods for fighting …new approaches to education…Added up, it’s a time for wholesale re-imaginings”

This White Paper is the corollary result of an extensive Futurism study. As leaders and researchers in the Fitness Industry, we hold deep concerns that the Fitness Industry is not moving quickly enough to engage with degree of change in our society. We are excited (optimisitic about the) by the enormous potential of the industry to innovate and create new fitness paradigms, and want to stimulate debate and discussion about how we can best meet the challenge of the transformational times we live in. This paper This paper highlights those the changes in our society and the increasingly rapid pace of change and considers some of the possible implications. It is, and is intended to provide the industry with the ability to prepare and plan for the future.

The paper is underpinned by a comprehensive international Futurism study, commissioned by Les Mills International (LMI) and Better by Design, and undertaken by the Nielsen Company in mid to late 2008. The Futurism study was deliberately cast wide to extend the current paradigm of the fitness domain and obtain multifaceted viewpoints on future trends. Four broad areas of investigation included:

Exploratory discussions with twenty five international global experts and leading thinkers from disciplines including business, science and technology, urban development, youth culture, fitness, public health and future thinking.. Eight interviews with Les Mills International agents key internal and key internal staff.[i]

  • A formal literature review of future trends, drawn from international sources
  • Sixteen qualitative focus groups with early adopters, active and inactive people.
  • Eleven ethnographic fitness observations conducted in the UK and US
  • In-depth interviews with leading thinkers across a range of sectors and perspectives and also with Les Mills International agents and key internal staff

The signals highlighted in this paper, have considerable implications for the future role of the fitness industry and ought to be strong indicators for how fitness and activity offerings are developed to attract a broader audience of future consumers.

The key implications of the study suggest our current fitness model, premised on targeting the fitness converted who can afford our services, and based on principles of fitness through ‘hard work’, will not attract new customers. In fact, we are and is likely to lose some current customers, lose. In short, we will lose market market share and lose relevance..

The Future is Now

In the Jan 11 2009(2) edition, Time Magazine talked about the development of Designer Babies and the current ability to select the baby’s sex. The article noted that in a decade or two we may be able to select “an enormous range of attributes such as…the hair and eye type”. The very next monththe Fertility Institute clinic in LA announced it was able allow parents to select baby’s eye colour – not in a decade, but now.

While this has caused an ethical storm, the point is that the acceleration in the ability to design and recreate the body is happening nowhas already begun. How soon before we have designer muscles orbyetta-type drugs eliminating obesity?

It is not just that the world is changing; it is that we are at a ‘tipping point’ of change. The acceleration is exponential. We are not in changing times, we are in hyper-change, we are in transformational times.

The fitness industry does not have a decade, or even 5 years to contemplate these changes

The IndustryThe Industry needs to engage with the implications for fitness now – immediacy is key.paramount.Other industries such as health insurance and health deliveryare paying attention; the fitness industry has the opportunity to stake its claim and lead the development of new models..

Challenge to the fitness industry

Key industry commentators collectively agree that the Fitness Industry, to date, has been complacentwith the current service model. Will Phillipsconsidersthat clubs focus on selling memberships, rather than new propositions or retention strategies to meet customer’s needs. Dr Tim Antiss, XXX, believes a step change is needed,“the current fitness industry is about high energy, beautiful people having fun…the (numbers of) members who actually turn up are low, service are standards low …and there is still a product mentality…the industry needs to change to effectively find ways to keep people active and deliver low impact, sustained health improvements. There needs to be a mindset change in the industry’

Tomorrow, people will be seeking mass personalisation. The current fitness industry has designed itself on a focused, efficient service model, around which its members fit – a gym centric machine. The thinking has been ‘develop products that suit most people interested in fitness and enough people will come to sustain the business model’. Tomorrow’s consumers look much less compliant. They will want fitness to fit around them – people centricproducts and services that are people centric. Mass personalisation will be delivered through multiple and diverse people centric, not gym centric, services.

Critically, the fitness Iindustry assumes that service tweaks and adjustments to current business models will keep it contemporaneous with changing times. This may well be a fatal assumption. The Industry has not recognized theThe transformative paradigm shift that is upon us.The Industry must begin to design its own future now.

The convergence of Macro Trends are creating the Transformative change

While there will be many trends shaping the future, five macro trends will hugely influence future human capability and potential, and will underpin consumers’ engagement with fitness and activity. Loosely, these group into social trends, environmental trends, health trends, regulation, and technology trends.

[S1]

It is the convergence and interrelationship of these macro trends that is producing transformative rather than incremental change. The cumulative effect of the trends poses the biggest threat and conversely creates the greatest opportunities.

The design, orientation and services of the Fitness industry will need to be ‘re-imagined’, as changing social needs intersect with genetic and nano technologies; as health and obesity impacts on government / health insurance spend and solutions may be found in regulation, drugs or body enhancement; as youth combine permanent connectivity with entertainment and find new ways to ‘move’.

The fitness industry will need to look closely at its personal environmental practices, the footprint of facilities and equipment materials, its ‘own back yard’, as consumers increasingly seek environmentally aware, sustainable, products and services.

Ageing consumers are a key demographic growth group who are not well serviced by the fitness industry today in any meaningful way. The ageing population is an international phenomenon that is progressively changing the structure of nations and economies. [ii]

To date the fitness package has been a single minded gym based proposition. Tomorrow, consumers will demand multi-faceted experiences, in many formats, from ‘my meeting treadmill at work’, to ‘my shoes that tell me (and my wellbeing mentor) that I need to walk another 3 kms today for my diabetes’. The future will herald even greater convergence and merging of products, services, markets, industries, identities, cultures, and technologies.

Emerging technologies will continue to shape our world in ways we are still to understand. There are huge implications for the fitness industry in terms of the experience offered and, more importantly, who is in charge of the experience. Technology empowers consumers to choose whether they want fitness with a virtual personal trainer at home alone or linked from home to the gym group experience, whether they want it to feel like a game show with friends or an international marathon, whether they want to experience the gym as their local social hub, or go walking in the park and experience it as a virtual sci-fi battle. Consumers ability to create mass-personalisation in other spheres of their life will give rise to the expectation and demand that their fitness offerings follow suit. The industry must prepare for the emergence of new lifestyles, new models of wellness and new ways of fitness.

From these few examples we begin to see the emergence of new lifestyles, new models of wellness, new ways of fitness.

‘New ways’ for fitness and health

The following scenarios were identified from the converging macro trends.The converging macro trends as seen is diagram x above create scenarios for new fitness themes and radical new classifications of fitness consumers. The future is dynamic, allowing multiple future fitness and activity scenarios to emerge and co-exist, as human nature evolves along a developmental path. Some scenarios enable consumers fitness needs to be met in ways distinctly separate from existing industry models. Many provide opportunity and challenge to the current industry. Understanding tomorrow’s consumers, today, is critical to the industry’s preparation and preservation for the future.

  • Theme 1:Activity is Not for Me - the dark side
  • People never exercise or move for results
  • Active experiences are viewed as too much? effort and rejected
  • For- profit providers are rejected due to lack of relevance & affordability

This theme portrays the darker side of emerging possibilities, as Unhealthy Lifestyle and sedentary habits prevail. People are inactive due to lack of motivation, lack of enjoyment, rapid and complicated lifestyles and generational norms. Fitness is not the norm and the fitness industry is unresponsive to these shifting behaviours and reluctant to or identifying new motivations[S2]. Health standards are likely to decline even further and chronic disease prevails.

“I find health clubs boring. I find them mind numbing boring and I just look at the time and I think am I done, and I have done eighteen calories and that is not even half a cracker.” (UK Consumer Group, Fitness Strugglers) [S3]

Citizens Left Behind captures the decline in living standards and economic growth, meaning bare necessity living and less money for consuming. People will lack access and as the traditional fitness offering is likely to be unaffordable.

“The big challenge is improving broaderpopulation fitness…motivating them to stay active, integrating it into their daily life…driving behavioural change by having instructors move from experts to partnerships, health trainers…building confidence and efficacy…focused on long term behavioural change, not exercise facilities”.( Dr Tim Anstiss)

  • Theme 2:Activity for Fitness Sake
  • Embrace activity, exercise, fitness & effort for[S4]
  • Results and benefits driven for personal end
  • Physicality and the body
  • Functional fitness

This Theme reflects the more positive possibilities and is the nearest to today’s fitness offerings. In the Functional Fitness scenario, consumers will seek an experience that is functional and targeted and customized for them personally, that either fits their health profile (weight control, arthritis, stress reduction), specific body parts (the neck, ankles), specific skills, (sport or lifestyle), or by life-stage or ability (childhood, ageing).

“What may occur is an absolute single mindedness to work on very particular parts of the body. Very body specific and people may seek to really define particular parts like their calf muscles or their shoulders.” (Chris Sanderson)

In the Training and Professionalism scenario, consumers will seek continuously improving levels of fitness training and professionalism to meet their needs, reinforced by governments who will be looking to the fitness industry for greater accountability for its outcomes.

“You will walk into a club and your personal trainer will be college educated with 3-4 certifications.” (Walter Thompson)

Part of My Life suggests consumers will increasingly want and expect to conveniently seek a fitness or activity experience that fits within their everyday life and living spaces. People seek to be active and fit when they want to and where they need it – anywhere, anytime, work, home, and while mobile.

“Somewhere along the line I think you will see organizations and schools and the rest of life looking at trying to build in ways of staying fit while we do our daily stuff.” (Dr Peter Saul)

  • Theme 3: Play drives Activity
  • Motivation for movement via an enjoyable experience
  • Activity is the by-product, may be unconsciously participating in movement
  • Shift from traditional “hard work” fitness space

The Game/Sport/Dance Blend scenario is a key emerging theme, where particularly younger consumers seek fitness and activity that is driven by fun and pleasure, and not by effort and hard work. They will value experiences that integrate traditional sport, dance and play and have a strong element of enjoyment, fun, sociability and play.

“You will be watching a TV and you will be actually experiencing what you are seeing on the TV, the sorts of activities and it could be anything like flying a plane. Fun things, new experiences and things you have never done before” (UK Consumer Group, Regular Gym Goers)

In Exergaming Consumers seek fitness and activity as a game driven by enjoyment. There is an expectation that exergaming products available today will be further developed to create rich sensory experiences/virtual realities that involve movement, social networks, tailoring, escapism, and new experiences.

  • Theme 4: Activity Offers Something More
  • Living a better quality life
  • Connection with the wider world and community
  • Gaining meaning, achieving wellbeing
  • Meaningful active experiences, emotional and spiritual, self-expression, beyond the activity
  • Activity leading me to who I am and where I am in the world

In the Better Healthier Life scenario, consumers are searching for a better, healthier, quality life, and a premium is placed on physical health and life extension. They will seek an experience that pays attention to body, mind and spiritual wellbeing, seeking richer and better active experiences.

“So in 5 years time I might expect my shoes to automatically log how far I walk in a week, 5 years after that I might be annoyed if my shoes don’t actually call my chiropractor to say I need to be adjusted because my gait is clearly off…,” (Che Tamahori)

In the Sociability Scenario, people will continue to need communication, connection, relationshipsand shared experiences, but these are likely to be shaped by the ongoing development of communication technologies.

“Here we have lots and lots of people who are somewhat isolated because of the movement and the question is where do they go for a community experience….the health club could become a place that nurtures community in a much broader sense and it hasn’t done that yet.” (Will Phillips)

In Search for Meaning, people place being a complete person at the core of their being. They are likely to search for meaning, and place emphasis on emotional, social and spiritual integrity. This experience may have a low technology component (conscious simplification, opting out or disconnecting) or a high technology component (proactive medicating, impression management, quick and instant mood enhancement).

“People want a richer register of experiences, not shallow experiences. They want to feel more fulfilled and happier. The fitness word needs to be reassessed…. Fitness feels dry and hard work. They must wrap an experience around it. It needs to feel compelling, connected to a bigger purpose…link what they are doing to creativity and the mind.” (Charles Landry)

Cherishing the Outdoorsmeans people will cherish and appreciate the environment for its intrinsic values of beauty and the ability to connect individuals to universal values. The trend of bringing the outdoors indoors is likely to grow.

“The compact city is the ideal…it has health benefits as it encourages people to walk and cycle... much more local shops, local facilities and parks, people can walk and feel safe…good urbanisation is important…facilities in the local park…with people getting together and enjoying themselves, local health and exercise places where people drop in, have coffee, and exercise…” (Mike Jenks)

  • Theme 5:Beyond Human Activity (Post 2030)
  • People and technology are interdependent
  • Trans-human, superior beings, artificially intelligent machines
  • Blending with reality
  • Changes the norm
  • E.g. Unenhanced Underclass, Blended Reality, Life in Outer Space, Earth System Changes

The challenging issue with the final theme is that the time frame is increasingly moving closer. Reaching singularity, when computer computation power outweighs human capability, was predicted to be about 2050 just a few years ago. The arrival date has been recently revised to nearer 2030. The potential changes in just the next 20 years will be phenomenal. The Industry must be prepared for constant environmental scanning.