What you’re about to read might be offensive.
In fact, if I were to have read this 5 years ago I’d probably put on my keyboard warrior hat and go to war.
But I’m not writing this to keep the peace, I’m writing it because this is what I believe to be the truth and ultimately if you take this path as a consumer or creator of commercialised fitness you will be better off in the long run.
“Group fitness needs to fucking die” - Adam Schaeffer.
These were the words which in 2019 changed the course of my life.
I was in Santa Jose California interviewing The Mind Pump Podcast hosts about the future of the fitness industry.
I was prepared for some controversy, but nothing like this.
Nothing that would go against everything I had built up and everything in my life I was proud of.
As the old saying goes, the truth hurts.
Let’s rewind to see how an owner of 3 group fitness gyms and the host of a podcast all about the benefits of group fitness had come to change everything he believed in.
Dec 31, 2011 I completed my first ever CrossFit class in my local ‘box’.
I quickly fell in love.
It was hard, different and fun to train with other like-minded people.
Fast forward to Jan 2014 and with 4 other business partners I was opening one of my own. CrossFit Creature. 3 years after that we owned 3.
1 year later we left the brand CrossFit behind and became ‘Creature Fitness’.
We left CrossFit behind for marketing purposes but the training mostly stayed the same.
1 program, 15-20 person classes and a whole lot of chaotic fun.
During the years of 2014-2019 we watched the rise of competition from brands like F45, Orange Theory, Barry’s BootCamp, Soul Cycle and everything in between.It was very clear, group fitness was taking over.
My business partners and I used to joke that these brands were a funnel pouring clients into our gyms. It was somewhat true but many of them despite having inferior training programs had a much better business.
So if our programming was so good… why were people not staying around and how were these other group gyms doing so well?
Well there are many correct answers to this question…
But putting all those aside there was still one underlying undeniable truth.
*Drum roll*
A 1-size fits all group training program is shite.
Just so we’re clear this is not easy for me to admit and there is a lot to lose for me by saying this.
So let’s all take a collective deep breath... and keep reading.
Think about it like this.
Large Group Fitness programming is like Fast Food.
If I haven’t eaten in weeks and I’m starving, fast food can save my life.
Just like if I haven’t gotten off the couch in years, any exercise will benefit me tremendously and even change my life.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is what happens at 6 months.
If I continue to eat fast food and nothing else I’m going to encounter some serious health issues. Yes this food once saved my life but it’s so devoid of essential nutrients eating it all the time will make me ill.
If I stay in the group training model doing the same 1 size fits all program with 20 other people every day I’m going to start running into some road blocks. Small niggles leading to serious injury, chronic tiredness, the plateauing of results and worse of all boredom.
It took me years to come to this realisation.
Yes, people loved our training in the beginning but after years and years of the same thing eventually these roadblocks began to show up and ultimately we had to watch these once great customers leave.
We tried everything… new programming styles, extra sessions, new class types and better coaches but ultimately we kept getting stuck at the same road blocks.
With no ability to individualize and custom build people’s training for their needs we would always end up back at square one.
Ok fast forward back to 2019.
It’s now just me and my business partner and podcast co-host Raph.
We both knew after returning from the USA and experiencing first hand the massive over-saturation in group training that we needed to change.
We were beating a dead horse.
What our gyms offered wasn’t the answer.But the other end of the spectrum, Personal Training, we also knew for us wasn’t the correct solution.
So like all good things in life we searched the grey area for the answer.
The way we saw it, these were the biggest problems we were trying to solve:
How do we ensure customers can train and make progress indefinitely
How do we get clients to focus on their long term health not just their short term performance
How do we dramatically reduce injuries
How do we keep the camaraderie and fun we have with group training
How do we get faster more consistent results for more clients
I’d argue most gym owners who care about their clients (not the investors who own 9 gyms in their multi-million dollar portfolio) want answers to these questions too.
I also believe the consumer of group fitness whether a first timer or on their 5th CrossFit Affiliate membership is also searching for these answers.
No one likes being injured, no one wants to plateau and not know what to do next and very few people want to train regularly on their own.
Side note: If you enjoy being injured, grinding endlessly through plateaus and trying alone I’m gonna assume you’re a paid athlete... if you’re not, you are cut from a different cloth you crazy bastard.
Solving this puzzle would be no easy task.
As I’m writing this now we are coming out of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown.
Gyms will be reopening soon in a completely different landscape.
It was a blessing in disguise because it gave myself and Raph time to pause and piece together what we believe is the solution to our group fitness problems.
So Yes Adam, we agree, Group Fitness is dying and soon in many places will be dead, mostly sped up by the regulations put in place post-pandemic but also largely from a market looking to do something more meaningful in the long term.
Do we have the solution?
I think so.
Could I be wrong?
Absolutely.
But having run gyms for 6 years, interviewed over 250 diverse and influential minds in the fitness industry and having trained at over 120 different gyms in Aus, USA and NZ I think we’re onto something.
Soon we will be unveiling what we have created, I couldn’t be more nervous and excited but deep down I know it’s what our industry needs.
Salud.
P.S. I don’t write long articles very often but I do send out a daily email to over 3000 subscribers. If you enjoyed it and want more of my thoughts in writing go here.