The dramatic rise of online fitness
Living room workouts and a promising future for personal trainers
Stretch up folks, we’re going to be looking at the rise of online fitness classes.
Today you’ll learn about the forces behind an insane demand for online fitness and the kinds of solutions fulfilling this demand. We’re going to take a closer look at a macro trend that online fitness is riding and think about future opportunities to capitalise on the hunger for workouts at home.
Let’s dive in.
An insane demand for getting fit at home
Covid has led to a dramatic shift in the demand for fitness solutions: From real life, to online.
Obviously this started due to gyms and the classes within them being cancelled, but fundamental changes in behaviour could lead to this trend sustaining well into the future.
Why this trend might stick around
They say it takes 66 days to for a behaviour to turn into a habit. A long period of isolation means the new behaviour of streaming fitness classes will turn into an permanent habit, making it hard for lounge-room athletes to return to regular gyms.
With a recession looming there’ll be less discretionary income to spend on expensive gym memberships and classes.
Remote work means that schedules aren’t as in-sync as usual. People will need workout classes to run on-demand rather than fit into a pre-scheduled time.
It’s likely that business districts lose population density as remote work increases and many simply not returning from out of city escapes. This makes it harder for physical gyms to maintain numbers.
What solutions are out there
Broadly, there are three categories of online classes:
1) Hardware programs such as Peloton, Mirror and Tonal.
2) Traditional classes gone online such as F45, Orange Theory and Obe.
3) Personal trainers hosting their own classes.
A lot of press (and huge investment) has been focused on the Pelotons and Mirrors of the world, but I find the personal trainers to be the most interesting opportunity.
Personal trainers, out of the gym and into your phone
There are over 350k personal trainers in the US, and many are using their significant social followings to draw in an audience to streaming classes held on IG, Fb watch, YouTube Live and Twitch.
Why is this opportunity interesting?
It’s part of a macro trend
Individually run online fitness classes reflect a wider trend of gig economy workers taking things into their own hands across dozens of categories: Bartenders hosting cocktail classes, DJs throwing streaming parties and Chefs creating limited meal delivery services. As gig economy workers realise the benefits of a scaled audience and direct revenue streams they will increasingly move away from the businesses and platforms they used to split their earnings with.
Low barrier to entry
Peloton and Mirror are creating a lot of hype in Silicon Valley and coastal US cities, but with the cheapest price of admission being $1500, they’re exclusively for the rich. As health awareness rises in lower income demographics and an uncertain economic future unfolds, cheaper solutions will rise in popularity.
Emotional connection
Group classes were successful in part due to the emotional connection you form with a group getting through a class together, as well as an impactful audio visual experience in the room. Online this can’t quite be recreated. There’s an emotional connection that you can build with an personal trainer that simply doesn’t exist in a class or app. Having one person understand what motivates you and tracks with you through fitness goals is crucial for sustained engagement.
Personal trainers offer huge marketing opportunities.
Personal trainers can scale income beyond what they earn from classes because online streams offer marketers completely new ways to target consumers:
Engagement with scale
Usually when targeting a category specific audience with relevant comms your choice (broadly) was to: A) Partner with a category specific channel/publisher/platform for scale or B) Activate category specific influencers for engagement. As personal trainers build larger live audiences there’s the potential to get both engagement (through personal connection) and scale (through a growing audience) in one hit.
Emergence of a unified influencer audience
Currently influencers reach their audiences at a one to one level, people check in individually on their own time.
When streaming a personal trainer can reach a scaled audience over a single moment.
Impacting a unified audience moment at scale is really valuable for brands. It's one of the reasons TV ads are so effective. A large audience experiencing a message at the same time builds emotional connection and buzz-worthy, cultural moments. Integrating this into a live stream also means they can’t skip past a message.
The future opportunities
A platform to organize
For a personal trainer to build a business out of streaming classes they need to take on many roles: Building an audience online, booking in classes, managing payments, scheduling classes and more. A platform that helps streamline this process would be incredibly valuable. There’s an opportunity for a Shopify for online fitness.
A marketplace for advertisers
A centralised platform that defines, promotes and fulfils partnership opportunities would help instructors reach marketing partners and help marketing partners scale partnership opportunities with as little leg work as possible.