Fitness + Technology

For episode 61 we pick the brain of Area General Manager and Director of Sales and Marketing at West Wood Clubs and IHRSA Board Member, Alan Leach. Alan is a regular speaker and presenter on sales and marketing for top business organizations around the world. Listen and learn how you can invest and make a difference in your members' fitness experiences. Also, learn what good marketing and bad marketing means in our industry. Don't loose hindsight of the original principles behind marketing.  Marketing is not just advertising, it is everything you do. Thank you Alan for bring such insightful thoughts to our listeners!  

For episode 60 we catch up with CEO of Discover Strength, Luke Carlson. We were honored with his time at ChinaFIT and look forward to the future connections with such young talented man. Listen in as we discuss the Chinese market and the technology implementations Luke uses at Discover Strength. We thank Luke for his time and appreciate his insights.

On today's episode, we talk IHRSA 2018 and share Bryan K. O'Rourke's presentation from last year's presentation, "Poised for Expansion. The Future of the Fitness Industry." Listen in as as Bryan discusses key trends that are impacting the industry and laying the ground work for 300% growth in the near future for the industry space. Consumer trends, technology trends, economic trends and globalism and how these things will converge to create a much larger market place then today. The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) is the fitness industry's only global trade association. IHRSA represents over 10,000 for profit health and fitness facilities and over 650 supplier companies in 71 countries. IHRSA's mission is to grow, protect and promote the health and fitness industry, and to provide its members with benefits that will help them be more successful. The IHRSA 2018 Convention & Trade Show will be held in San Diego, CA, March 21-14, 2018. You can find out more at https://www.i

For episode 58 we catch up with CEO of Anytime Fitness, Chuck Runyon. A great discussion around his recent book titled "Love Work" and how to create a high performance culture within the workforce.   As a leader or influencer, we are looking to help shake our culture to make it the best place, work. Go to work happy, leave work gratified. "You should never have to miss life's most important moments." Ask yourself, do you know what your employee value proposition is? Learn how to create and implement this value prop by listen to this episode with our dear friend, Chuck Runyon.

For episode 57 we're exploring the dynamic world of sports science at the crossroads of technology with Emmy award-winning writer and the author of "Unplugged," Phil White. In this podcast we're talking about the connections between mindfulness and technology when it comes to breathing, eating, moving, sleeping, and exercising including the relationship of health club and fitness facilities and devices. We also learn from Phil about the importance of what he calls having a "white belt mentality" when it comes to both fitness and technology, and why he believes that technology's best use case in fitness is to identify a movement fault that is potentially harmful to a client, know what the correct solution is, and to have the client implement that solution. For successful coaches and trainers, we uncover why fitness technology must only be a tool in a professional's toolbox to help inform, educate, and increase self-awareness to get a client to a place where they are actually independent and no longer need that

For episode 56, where learning and growing from the CTO of FitMetrix, Josh Lloyd about using technology for the member to win. This is something that we explore quite a bit on the show, but this is a deeper discussion where we are learning from Josh about the strategy and tools that will connect the sometimes disparate technology silos inside and outside the club to help bring them back together. In this podcast we're talking about not only how to use technology to enhance and uplevel the customer experience but also how to incentivize healthy living through data points collected via gamification and that relationship to smart push notifications sent to members. FitMetrix was founded in 2013 to solve a need around group training but has now evolved to a more robust platform that does much more by bringing in best practices from outside the fitness industry: FitMetrix has significant technical experience and believes customer service is the most critical path to success. With technology racing ahead faster tha

On episode 055, get ready for a compelling and insightful conversation live from Titleist Performance Institute in San Diego, CA with its Co-Founder Dr. Greg Rose, a pioneer in 3-dimensional biomechanics, strength and conditioning, and expert in fitness technology. In this podcast we're taking a deep dive into the success of TPI and it's impact on the fitness industry as a whole. If you are a fitness pro or operator that has been curious about using technology, apps, and movement screens to deliver better results to your clients and revenue to the club, you're going to enjoy this thought-provoking show.  Through the past 17 years, Greg has helped thousands of golfers of all skill levels reach peak athletic performance. His cutting edge yet research-based form of functional training combined with golf-specific motor learning drills have made Greg one of golf’s top strength and conditioning professionals.   Greg has also been an integral component in the creation of the "Jugamos Todos" program developed by TPI

New technologies in the fitness space are helping everyone achieve greater results as digital reward programs are making the gym experience more enjoyable for customers and more profitable for owners. In the past, running a loyalty program was fairly expensive and required a great deal of manual effort. Now there are automated tools available and tailored to the fitness space that allow members to track progress, use points, and interact with the club, all without the need for additional staff to facilitate the process.  This episode is for club owners, operators, and fitness professionals to explore the impact of how digital reward programs can be used to drive engagement, increase spend-per-member, and improve customer retention. For episode 054 we're joined by Sunil Saha, the Co-Founder and CEO of Perkville, a company offering custom automated loyalty programs in minutes that is revolutionizing how businesses motivate their customers to help them grow. Sunil also discusses how fitness management systems ar

For episode 053, we're joined by best selling author, speaker, and behavior change expert Nir Eyal, as he shares the powerful insights and strategies that companies inside and outside the fitness industry use to create engaging products and foster repeat clientele. Today on the show, we navigate the intersection of psychology, technology, and business, as Nir provides a comprehensive approach for using modern technology to build habit-forming products and how to apply these techniques to the wellness and fitness world. We dive into the psychological principles that lead to habit change with Eyal's "Hook" model, which involves four main steps: trigger, action, variable reward, and investment. He explains the value of understanding these different stages, and how building around your user's' own internal drivers will help to create an emotionally rewarding experience and keep customers coming back for more.  With all the advances in our modern world, how can club owners and fitness pros combine new technologies

For Episode 052 we're joined by Simon Hall, Principal Consultant at Fitness Business Experts and the General Manager of MYPT App, to show us the strategies needed to leverage technology and social media for generating leads, creating an engaging community experience, and increasing customer retention. Even in our fast-paced digital world, we still see a serious lag in the adoption of social strategies and new technologies with many of today's clubs and personal trainers. This failure to take advantage of social platforms and new advancements in the fitness space will cause many facilities to suffer as others begin to offer a more exciting and emotionally engaging experience.  Coming up, Simon breaks down the concept of creating a "Club-Within-A-Club." With the recent success of studio and boutique training centers, he shows how larger gyms can create a similar appeal within their existing facilities by transforming the experience around exercise classes. We talk about how many forward thinking club's now have

For Episode 51 we are joined by Garrett Marshall, Divisional CEO of Fitness On Demand, to discover how digital video programming is helping facilities enhance personalization, take advantage of underutilized space, and provide a greater variety of exercise formats to the consumer. We're also exploring how to leverage the consumer fitness groundswell in our space. Fitness On Demand™ is a market-leading delivery platform of virtual fitness. Since 2010, their services have allowed facilities around the world to economically deliver premium fitness programs to their users. With programming and services designed to optimize space, streamline operations, and offer unparalleled variety, their services are a perfect addition to fitness facilities, apartment complexes, hotels, and more. It's been shown that on average, functional training and studio rooms inside of clubs remain vacant 60-70% of the time. These new technologies are allowing facilities to capitalize on this space and provide a new digital experience to

As we fast-approach the one year anniversary next month for the fitness + technology podcast, today we're guided through some of 2017's most critical insights at the bleeding edge of trends and forecasts in our industry with the president of the Fitness Industry Technology Council, Bryan O'Rourke. In this special 50th episode, we cover so much ground and discuss the pivotal fitness and wellness devices for the cloud so that our club operators, owners, and trainers can embrace the meaningful technologies and avoid falling behind the competition. We learn from Bryan about his take on the the way our 3 basic models in the commercial fitness space are being disrupted, how technology makes you the CEO of your own health, why more people die today from overeating than from famine, and the social and economic forces at play that have a direct impact on how all of us will do business in fitness in 2018 and beyond.  If you've been listening to the show for a while and have received value from one or many of our expert

We're exploring fitness devices, data, and ecosystems that matter with the CEO of Michael Wood Fitness and the CFO of Koko FitClub, Michael Wood. In this podcast, Michael uncovers what he believes is the recipe for success in merging the digital experience with in-person training. Michael is widely recognized as one the nation’s top strength & conditioning experts. Through his leadership, Koko FitClub started as a integrated software company back in 2005. Not long after, they developed a strength training product with the goal of creating a unique turn-key coaching facility where the need for on-site trainers was to be obsolete. They saw moderate success with this new style of automated coaching, and soon realized that a critical component was missing:  Human connection. When Koko FitClub realized their digital experience needed to be upleveled to provide their members with both the technology and human connection they were looking for, they innovated a unique way to blend their tech with traditional trai

On this podcast we explore the deeper impact of the 2017 fitness industry technology trends and beyond in this era of exponential growth with the President of the Fitness Industry Technology Council, Bryan O’Rourke, for a special featured podcast from the FIT-C webinar recorded LIVE just days ago. With technology becoming not just a thing we use, but something we will become with no boundaries, Bryan reminds us that if we can think it, it can be. Yet even with all the technology that is creating more opportunity in and out of the fitness space than ever before, we also must understand the unforeseen consequences that tech is producing and how we can adapt to transcend the negativity around those changes.  You’ll learn why Bryan believes we are in the "knee of the curve" when it comes to rapid adoption and creation of new exponential tech, how this relates to the 4 key driver dynamics of why technology must serve specific purposes for business including omnipresence, personalized service, sustainability, a

With the recent update for Apple's iOS 11, today on the podcast we're learning about what this means to the fitness industry from the Chief Information Officer & Vice President of Good Life Fitness, Steve Groves. If you're like most of us in the fitness space, you've been hearing rumors for months about how Apple has been gearing up to change the landscape of how we do business, take payments, collect activity data and engage our members using GymKit and opening up the bidirectional NFC reading capabilities, along with so much more. On episode 047, we're exploring this pivotal subject in depth to uncover the real truth behind how club staff, front desk, trainers, and everyone that compliments a member's journey will now shortly be able to serve at a higher level, and save the member valuable time by using this bidirectional NFC for the creation of a truly "seamless experience" that so many in our industry have been asking for.   This iOS update points the needle of progress in the right direction and open

Today we're learning from Leon Rudge, the Director of Digital Experience at Life Fitness on the 10 steps to implementing a digital fitness strategy. We've had double digits of expert guests provide so much value over the past 40+ shows in this category of digital strategy and tools, but on today's show we're going laser and concise to extract the 10 powerful steps that club owners, operators, and trainers can build from the ground up when they look at the actual technologies in our space that will support growing both the bottom line and the customer journey and experience for members. Be sure to explore all the different resources and white paper links from Leon in the podcast today and if you've been enjoying the series, leave us a five star review for the podcast; it helps the show reach more intelligent and proactive fitness leaders like you. You can also ask myself, Bryan O'Rourke, Leon, or any of the previous guests who've been on the show a question by simply typing in your question in the review box.

With the fitness industry poised to further expand its impact and transformation within the wellness industry space, we're growing smarter today from one of the world's most influential minds in the active healthy lifestyle sector, Lee Embley, to discuss the best-of-the-best takeaways from his 40+ years around technology innovation and digital trends. With his impressive body of work, he is now leading a mission to connect the role of fitness to an even larger ecosystem of wellness, driven by artificial intelligence and big data sets through his up and coming platform Optimal AI Coach. We know now more than ever that fitness has been and will always be a powerful and integral piece in what is at the core of all club member's goals, which is to be healthy and well in their body, mind, and spirit, so on this podcast we're excited to unpack the nuances of what Lee believes is the "biggest miss" right now in the fitness industry, how human longevity plugs into our standard fitness models, why the ultimate value p

For episode 044 we're excited to bring you one of the most sought after leaders in our space for an important discussion around data collection accuracy and its relationship to the growing demand for AI and machine learning in the fitness industry. We're talking with our returning guest, Dave Wright, the CEO of MYZONE for his second appearance on the show to explore the impact of collecting fitness data for practical use, the difference between incidental versus concerted activity when we look at fitness consumer activity,  where the gaps are in adoption and how our industry can rise to the demand for true omnipresence. We're also uncovering how MYZONE is proactively educating fitness professionals and leaders on how to take in the right data set, understand it, and use technology to support executing a sustainable health and fitness experience for the new era of our consumers. With more data sets being delivered than ever before, what are the most important ones and what do fitness leaders, trainers, and ope

Today on the podcast get ready for an in depth interview with not just one, but three high-level fitness industry professionals from EXOS, a leader in the field of human performance employing more than 3,500 people in over 400 locations worldwide. We're exploring how new technologies are force multiplying the reach and efficacy of fitness professionals to deliver an intimate and powerful experience for both clients and athletes across the world.  This interview is going to inspire you and be quite thought-provoking as we challenge the conventional wisdom in the fitness industry for one of the most powerful conversations we trust this industry must go with the use of technology to finally scale a trainer and a team's services to a level of sustainability through what team EXOS calls "force multiplied fitness training." As you know if you been listening to the show for a while or if you spent years in our space, the hour-for-hour trainer model is undergoing the largest disruption in over 50 years. In our opinio

For episode 42, we tap into the roots of what technology is making an impact on the floor of one of the fastest growing studios in our space, Delta Life Fitness with CEO, Josh Cherry.  In our previous episodes around fitness studios and making fitness fun through tech and gamification with Lindsey Rainwater and Shannon Fable we've talked about what various cloud-based solutions and tactical approaches are important to create an enhanced user experience, but on today's podcast we take an even deeper dive into what is driving the growth of this up-and-coming franchise that is utilizing data sets for an outside the box gamification fitness experience for the growing niche of female-focused training. You'll learn from Josh Cherry on this episode how Delta Life Fitness uses a digital leaderboard in the lobby to harness the social contagion factor for their female members to engage inside the four walls and create the emotional hook to make better choices in the other 23 hours of their day. You'll also learn some o