SWEAT SUCCESS

Working out has become a total mind, body and soul experience.

When you catch yourself sneaking out for a fix on a snowy Sunday night in New York, you know you’re hooked. “Stay here. I’ll light some candles and shout mantras at you,” teases my friend as I exit her cosy West Village apartment, seeking sweaty spirituality via a SoulCycle class, booked before boarding my flight from Sydney.

But as any keen SoulCycler will tell you, clipping into a lemon-yellow bike is about much more than a workout. Or grape fruitscented candles. Or motivational cliches. Or cardio. Or community. Or hill climbs. Or cute instructors. Or even the celebrity ‘riders’, who include David Beckham, Nicole Kidman, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton and Lena Dunham.

“This is not about a class; it’s not about a bike: it’s about you. Your purpose. Your goals. Your drive,” declare SoulCycle’s charismatic instructors in the indoor cycling studio’s Find It campaign. You could also call SoulCycle, which began as a single, candlelit 31-bike Manhattan cycling studio in 2006, a cardio dance party, group therapy, entertainment, meditation in motion, a religious experience or quite simply a cult. “SoulCycle, like certain iterations of yoga, has been such a success in the current moment in part because it makes submission to a luxury-brand experience feel like spiritual enrichment,” surmised a New York Times article.

But it is not the only workout enjoying cult status right now. Or the only one serving exercise with a side of enlightenment. Class by Taryn Toomey is a yoga-cardio-strength workout that encourages students (who include Christy Turlington, Jennifer Aniston and Naomi Watts) to laugh, cry, swear, moan and scream out loud to process their emotions while writhing about on a crystal-studded floor.

Then there’s the Hollywood-endorsed, high-energy Barry’s Bootcamp, where you can burn 1,000 calories per class alongside Kim Kardashian, Katie Holmes and Jessica Alba. The dance-driven Tracy Anderson Method championed by student (and now Anderson’s business partner) Gwyneth Paltrow appears to attract perfectionists seeking precision bikini body sculpting. CrossFit has been around for almost 20 years and boasts about 13,000-plus affiliates globally. But the gruelling combo of circuit training, weights, plyometrics, cardio, kettle bells and endless burpees remains a religion for a

tribe of “crossfitters”, who over the years have included Cameron Diaz, Madonna and Jessica Biel. Hot on the heels of Crossfit is the Australian franchise, F45, which launched its high-intensity style training in 2012 and has already expanded to more than 500 gyms across Australia, Europe, the US, Canada and Asia. But insiders are tipping high-intensity, low-impact indoor rowing workouts will be the new indoor cycling (check out LA-based studio LIT Method).

Competition in the fickle fitness industry is ruthless and the stakes have never been higher. According to the Global Wellness Institute report, the business of wellness was worth US$3.7 trillion worldwide in 2015 (yes, trillion: it’s not a typo), and the “fitness, mind and body” category accounts for US$542 billion in annual sales.

Australia has one of the most saturated gym markets in the world, says Kate Kraschnefski, national training manager for the Australian Institute of Fitness. She says the growing popularity of low-service 24-hour gyms such as Jetts, Anytime and Snap have forced the bigger gyms to offer access around the clock. “And, conversely, the 24-hour gyms are starting to offer more classes to compete with big gyms like Fitness First and Goodlife.”

The athleisure trend is also stronger than ever. According to market research firm Euromonitor, sportswear sales grew by seven per cent in 2016, outpacing growth in other clothing categories in the US$1.7 trillion apparel and footwear market for the third year in a row. Morgan Stanley estimates annual activewear sales will reach US$83 billion by 2020. That explains why the lobby of your local gym is packed with racks of merchandise, which accounts for an increasing proportion of revenue.

For every cult workout, there are competitors (and energetic copycats) muscling in for a slice of the action. SoulCycle’s main US rivals include Flywheel Sports (started in 2010 by SoulCycle cofounder Ruth Zukerman), which is said to be more competitive and less “psychoactive” than SoulCycle, allowing cyclers to publicly display their performance on a communal screen and compete with the group. Then there is Peloton Interactive, launched in 2014, which sells a sleek US$2,000 stationary bike equipped with a touchscreen that allows you to stream up to 14 live online classes daily and access a database of 4,000 classes via a US$39.95 monthly subscription. (In comparison, SoulCycle charges up to US$40 for a 45-minute class.)

SoulCycle is also facing increasing competition from traditional gyms, new spinning studios, other boutique studios and even Netflix, according to a report co-authored by Professor David Collis, who specialises in strategy at Harvard Business School. The report also observed that “some people are turned off by SoulCycle’s ‘elitist culture’”, which is “a place where skinny one-percenters congregate, and self-esteem goes to die”.

Bricks and mortar fitness studios are also competing with online fitness programs and apps that offer privacy and convenience, online community and digitised feedback. Case in point: downloadable Bikini Body Guides and a Sweat with Kayla app earned 26-year-old Adelaide personal trainer Kayla Itsines an estimated $46 million in 2015. And Michelle Bridges, fellow personal trainer, author and former coach on The Biggest Loser, has an estimated worth of $53 million, thanks to her 12 Week Body Transformation (12WBT) program. Bridges prefers to measure her success in kilograms, boasting that her clients have lost a collective 1.5 million of them since 12WBT launched eight years ago.

Competition aside, SoulCycle’s emotionally engaged training ethos is symbolic of the more holistic role real-life and digital trainers must play in the “transformation economy”, in which consumers are splurging on self-actualisation rather than stuff. Discretionary spending is shifting from conspicuous consumption toward self-improvement. The new luxury is about feeling good internally. (Looking good is a welcome side effect.) But becoming your “best self” is a status symbol that comes with lasting real-life benefits. Longevity has become the ultimate gift with purchase.

Pumped up by Instagram memes and #fitspo imagery, motivated clients are pushing trainers to lift their game, too. Once it was enough for PTs to stand back and bark orders. Now they are expected to be thought leaders, lifestyle gurus and agents of radical change.

Being a PT is not about telling people what to do any more, says Kraschnefski. “PTs need to be able to recognise detrimental behaviours and coach their clients towards positive behavioural change,” she says. “And not just while they are in the gym, but in other areas of their life, such as what they eat and how they manage stress.”

Bridges says the trainers leading the field are expanding their clients’ mental and emotional selves, not just aerobic capacity. “We’ve always been motivators, but the pressure is on, because of consumer demand and expectation, to be much more multifaceted ourselves as trainers,” she says. She warns that consumers need to make sure their trainers are qualified to advise them on areas outside the physical training sphere: “Training people in the mental and emotional fields is a really specialised skill set and it’s important for all parties that no-one oversteps their remit and expertise.”

Total mind and body transformation is a trend that’s here to stay. Enjoy the ride …

“We’ve always been motivators, but the pressure is on to be much more multifaceted ourselves as trainers” – Michelle Bridges