Women drive growth in exercise streaming
There’s likely to be an exodus away from traditional gyms and towards online workouts following the pandemic, writes Alice Clarke.
Since our gym closed in March, my mum, mywife and I have kept in touch and clung to what little sanity we could by streaming the Les Mills workouts we’d normally be doing at the gym.
We Facetime at 4pm every weekday, sowe can switch between dance-based fitness, high-intensity weight-based interval training, hardcore cardio, and mixed martial arts.
It keeps us connected and gives our lives some sense of normalcy, and it turns out we’re not alone.
Since March, all the major exercise streaming services have had huge increases in their subscriber base.
Chris Hemsworth’s app, Centr, has seen membership grow by 300 per cent.
That’s hundreds of thousands of new users signing on worldwide, which got the app to the top of the App Store in multiple countries, with peak workout consumption up 400 per cent from the previous high in January 2020.
Lesmills On Demand, the streaming arm of the New Zealand group fitness juggernaut, has seen a 900 per cent increase in new subscribers compared to previous months, as well as a 900 per cent increase in online platform workouts across the board.
According to Les Mills’ 2019 Global Consumer Fitness Survey, 85 per cent of gym goers were alreadyworking out at home as well as at the gym.
During unprecedented times when we’re trying to get all of our human connection and entertainment through apps and streaming services, it makes sense that people turn to their devices towork out as well.
The big question for these services, though, is how much of their userbase will stay subscribed after the gyms open back up?
Rachael Newsham, a trainer and programme director at Les Mills, thinks a lot of peoplewill stick around after the pandemic.
‘‘Obviously it’s not going to be a 100 per cent hit rate,’’ she says. ‘‘[But] I feel like if people have spent more than 21 days with us, even if theymight not come back every day because life’s going to pick back up and carry on, they’re going to come back and visit. They’ll just pick us up and keep it as a complementary thing rather than the be-all-and-end-all that it is at the moment.’’
The most interesting discovery to come out of data from the services is how much the streaming fitness trend is being driven bywomen, which isn’t what I expected from an app promoted by the god of biceps, or anew Zealand platform famous for weights and combat classes.
While newer platform Centr wasn’twilling to share exact ratios, its rep did say that the fastest growing member cohort across Australia and America was women.
Over the ditch, Les Mills On Demand has a subscriber base that is 92 per cent female across its 100-country market. Newsham’s theory is that it has more to do with men traditionally seeking solitary weights or team sports, and women focusing more on community.
‘‘I’m not going to deny that I have a targetmarket for my Sh’bam workout, because I know more women are going to do dance fitness than men. But when I’m doing Body Combat, I’m not actually targeting women; I’m speaking to every gender,’’ she says.
‘‘Group fitness has had a cheerleaderwrapping for so many years, and guys don’t tend to want to do aerobics; they’ll play sports. But it’s losing that stigma, which I’m so happy about.’’
Of course, one of the concerns when taking aworkout out of the gym environment is that there is a higher risk of injury for inexperienced users. At the gym, a trainer or more experienced fitness enthusiastmight correct your technique if you’re about to hurt yourself – at home, no-one can hear your hamstrings scream.
Injury was a big concern for the programme directors when Les Mills On Demand was launched in 2018, but Newsham and the rest of the team found some solutions.
‘‘What we try to do is reduce the range of exercises. In a personal training situation, where you can be hands-on with somebody, you can engage in activities that have more risk involved,’’ she says.
‘‘What we try to do is just reduce the range, so a squat isn’t as deep as some peoplemay go; it’s a little shallower. And we don’t use heavy weights in Body Pump, we use light weights and high reps, and that definitely reduces risk of injury. The coaching that we deliver is so considered to make sure that everyone hears what they need to hear to be safe.’’
No-one knows how the world will be different after the pandemic ends, but if these trends continue, and more people get into new habits, there’s likely to be an exodus away from traditional gyms and towards technology.
– Sydneymorning Herald