LIFTS Episode 111 - Strength, Pilates & Wellness Are Booming, But Something Isn't Adding Up? | Inside the Les Mills 2026 Global Fitness Report | with Sean Turner

27:57Sean Turner:You know, it takes resource. It takes human capital. It takes real effort and strategy. over just focusing on acquisition. So what we wanted to do with that study is who are the most value participants in your club, okay? And how do you go after them to actually drive bottom line results?

28:16Mohammed Iqbal:Matthew, before you go, just on retention, a couple of key points, which we've seen, is to acquire a new member, depending on if you're HVLP or premium, but you're roughly between$150 and$300 for that member acquisition. Sean, retaining a member is less than$80 on average. That's it. In addition to that, the industry, and depending on what type of club you have, churns between 40 % to 50 % a year. That's how much we churn. So if we could solve the retention problem, it's a much easier way to grow your business. Matthew, I'll hand it back to you. Yeah. Well, in relation to the point you've made, it does seem to say in your report that even though participation seems to be rising, confidence is falling.

29:02Matthew Januszek:And there's a couple of examples in here where if you look at page five, regular exercises are up 61 percent from 44 percent in 2018. But if you look at page eight, 37 percent don't feel confident about working out. And on page 10, people are less confident about working out now than they are years ago. So although we're definitely fitness is probably there's no surprise. Everybody's excited about fitness or they recognize the importance of getting involved in fitness. However, it still seems to say that as an industry, we're not quite getting that message through to people. and clearly, as you both indicated, that this is not resulting in the long-term retention of this habit as we need it to be.

29:55Matthew Januszek:So what are your thoughts on this? Now, clearly, Les Mills are working on that, which is part of the magic of some of your programmings. But I'd just like you to, maybe with your operator's hat on, give us your thoughts on that and what are some of the key things that we need to do to move this? Because it is an old conversation. Totally. Absolutely.

30:14Sean Turner:Yeah, it's an old conversation. And, you know, Lee was on with us in a webinar a few months ago from ABC, and he was saying that last year's stats were across ABC, the ABC platform where we grew by 1%, but we lost 4 % or something like that. I'm not sure if I heard that right, but it sounds kind of scary. And that's been, you know, the prevailing stats over quite a couple of years. I think there's a challenge since COVID, actually, that's impacted this area. Because we've been able to become leaner when we operate clubs within that time based on expectations. I think also maybe there was an idea in the operator space of cut the fact because maybe we were, you know, over indexed on support, etc.

31:08Sean Turner:However, by taking some of that out, we've become less human centric. And often, as you touched on before, Mo, people that like to exercise, we can't understand how people wouldn't be motivated to work out. but we're in a very small percentage and sometimes the curse of knowledge as i like to say sometimes you know it doesn't allow us to think about the majority of the population that have what we call at les mills gym intimidation right they they're really intimidated to go into the club uh they may be new to it they may not know so i think that's the one thing that maybe there's less resource that is focused on that in the majority of clubs maybe they've gone digital maybe they've lost sales teams you know where are the days back you know in the home space days we used to have someone that was dedicated to member interaction i mean that's what we called it all they did was walk around the club and speak to you know is your workout up to date would you like a personal that type of thing and a club manager was expected to be out on the gym floor not in the office in fact i met other club operators in norway that they didn't even build offices for their teams because they wanted their teams to be with the members.

32:24Sean Turner:I don't see that happening as much in clubs these days, except for very, very good operators. So I think that that's the first. It happens in restaurants and good hotels.

32:34Matthew Januszek:You know, it's very common to see that. And for such a service-led industry like we are, it's surprising that there's not a, you know, reverting back to some of those basic ideas, really. Yeah.

32:46Sean Turner:And the second thing I would say is there's almost information overload. I heard Anthony on your podcast a while ago, and he was kind of touching on the desire for people to move away from technology and more become more human, you know, for more human engagement and connection. And I think that that's true. And I think in our report also, one of the things that stood out to me and something that Tom from Raw mentioned on a webinar a while ago was the distrust that people have or Gen Z have in AI. And there's so much information and workout information on there that I think people are on their phones, but often they're not sure if they're getting conflicting guidance or training advice, and they're not sure what's true anymore.

33:37Sean Turner:And I think that that's the area that we could really impact in. And a lot of our new formats are really driven around that. So, for example, one of the things we speak about in the report is the rise of strength. So strength, you guys speak about it all the time. Everyone's speaking about it. But you go out on a gym floor, and if you've worked out for a long time or been a trainer, you notice how many crazy things people are doing. And some of them are downright dangerous without support, right? So you're seeing people on squat racks, lifting fairly heavy stuff, doing Olympic lifting, but they don't have that much of a background.

34:20Sean Turner:So where we're trying to look at is how do we bridge the gap? Can you bring people that are intimidated or new to lifting and wanting to lift heavier into classes? Give them the social element that they seek, especially Gen Z. give them confidence and technique to lift better and actually have a good experience so they can actually go onto the gym floor and do some of this in a more effective and safer manner. So I think those are the two big things that I would say are driving some of them that we could do in clubs to overcome some of that. So how do we, and onboarding. So are we sending people into the right spaces?

35:07Sean Turner:Are we onboarding? Are we going around the gym floor? Are we creating opportunities that are inclusive enough to get beginners into lifting safely, having fun, and connecting socially?

35:20Mohammed Iqbal:You know, I think that a lot of that resonates with me. Something interesting, too, when you talk about technology and people getting conflicting advice through AI, to your point, I mean, that was in your report, as you had just mentioned. But that's also something that is a reality that we have to live in today. Over 30 % of people are coming into gyms today with some sort of programming that they got online, whether it is from a YouTube influencer, it's from ChatGPT, who just released ChatGPT Health two weeks ago, while I was at CES. How do you kind of view the role of technology and how do you build the trust so that even though uh and i think you call them movers and you to use a les mills term your movers might be something online on social media on tech talk chat gpt but then you want to be that source of truth

36:16Sean Turner:look first of all i'll say i love technology and i always have and i think there's a place for it and i think you know human-led technology enabled is kind of a theme that i think is kind of be going to be driven more in a lot of health clubs. I know I heard you guys speaking about AI and maybe that bubble is going to burst, etc. I really believe that there's a place for tech. And let's not forget, a lot of the tech solutions have driven people into the club. They say that 35 % of people that see an online workout will go and try that workout in the club. And that's stats that we have from our content, which is awesome, right?

36:59Sean Turner:I guess what you're speaking about is how do you get people that aren't experienced and get them up to speed? And I think what you see is that, you know, for golfers out there, it's like when you're trying to improve your golf swing or you're doing anything that's biomechanical, you think you're moving in a certain way. But when you really see a recording of that, you're moving very differently. So maybe in your youth, Matthew, as I've heard you say, you spend a lot of time in clubs and raves. Maybe you thought you were a good dancer, but when you video, maybe you're not so good. Oh, I am.

37:32Matthew Januszek:I'm confident about that.

37:35Sean Turner:So I think once you start seeing yourself, and, you know, so there's a lot of space for human coaching around technique, especially for compound lifts and things like that, that are usually, and back in the day, we're more done with coaches and personal trainers. The challenge I believe is, is when you go from something fairly complex in movement to someone that hasn't got the experience, and you're using a lot of weight to keep up with your friends and peer group, that's when it borders on, you know, how dangerous can this become? And I think they're having different stages of entry into your onboarding when you get new members into a club is critical.

38:18Sean Turner:So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And by the way, Mo, I think from a tech perspective, you know, I'm often excited about the opportunity. I know we're not there yet, but what role AI could play in helping the, you know, human tech crossover in onboarding, like you could scale, personalize, et cetera. In the traditional health club space, we take a long time and we've seen kind of interesting stuff happening in the acquisition space with AI and marketing, but we haven't seen much in member journeys and onboarding. And I wonder about that. And I can envision there being some very interesting elements that we could use to scale and personalize in that space.

39:05Mohammed Iqbal:Well, I can tell you the parts that I'm involved in from an industry perspective, 26 is going to be a big year for the things that you're talking about around assessments, onboarding and using AI to really have drive the member journey. But it brought us something interesting because this is a lot of what you just talked about. We talked about just 10 % of consumers prefer AI guidance over human coaching. And then 33%, which is close to what I mentioned, about a third of exercises use a fitness app for every workout. And then 78 % use some sort of tool or device to track their workout, which is pretty remarkable.

39:43Mohammed Iqbal:and then 76 % are holding off on weight loss medications. And when I look at this data, to me, this is surveying potentially Les Mills or gym members. I would probably push back a little bit here and say that number one, one in eight of Americans have tried or been on a GLP-1, which is an alarming statistic, alarming statistic.

40:08Sean Turner:By the way, I can touch on that. I think you've got to look at it. This is, as I said, 14 countries. So the U.S., I mean, there's so much opportunity in this space, and it's growing at an unbelievable rate. I saw a consumer analyst, elite consumer analyst from PwC the other day on a news channel, and she was speaking about the growth and how glp ones have impacted retail beyond fitness in the united states and it's it's mind blowing so how portions that restaurants serve what type of drinks the alcohol industry retail at leisure um on and on activities how people are getting more into activities agility that people get that they're able to do things that they would.

41:02Sean Turner:So I think in the US, I mean, there's, they said there's like 13 % in clubs using GLP ones. I'm not sure. I saw that stat somewhere. But there's, you've got 40 % of people that are obese and 70 % of people that are overweight in the US. But I think we far ahead in the US speaking, we now I'm American, we in the US are far ahead of everywhere else in the world, I would say, around GLP-1s. Maybe the UK is moving. So I think that's a good call out, Mo. And I think that this skews because of the worldwide view of it and how that's balanced. So I would say that there's a lot larger number in the US.

41:51It's only starting to get traction and there's awareness about it in other countries.

41:57Sean Turner:I heard you say that you gave a talk somewhere recently and you spoke about GLP-1s and people didn't really know what you're speaking about.

42:07Mohammed Iqbal:Yeah, that was in Australia. And I just pulled up an article that Jeffries did a research that they released last week in the New York Times that airlines are going to save$580 million a year because people are weighing less and they save less in fuel costs. But yes, that was in Australia where I spoke in the Gold Coast and I mentioned GLP-1s and I saw all these looks like, what is that? But then when I talked about a Zempick, people understood that.

42:31Matthew Januszek:Well, we have to get, if we've got GLPs on, GLP1s, which is a regular on the podcast, we can't finish without mentioning Pilates as well. And if you look, Pilates seems to reflect the demand for strength training. It seems to be a place where people can feel safe and structured. and it builds confidence, which I would say, with a key demographic that are coming into the clubs trying Pilates. However, almost every week I follow Athlitech and there's a new brand that's offering Pilates in their gyms. Today I saw that Pure Gym, which is a low-cost operator in the UK and I think they're in the US now, have also included Pilates.

43:19Matthew Januszek:Going back to your report, page 7, it says, Pilates is identified as one of the fastest growing categories. Page 31, 59 % want yoga, breathwork, and meditation on timetables. And pages 14 and 15 says there's barriers around intimidation, uncertainty, and fear of judgment. And so when you think about Pilates and coming back from the Pilates Expo just last week, I realized that this is a really sophisticated product to deliver from a trainer perspective, from a safety perspective. It's not easy just to roll out Pilates like it is to add a few squat racks in there, although it does seem as though this is being approached in a similar way.

44:00Matthew Januszek:So I want to get your view on this whole Pilates and yoga and breathwork category that seems to be growing. What do you see as some of the challenges that the industry are facing by going into this too quickly without really having the infrastructure and support delivery. What are Les Mills doing? And it'd be nice if you can maybe be, you know, this can be one of the first places where you maybe tell us about some of the innovation that's due to be launched pretty soon by Les Mills. Okay.

44:28Sean Turner:So first of all, wellness is a massive thing. The two areas we focused on in our evolution over time and a lot of our innovation collection is focused on it is really the growth of strength and the growth of mind-body for wellness type activities. Obviously, Pilates, Sculpt, which is our Shape program, which is a mix of a number of disciplines that are mind-body, and yoga are huge in that area. I mean, if you look on search, yoga is one of the highest searched activities on the internet. Adrian usually throws out a stat, but I don't want to make a mistake on how many million there are. But it's generally growing, and that's also the shift in how people want to actually work on their mindfulness and other areas.

45:25Sean Turner:So we've recognized that trend. Traditionally in clubs, I feel it's been fairly hard for them to execute well on that. It's quite The courses are very intensive, so 100, 200 hour courses, and often they find that it's challenging for them to get instructors in that space. Or people that want to attend those classes often feel intimidated by, you know, that it's very, very pure and maybe they're not a yogi or as flexible, et cetera. I might have been in that space myself, but I was introduced to yoga by my ex-CEO who goes to India every year and I really found that it's a fantastic practice. At Les Mills we've really looked into that and look how can we make it more inclusive, more accessible and as you touched on Matthew, how can we get more instructors involved so they can focus on the teaching rather than creating the program and having to go into all the technical elements around them being able to actually go through the physiology and all of those type of things.

46:35Sean Turner:And what we've come up with is we released our yoga program, which is actually four programs, yin, hatha, vinyasa, and breathwork, the end of last year or third quarter of last year. That's starting to go well. And one of the appeals to that is that we can get a boutique-like experience in the clubs, and it's easier for them to recruit and train instructors in that space. The reason for that is they don't need to do 100 or 200-hour course because we're focusing mainly on the teaching and how they educate the people. A lot of those instructors also come from other disciplines like body balance or other areas in the mind-body space, and it's more focused on how they teach rather than how they create the programming.

47:23Sean Turner:Why? Because we've given them the template with the flow and their exercises and it's science-backed in that space. So it's much more accessible, easier. And we've also looked at making it more Gen Z friendly. What does that mean, make it more Gen Z friendly? In the way that they actually learn. So looking at learning styles, attention spans, not suggesting that longer or shorter attention spans, although when I look at my kids, I'm not sure. But basically making so 10, five to 10 hours is pre work, which they go through a lot of stuff that's on video, etc. Then they're going to two day training, which some of our trainings were a bit longer before.

48:08Sean Turner:And then there's post work that's basically bite sized, that they get coaching on, etc. before they actually go into filming their tracks, and then they get certified. And then there's follow-up through grading, through workshops, et cetera. So we've really looked at the education tracks and, you know, made it more accessible and user-friendly in that space. And that's not necessarily only Gen Z, you know, you've got different type of learning styles.

48:40Mohammed Iqbal:Well, one thing which I would encourage your research team to do for next year with this report is you combined yoga and Pilates in a singular category in the report. And I think that they're taking diversion paths in that since the pandemic, really, yoga's been on a bit of a decline, even though it's still highly popular, to your point, one of the most searched terms in fitness. While Pilates is having a moment and having a boom. did I hear you say that Les Milt is coming out with the Pilates type of program? I'd love to hear more about it. Is that equipment-based? Do you have a reformer? Or is it more mat-based?

49:15Sean Turner:So we have. We launched Pilates, and we call it Pilates Reimagined. So there's an element of music and flow to the music, and we find that that helps with the mindfulness element of it. So it's based on the original Joseph Pilates stuff, and that's a mat-based workout. But we are going to bring something out later this year. Is that a first? Is this being broken now? Wait and see. Yes, yes. You might come and try it out, let's say. No, but we can share because we're going to share it at HFA anyway. We're looking at, we've developed and we've trialled a reformer class in New Zealand. So anyone that goes down can see it.

50:08Sean Turner:And the idea is we'll allow clubs to be able to have boutique reformer-like Pilates in their clubs. And also be able to actually drive through that as a revenue stream, but a lot of clubs have tried to do it. Overcome some of the barriers with the instructor challenge and the design of the content, keeping it consistent, refreshing it every quarter, et cetera. So at HFA, we're going to have an invite-only trial of that. I've done it down in New Zealand, and it's been going very well in New Zealand.

50:45Mohammed Iqbal:I've got questions, but since we don't have a lot of time here, but I'm just curious, how do you deal with the different reformers that a club might have? There are so many brands of reformers out there. Great question.

50:56Sean Turner:we had to make it agnostic. So we don't have a specific reformer. We've got people much smarter than me that thought about all the gaps and didn't just dive in and make it one reformer. So it's reformer agnostic. It's designed to make it as easy as possible and frictionless for the operator to execute in the club as possible.

51:20Mohammed Iqbal:I'm excited. Maybe you can find a way to get Matthew and I on that list. Actually, I've been trying to get Matthew to do a Pilates class. I do Pilates about once a week, and it's been transformative for my strength and running and all the things. So he has not. So maybe, Matthew, that will be the time when it's only, I think, a month or so away. We'll take it.

51:40Sean Turner:Very different from ceremony that you did. We can do a Pilates podcast and ask a few questions as we're going through it.

51:49Mohammed Iqbal:No, I think we should. Well, listen, I think we're at time now. So Sean, one of the things, you are a regular listener of the podcast, so you know we like to wrap up with the final takeaways. I'd love to start with you. Given this report, given the moment that we are in as fitness and the legacy of Les Mills, anything that we should be looking at in 26 that we should get excited about?

52:11Sean Turner:I think that our industry has always been good at the human element and we're we always say we're a service industry and we're all passionate about passionate about getting people moving more and more often right and that's the fundamental thing that keeps us all together we want to create as we say at Les Mills a healthier planet which is a really awesome purpose and most companies in our industry and people have that. I just wonder, you know, and I'm excited about how we look at becoming more human centric, but looking at human led tech enabled and how we do that in a better way. So we use tech in the ways that really help us get more people to work out and make their journeys a lot easier and help it stick.

53:02Sean Turner:Right. So I think there's so much opportunity in that space that I'm pretty excited by where we could go with that and who are going to be the first to actually really dive into that and prove it very effective.

53:16Mohammed Iqbal:Matthew, how about you? I don't really see you as someone who is going to be all in on a boutique fitness class. We did this ceremony together and you have committed to doing a Pilates class with me soon. Any key takeaways?

53:28Matthew Januszek:yeah uh my my key takeaways i've followed les mills for a long time when i came into the industry les mills body pump had just started and i followed them very closely through the aerobic studio boom where all of the health clubs had a step class and then they had body pump and i watched that the programs expand into group cycling and then i also saw the the shift in the industry where studios were starting to be removed, where the low-cost gyms came in, and Les Mills had this, and this is just as an outsider, but seemed to observe this move towards equipment and then digital and then also a big push in terms of the consumer space.

54:14Matthew Januszek:And this, for me, seems like another new chapter for Les Mills, where a lot of the shortcomings of the industry and a lot of the changes in terms of staffing and quality of instructors almost seems to be coming back again. And when the boutiques came along, I almost wondered, well, what are Les Mills going to do in response to this? Because this was almost a lot of these small entrepreneurial businesses were doing exactly what Les Mills was offering. And it was like Les Mills was anti-boutique fitness. It was, you know, there was this almost like competition going on between the two. So it's really encouraging to see.

54:54Matthew Januszek:One, it speaks to the innovation of the people and the leadership within Les Mills. They've been going for a number of generations and clearly they know what they're doing. But it's always impressive just to stand and whether you work with them or not, just to stand back and watch what this company does. because they are truly an impressive company. The partnerships, the relationships, the products that they deliver are always five-star and first-class. And I just want to say, whilst I've got the opportunity for anyone listening, I've got a huge amount of respect for the company and looking forward to seeing what they come out with in the next year or so.

55:31Matthew Januszek:So thanks very much. Mo, what's your takeaways?

55:35Mohammed Iqbal:Yeah, I think just to add to what you said about Les Mills, most gym goers and obviously even industry experts don't really realize the scale and scope of Les Mills. It isn't until you go from like a New York sports club in New York to a David Lloyd's in the UK or somewhere else in Australia and you see the consistency of how the brand delivers, which is really hard to do, right? Because it's not a franchise. You're dealing with mixed environments. You have to localize the products. I just, you know, kudos to Les Mills and what they're doing. My key takeaway is we've been having a lot of conversations.

56:11Mohammed Iqbal:We're a couple of weeks into the new year now. I think it's the inclusivity of the industry in how we're thinking about what is next. We live in such a polarized world, and everyone has these super strong opinions about things that are out in the world. But in our industry, I keep on hearing, we almost seem joined together in terms of what we need to do to advance things forward. And the theme today which came out is really this focus on mindfulness and emotional and the move away from aesthetics to wellness and all the different drivers of the industry. By and large, there is a general consensus on the strategy, and it seems to be the right one.

56:55Mohammed Iqbal:I've heard in past years, you've heard very, very polarizing things. Sean, I'll give you an example. I was at a Les Mills live event in LA, and I was on a panel with someone from Meta. I'm not going to mention names, but I had an opposing view to VR. I said, I don't know if you recall that or not, but I said, I don't think VR is fitness and I don't see this thing growing. And the Meta person, who I know and respect, but said, no, no, I disagree. I do think it's going to be a big thing. Well, a couple of weeks ago, Meta just killed VR and fitness. I don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so.

57:30Mohammed Iqbal:But today there's so much consensus in just the general direction. So I'm excited about that because I just feel like these next three years are really going to be transformative to make fitness even more mainstream than what it is today.

57:45Sean Turner:The one thing that I just wanted that I forgot to say is the two things we're really excited about. I mean, obviously the wellness area of our programming, the yoga, seeing how that grows, But we've also just launched what we call Body Pump Heavy. And that's a heavy strength, you know, metabolic, you know, program that we've launched and we're starting to roll out in clubs. And that's a fantastic upgrade or something different that's come by. And I think it's exciting where heavy strength group classes go, if that's on the gym floor or in the studio, and how we get more people into lifting heavier weights in certain areas that they get great results, but in a safe and effective way as well.

58:40Sean Turner:That's also in somehow motivating and connects people together. So look out for that. And that's rolling out in January. So over the next two, three months, we'll have an interesting view on where that's going to go as well. I'm sure it'll be a success.

59:00Matthew Januszek:David Barton did that concept about 15 years ago in some of the studios. And it used to be really, really popular. So I'm glad that someone's coming out with a heavy group strength class. So anyway, look, that's it. We could talk for hours. Thank you very much, Sean, for joining us. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you have, then please leave a few comments, share it with a couple of people, and it will allow us to continue to invest in getting great guests on like Sean from Les Mills. Thank you for listening to this episode.

59:43Bye.