LIFTS Episode 127 - The HYROX Effect | Will Every Gym Need a Strategy to Survive?

0:00We recognised the power of fitness competition probably about eight or nine years ago and I think that power is only getting stronger. We're seeing stories across our whole community of competitors that are making significant changes to their lives and are getting unbelievable results, partly because of fitness competition, because it gives people that moment in the future that they work towards. I think we all would agree that you used to walk into gyms and often see a bit of a random functional space where no one was really necessarily using it or they were using it in different ways. I like to think that those areas are becoming a lot more popular in gyms and that's not just because they're training for high rocks.

0:44It's just because the way that they're training and the way they're seeing people train through Instagram, etc. is translating into those spaces and then they're looking to upgrade them.

0:56Matthew Januszek:Good morning, everyone. I'm Matthew Januzek and we're here to talk about a brand new trend I feel as I'm a little bit out of I've not actually done one of these races although my co-host here has attended a high rocks event last year at was it FIBO you actually did the first yes yes that FIBO but we're also extra pumped up because this morning we were at the Gymshark lifting club yeah 5 to 5 30 a.m. uh managed to get up and uh have a workout so i'm i'm not sure whether i'm pumped up or sort of a little bit beaten up but uh ready for the session well we're excited to be here this is a really interesting panel i'm excited to introduce um our speakers here this morning racing has been around for many many i mean thousands of years right since the first olympics People have been racing, training to race for a long time.

1:53The change that we see happen now is that training, in a lot of ways, has become the sport. So we are now in the sport of training. The question for a lot of operators, people in tech like myself and people who are just serving the industry is, is this a fad? Here are some examples. So obviously in the 60s and 70s, we saw the rise of aerobics and running 5Ks, half marathons, and so on. Ironman was then born as an extreme endurance event. You saw ultras. Then CrossFit came to the market. And with the launch of CrossFit Games, it really, one, expanded the community. The Open was something that anyone could potentially join and participate in.

2:37It also provided somewhat of a way to measure yourself. And you could say, how did I do on the same field as some of the most elite athletes in the world? And I think people largely enjoyed that. After that, we saw the rise of mass participation in sport, and that became a term. You saw fun runs, bubble runs, but it also was a rise of obstacle course racing. We've got Spartan here as well, someone who I've worked with for a long time. And obstacle course racing was an important thing. In fact, it evolved to such an extent that you could now find the discipline in the Olympics as part of the modern pentathlon.

3:14But that also led to many competitions within gyms. And along that way, gyms are trying to figure out how do we participate in what's happening outside of our four walls. So gyms started having many competitions themselves. They started having and organizing their own events on weekends outside of that. But we saw that slowly move on the decline. And what was born, let's just say, but maybe five to seven years ago, depending on what you're tracking, are companies like High Rocks, DECA, and more recently, ATHX. And to me, that's really been taking the training that you're doing into the gym, and as I mentioned earlier, but making that into a sport.

3:57And I have a lot of questions. So I think the first question to start, maybe Mark, we'll start with you. If you could first give two things. One, an introduction to yourself, what ethics is, and also your opinion on whether you think this is a trend or if this could stay for a long time.

4:18Hello. Yeah, so my name's Mark, as the guy said, one of the co-founders of ethics. For those of you who don't know, ATH-EX is a functional fitness competition that has been around since 2023. So we're still quite early in our journey. What we pride ourselves on is being an all-round test of fitness. So we test athletes across two and a half hours, across three workouts. But those workouts have very, very low barrier to entry. So no complex lifting, no gymnastic movements. We test athletes on movements that you would see in almost every single gym across the UK and across the globe. We're on quite a growth trajectory at the moment.

5:07So last year we had eight events across the UK and Europe. And this year we're going to have 21 going into America for the first time. We've planned to scale that quite rapidly over the next few years. in terms of your question do do i think it's it's a fad no i definitely don't um we we recognize the power of fitness competition probably about eight or nine years ago and i think the that power is only getting stronger um we're seeing stories across our whole community of of competitors that are making significant changes to their lives and are getting unbelievable results partly because of fitness competition because it gives people that moment in the future that they work towards and what we're seeing is those those athletes those competitors once they signed up to an event are going to the gym more when they're going to the gym they're working harder they're more engaged with their coaches they're more engaged with the gym manager and that basically leads to better results and i think as long as you're getting better results in the gym it's not going to go away, right?

6:16It's definitely not going to be a fad. Nick, I will move on to you. You've got a software called Gym Sync, which I believe allows gyms to hold micro events within their four walls, right? Exactly. So we're slightly different from the other operators here on the stage in that we're building a platform and we're leveraging gyms to run events. So we think we're the most successful competition in the world. Our events are based off bike, ski, row, concept two machines and then either burpees over a line or burpees over a box we have five events a year basically gyms across the uk now the world we've got gyms in europe and australia running our events uh all link up through a leaderboard so you can do your event in dc i can do mine in london and we can compete against each other but what we're trying to do is i'm a gym owner so uh i own a gym in central london called sleven i my main goal is to help gym owners so if i can bring more excitement to gyms, if I can bring more people into through the doors, get people excited about events, then it's just gonna basically help everybody in this pyramid.

7:24So if we think say like Hierox Deca ethics, they're all at the top of the pyramid, I'm trying to grow the base, the more I can get more people into fitness, the more we're all gonna benefit. And do I think it's a fad? Well, no because gyms will outlast fads. So I think the gym, the Gymsync platform itself will be looking very different in about three to five years and whatever fads come through it doesn't matter we can adapt and change because our our main goal is to help gyms.

7:57Hi I'm Emily and I am the VP for DECA and so to put DECA into context of we we were the little brother of Spartan and Tough Mudder, which I know Mo has done many a Spartan race. So a couple years back, Little Brother, over the last few years, the voice got louder and louder and louder because of that understanding of the importance of the gym. So DECA was really created for the everyday athletes and also to support the operators. And it happened at a time when COVID hit. So reality was DECA originally was going to probably follow similar lines to Athex and Hyrox in terms of the big events, but very quickly we realized actually the gyms are the foundation and they're the engine of our growth.

8:45So if we really nurture all the good stuff that Nick's doing as well with the gyms and really bring that value into the gyms, we know we've got a very, very solid foundation and therefore absolutely will not be a fad. So the gym of old was you pay a membership, you get access to equipment. now you pay a membership and you want so much more from that so the gyms are reliant on all the brands that here on the stage to help them understand how to better program how to monetize events how to host simulations which obviously is another way of monetizing also how to bring the community into their gym so the ROI for gyms really is about retention but also acquisition So a lot of the work that we do is working with the gyms to support them and educate them and stimulate them into how to create great marketing content.

9:37I can see Mark here from Bodyburn. He's brilliant. His social is amazing. He goes out to his local community. He brings new people into the four walls of his gym. And some of those people probably sign up for membership or they drop in for classes. So again, Mark, as a local operator, is able to monetize his partnership with Decker and any other brands he's working with. George.

10:04Hello. So I'm George, working with Hirox. So Hirox is a functional fitness race that combines running and kind of functional movement and workouts. It's quite fitting being here. I think no one within High Rocks, even our founders, would have expected the growth that High Rocks has seen. Since even back here in 2021, High Rocks ran an event in Birmingham just after the COVID. And there were 600 participants in that race. So for those people that have raced in High Rocks, I'm sure the idea of a big empty race floor would be quite an appealing one. But you fast forward to 2025 and we ran an event in London with over 40 ,000 people taking part.

10:42And I think very similarly to the panel that I've just said, the success of that, and I feel reasonably qualified to say this as I was previously a gym owner, is the gyms have done the hard work in this. As in they're really the ones that are driving people. And I think not just the success of High Rocks, but the growth has come off the back of a little bit of luck with timing. I think there was a movement around members in gyms looking more for like performance focused goals. and lots of coaches working with members to find a way to incentivize them to feel committed to come to the gym more and dangling that carrot of either a race or performance focused goal was a big shift and people enter gyms often with body composition goals and they kind of stay because they get hooked into a hobby such as any of the sports that we're talking about today and I think that on top of the hard work that gyms have been doing and it's an incredibly competitive space the gym sector and being running great classes putting competitions running mini events is something that's become the norm and that's really powering the sports that we're also set across to give people a the london marathon equivalents where people can go and really showcase in front of their families what they've been working on um and and again like i say the timing the shift but also the hard work done on the gym floor by coaches really kind of motivating members as being the growth of Hyrox without a doubt.

12:04Matthew Januszek:So one of the things, many people in the audience here are gym owners and operators and over the last six months I've been to events in Germany, FIBO, events in the US and this is the first one I've done in the UK and when I speak to different operators there's kind of a mixed response around working with some of the events. Some of them are saying this is great, he's driving people into the gyms that are running some of these training programs. And others are kind of questioning how in bed do we get with some of these different programs. With many of the operators that have a bricks and mortar location, they're obviously dedicating a lot of space, investing in equipment.

12:48Matthew Januszek:and it's probably a long-term investment in creating opportunities and education and equipment to run some of these programs. So how do you, I'll start with yourself, how do you see the relationship with gyms going forward? Because it's obviously quite a new thing, which is what's happened. And are you seeing it as the gyms are really driving participation for the events or are you seeing events that are driving opportunities for gyms? And how can you sort of navigate a very delicate space of, well, who, you know, which brand sort of, you know, takes the lead in this so that they both are able to sort of sustain themselves relatively independently?

13:36Yeah, so firstly, High Rock's affiliation model where we essentially partner with gyms, allowing them to not access just our workouts, our education, but also being able to advertise that they're running high rocks focused workouts was grown around the independent space so the independent gym space and only probably more recently have the bigger gym chains kind of come to the table and sort of seen somewhat the value around building inner communities within their facilities and I think that peddling that those independent gyms were doing where they are competing against some of the most incredible facilities that you'll ever come across the way that they can somewhat get an edge or even survive in many ways is by not just creating these communities, but creating very personalized experiences.

14:21And we felt that High Rocks was the ability to create that kind of shared goal, that like mini ecosystem within a gym that was really just like flourishing. So we really found that through the independent space. And what we've then seen is it's then now moving now, not just to having a great coach and a great space, but also what equipment are you offering and the race format within high rocks is always the same so it's meaning now athletes that are really dialed in are now there's an expectation that they also can train within their race facilities so our equipment provider through our races is concept for the erg machines and then center for all of our race equipment and what we're now seeing is athletes not having an expectation but wanting to find race conditions and therefore there's a a need for gyms to also look at their spaces and work out what can they do within them to bring them up to speed so they attract more leads and again from a gym point of view we know it's more leads means more trials more trials mean more members and then you hold on to them with retention and if there's different ways that you can attack that and if one of them is creating an incredible high rocks training facility with race turf and race sleds there's a good chance that our community of athletes are going to find their way into those doors for those race conditions and and again so there's this like balancing piece now where it's not just about great group x is about facilities and it started with independence and i think in a lovely way these big operating gyms and everlast is a great example they've done incredible things with their facilities um bringing high rocks to the table but they're also trying to find ways that they can make people feel that they belong in their gym and that's their gym and their club and they're looking at crossfit boxes f45 studios to work out how they've come up with this formula uh and they're bringing it through and i think then the equivalent at the independents are looking at these facilities going, wow, imagine having ice baths in the changing rooms.

16:07Okay, cool. What do we do? And we're seeing this kind of snowball of just the gym standards really rising. And I think from a High Rock's point of view, we just sit along the side of it trying to support in any way we possibly can.

16:18Matthew Januszek:Similar question to yourself, Mark. What's your position on this one? I think the relationship between fitness events and races and gyms can be and is a very strong one and I think it can work for both sides. I think where potentially some gyms may make a mistake is focusing solely on their members performance in the race or at the event. I don't believe as a gym owner or a coach you should just in the High Rocks example focus on the running and the eight movements and forget about all the other fundamentals of strength and conditioning. I think the race and the event, like I said, can be that moment in time that can offer inspiration, can offer motivation to the member, but you have to do all the basics as well.

17:13And I think that's where you can have success as a gym owner when it comes to fitness events. For me, you should challenge your members to do different types of races, different types of events because that will essentially mean they're going to get better results out of out of the training you're doing so yeah i it's an important part but i don't think it necessarily needs to be any gym owner or manager or coach's sole focus on improving the time or improving their leadable position even in an affect is part of the the total picture mark which is really interesting. I want to move to you next as it relates to Spartan and Decca, but we've been thinking about that, right?

17:57So I love High Rocks. We're going to be working with High Rocks. I'm doing one in March, another one in April. And at the same time, I've been working out since I was 14 years old. High Rocks, and I agree, Mark, with exactly what you said. And this is, by the way, at Dinner Conversations, exactly what we talk about is when you think about a gym or tech platform and we're investing into a single brand with equipment. It's a specific format, which is the beauty of How Rocks, that it's a repeatable format. So my friends in LA, I can compete with as I'm doing the race in DC. At the same time, though, it doesn't afford for flexibility.

18:37Maybe I want to train for a marathon. Maybe I want to train for a Spartan or an Ironman. So Emily, you know, I broke with Spartan starting in 2012, going way back, the early days. So I saw early Spartans with just 1 ,000 people to the tri-states of New Jersey, which I think had 30 ,000, 40 ,000 people on a weekend. So when I'm asking the question around, is this a fad? Because we've seen that before and we've seen it come around. Spartan in the early days also had SGX. And I remember working on that as well. Now you have DECA. I'd love to understand, number one, how you think the relationship with gyms today is a little bit different.

19:16And second, why do you think DECA is going to potentially work when SGX tried? Was it timing? Was it consumers? What's different about this today? Well, SGX is actually the name for our coach program globally. So SGX is a sparse and OCR, obstacle course racing coach. You've then got your DECA coaches, so similar to what George is driving hard. So it's two different things. I think where OCR has obviously grown and grown and grown and grown, OCR now is very much about that destination weekend, going to incredible parts of the world, going to the Morzine, French Alps, and having an incredible weekend and really testing yourself.

20:02DECA is an urban product. And now when you speak to gym affiliates, they will probably tell you their membership will be 65%, 70 % female. The demographic will be probably women in their late 30s, early 40s. So it's consumers who are now prepared to invest in their health. They want something that's quick, simple, easy. It's community-driven. They can go and have a great time. They can work hard. And they can effectively put a date on the calendar and work towards something. So where DECA is slightly different to Hirox is that we have three key formats. We have DecaFit, which is the 5K run event you'd see in a big arena.

20:46You have DecaStrong, same 10 zones, no running. And DecaMile, same 10 zones, and a total of one mile running. So our gyms, the Strong and the Mile live in the gyms. And that's our commitment to really create two incredible products that are exactly the same anywhere in the world where you might compete. They live in the gym. So if I, especially Mo, you need to go and do a Decker Strong. You go and do a Decker Strong in Mark's gym, which is not far from here. You get your time. That time then gets fed up to the global leaderboard. So you can now compare yourself to your friends in LA or wherever your friends might be.

21:27So the whole gym landscape is, I think, probably 10, 15 years ago. It's about, I want to look better. But now, actually, people want to live better and they want to perform better. and whatever their starting point is and that's the beauty of the community is you've got people who come to the gyms at a maybe it's a very low point in their life they've it's someone who's come out of a bad relationship or they've just fallen off the wagon with their diet and they just need that kick, they need that support they need the community around them to get them to that next level so training for High Rocks, training for Apex, doing a Gym Sync event, training for a Deck of Strong or a Deck of Mile, that's what is going to push them onto that next level, but it's part of a journey.

22:10So it's incumbent on all the brands on the stage to continue to innovate and to continue to elongate that journey because I think now in this modern world, we all know we need to live better. We need to be better educated on training, on nutrition, and just live a better life. Nick, as you think about Gymsync, one of the other questions that I know a lot of operators spend a ton of time thinking through is the layout of the gym and that real estate, which is so valuable. When the recovery boom, which is still happening now, they carved out space to allow for that type of modality in here. Now you've got events that you're going to train for.

22:52George talked about high rocks and kind of creating these high rock spaces like Everlast and other gyms have done. Also, I think you have gyms like Goals Gyms as well in the US and many others. when you think about gym sync and from an operator perspective how should they think about gym layouts do you think that they need to be thinking intentionally about having a part of the gym that is curated to hold an event or potentially could be moved around to hold an event or do you think that any gym could could work the beauty about gym sync is we've thought about all of this So like the gym layout doesn't matter.

23:31It could be a small group PT. They could have two ergs. They could be a massive gym. They could be a third space. They could be an Everlast. It doesn't really matter because all they need to do is have the erg machines and they need to have members that they're going to get excited for it. So we've created, I know gyms because I'm a gym owner myself. So I know every gym is different. I've been doing the CrossFit Open since 2011. When there's overhead walking lunges with a barbell, that is it it fucks it up for 90 of gyms in the world so what we tried to do was we said we're going to take out all the issues that all these competitions have with judging so it's always burpees over a line it's always on the concept to erd machines if you started fitness last week you can be a judge for this competition there's no rx there's no scale there's no pro So everyone does the same workout.

24:22So again, barrier to entry is minimal.

24:29Then another issue is, well, do we have different categories? Okay, so we've got to have women go first, men, then a mixed team. Doesn't really matter. Everyone books in as if it's a class. So the gyms run it as if it's a class. And it literally doesn't matter if you started your fitness journey last week. You're the top dog in the gym. You're all doing the same workout at the same time. any gym in any world and we're in any part of the world and we're starting to prove that so we launched across five european cities in our last event uh using our partner nike so now we're in barcelona we're in berlin we're in hamburg we're in amsterdam we're in paris uh we're starting to get into the australian market which we think is going to be unbelievable so it doesn't matter what language you're speaking what the workout is because we've simplified it to such a level we just think that we can just take it scale it just all over the world today's episode of the

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25:46Matthew Januszek:Just staying on gym design for a moment then, and probably people here that are looking at the list of different events that they could get involved in and are considering how do we lay out the space and could we actually provide for all of those events? Because they all sound quite interesting and obviously there's growing communities in relation to what all of you guys are doing. I'll put this one to you Mark do you think or how do you think someone could practically consider laying out an area and could you arguably have all three of you guys the training for each one of those events in the same space and if so how would you go about doing that?

26:30I think you can for sure train your members for all three different events without a doubt I think gyms just have to lay out their areas with that flexibility in mind. I mean, as athletics, we're big believers in the power of strength training and the importance of strength training. So for a gym to affiliate with us and to properly train their members to do an athletics, they can't be afraid of the barbell. so we need to have gyms that have barbell areas and squat racks because that like I said we do believe in in really strongly in the importance of that so there may be the odd gym that that would kind of take them out of our wheelhouse but I think any gym that does train with barbells it's them very easy to have wall ball targets for high rocks to have sleds to have a sled track and you know if that we don't have sled work in affects but we have dumbbell lunges that can be done on that track so I think the spaces can be very very adaptable and again to my point earlier I think they need to be I think it's a little bit dangerous going down one one route and going you know pigeonholing yourself into we train people for just affects or just high rocks because I don't I don't think that's that's the best way to train people.

27:59I think it should be all-round training and then people can pick and choose which event they do at which part of the year and they'll become better athletes and they'll have better results from doing so. Emily, do you have any thoughts on that question? I do because I always get asked this question from gyms, like how much space do we need? So for Deca, you need 1 ,200 square foot minimum. And I think it's also really important to recognise that as a brand, we're not targeting the gold gyms this world we're we're trying to work with gyms from a really broad spectrum so we've our gym owners i think they're incredible they're up at the crack of dawn they're working super late at night they're trying to learn social media they're trying to learn how to how to put a reel onto instagram they're probably some of the most hard-working people that i know but and they're the person that has to be so upbeat and positive every hour of the day because their members need them to be like that.

28:58And I do believe that gyms should be programming to different types of programs. We typically see a lot of our partners will have so Thursday at Caveman in Stoke is Decaday. So if I ever go down to Caveman, I'll be going on a Thursday with Emma Waring, who now works for Mark. And then Tuesday will be High Rocks Day. And then they'll have a Saturday, will be a High Rocks Day. Sunday will be Decaday. They'll be incorporating Athex into its own day as well. And that's great because the members have got so many options to pick and choose from. But fundamentally, it's down to that gym owner and his or her coaching staff to get the members to think about doing some lifting because as Mark said, it's really important.

29:43You need to be able to lift heavy stuff, especially as you get older. So having that cross-section of options available is really, really important. And again, it comes down to that innovation that brands on this stage need to continue to drive? So this is the closest I've seen events make a relationship, form a close relationship with gyms. When you think about it, I remember even Spartan back in the early days. I was up in Joe's farm and he believed you didn't need anything to train. You just go outside, you pick up a rock, you chop some wood. That's what we would do as training. Now it's become a lot more structured.