LIFTS Episode 82 - Building Gyms for Longevity, Not Just Muscle | Rod Hill of Zenergie

0:00Spain in a lot of ways is quietly becoming one of the epicenters for fitness and longevity. I think the time has come where we have to decide, you know, do we want to make fit people fitter or do we want to make people who've got illnesses, chronic illnesses or people who are struggling, are we going to make those people fitter? It's cardiovascular fitness, it's strength and it's emotional well-being. What do you want to do in that last decade? Do you want to be playing with your grandkids? Or do you want to be sitting on the sidelines in a chair watching your grandkids kick a ball?

0:35Matthew Januszek:Welcome to this week's, we've got a special episode of Lifts. Mo, my co-host, how are you doing today in, what is it, Texas you're in? I'm in Texas. It's hot. It's humid. I'm in Houston visiting my parents for a week and I've got the three kids with no nanny and no wife. So I don't know what's tougher. If it's doing what I'm doing now or preparing for a board meeting, which I have on Friday. It's difficult, but I'm having a good time. It's always good to be with the family. The pool always feels good in the afternoon once I'm done working and it can happen. but I've been trying to get out in the morning because it's actually not that far off from DC.

1:21And, you know, I love to run. So they live about a mile and a half from the gyms. I typically jog to the gym, do some recovery. We'll get into some longevity stuff here, maybe some strength. Then if I want to do a run after, I'll finish it up with a run. So I'm here for the week. Always good to see the family. And Matthew, I recognize where you're I know you're in Hana House in Newport Beach. And I remember that booth that you're in might have been where we did our first podcast. So you sent me this picture of us having dinner in Newport Beach and I met your wonderful family and your kids and your wife then too.

1:57But I remember, did we record our first podcast in a similar booth in Hana House?

2:03Matthew Januszek:We did. That's a good memory. And this is the first time I've been here probably since you and I did that interview. So yeah, we're here. in Hannah House. And it's become a place I've turned up quite regularly. And interestingly enough, it's a nice segue into the, we've got Rod on and I wanted to talk about something that was a little bit more leaning into the field that we're going to talk about today. But I was here on Friday with Deborah, who was on podcast a few weeks ago, and she was talking about this product called Beamer. And she was raving about it. In fact, we've got a meeting tomorrow with a lady that's kind of very high up in this type of longevity space.

2:49Matthew Januszek:She's got a studio in Newport Beach we're going to go and check out. And she was telling me about this product called Beamer, and suddenly the name clicked, and it was like, actually, that was the product I went on at Feebo. And so when I went out to Feebo this year, I had a long sort of travel period, probably ran a little bit too far whilst I was dehydrated, And I had this real, I obviously did some damage to my calf, Achilles area. So I couldn't even walk on it. And I saw this booth at the trade show called Beamer, which was, it was spelled B-E-M-E-R. And I said to the lady, look, I've got a bit of a problem.

3:27Matthew Januszek:Does this, you know, is this worth me trying? So she sat me down, strapped this, just a piece of almost like material around my calf. And I sat there for 20 minutes, just doing my emails and got up. and my pain had gone from like a 10 to about a four. And so one, I was quite impressed because it allowed me to walk around the trade show for the whole day. And then she said, look, come back at the end, do another session, which I did. Again, it sort of took the pain down again, a few notches. Went out in the evening, came back the next morning, did another session because I thought maybe this is just psychological that I was feeling this and it wasn't really happening.

4:08Matthew Januszek:and then I did one again on the second evening and then I went out for a run which I hadn't been able to do for a few weeks so I've no idea what this does apparently it's some sort of like electromagnetic energy regulation which is what it's called but it but I was you know you sit there and you don't feel as though it's doing absolutely anything so I could imagine if someone was trying to sell you one of these it's one of those treatments where you don't feel as though it's doing anything so you don't really know if it's worth paying for and I think these systems are about three or four grand so they're not cheap but when I I actually had a problem I went to her with it and um and it was just remarkable with with what it had done and and there's some really good research on it I think it's an interesting concept to have a look at and I'm going to sort of learn more over the next few weeks but um yeah that was that's kind of my like my little health hack and I think Deb was going to convince me to buy one so um okay well yeah so much and we'll get into it here that that's good that i mean so much of i think longevity and health it's about getting your blood to flow freely effectively all over your body delivering nutrients and oxygen when you need it right especially at times of need and i think when you start cutting out circulation and sometimes when you have an injury you your your your body wants to focus on the particular parts of all the nutrients rushes towards them you might be ignoring some other parts.

5:30So it sounds like, and I don't know anything about this machine, but it sounds like it somehow promotes blood flow to the areas that need the help. And through that, if everything else is in point, it's driving nutrition, hydration, all the cells that you need to repair that piece. So that's exciting, Matthew. You did not mention that to me. Now I know why you didn't go running with me. We still haven't gone for a run yet. So I feel like we need to get that done. But as you mentioned, we're excited to have a special guest on today, someone who I've not spoken to before, but I've heard of. So today's guest is a serial disruptor who spent the last three decades scaling some of the most influential brands in fitness, from Fitness First to Viva Gym's launch in Spain.

6:18And now a really new bold play, which is related to what we were just talking about, that could help reshape how we think about aging. Rod Hill has seen the entire fitness cycle from HIIT to Habit Stacks to Big Box to Boutique. He's helped Fitness First scale. He later helped plant the flags for Anytime Fitness and also Tribe in Spain. But today, he's building a gym not just for young teenagers or Gen Xers, but really for the 40-year-olds who want to live to be 100, I would even argue 120. We'll get into that here in a minute. His latest venture, Zenergy, at least from what I've been able to see, Rod, happy to unpack this, is part spa, part gym, part tech lab, but it really is all about longevity as a central theme.

7:08So if you think about smart strength circuits, Zen studios, infrared saunas with this Mediterranean Spanish mindset, that's really what he's brought together. He's combined biomarkers and mindfulness and to me finally built this fitness model that really respects the back half of your life, which I'm getting close to and I would think is really potentially the best part of your life. So you're not just selling hype, Rob. I'm really excited to be speaking with you. I think you're creating what is the next boom in fitness, which really is not about reps or having a six pack, but it's really about living longer and living better.

7:48So Rod, Hill, welcome to Lyfts. Thanks, Mo. Thanks very much. Thanks, Matthew, for inviting me on. It's very exciting for us to be here talking about Zenergy. I think, you know, just going back to the beginning of my career, I've kind of gone a little bit full circle because I started in fitness first as a fitness manager in the first club in 1992 in Bournemouth in the UK. And, you know, the vision there was from the founder, Mike Balfour, who was responsible for the whole vision of this affordable fitness chain was really, you know, six clubs. So I was a fitness director. I've been playing rugby.

8:28I was dabbling in a little bit of bodybuilding, playing rugby. And I got involved in the first club. That's where I met Matthew when we were buying your dumbbells, Matt, back in the day. And it's really interesting because we were kind of indoctrinated in a way about looking out after the underdog. So I think the basis of everything that we're talking about today, and I'm becoming an older guy in the industry. I've stayed in the industry for some years and I've had the luck to be involved in some interesting projects. And I think this has been shaping my thoughts on how we're going to develop Zenergy based on the industry where we very much feel that the industry has been very good at looking after people who like to work out.

9:13right? I mean, so we feel that we were a little bit indoctrinated. And I remember going to the early 90s in Ursa and some of the big events. And we were always talking about, you know, the 20 percenters, you know, the 20 percenters and trying to reach out to people who weren't in the category of the 20 percenters. And so when we were developing Zenergy, we took it, we have a kind of a little bit of a simplistic way of looking at this industry and the industry we've broken down into 2020-60. And we've always been talking about 2020-60. And what I mean by that is that we have 20 % of the population that generally like to work out.

9:52You know, the fitness industry was built by people like ourselves, you know, people that like to work out, find it quite easy, come from a sports background. And then you have maybe 20 % of the population that don't really want to listen to messages of health. And it's pretty hard to reach those people. But in the centre, we have this huge concentration of people who try to connect with our product, with the mainstream product, with the gym product. Maybe they're coming in, they're coming out. And a lot of those people, you know, have other goals rather than, as you say, you know, a six pack and bigger biceps.

10:25They're looking for health outcomes. They're looking for someone to show them how to work out. And typically they're over 35 because, you know, let's not forget our industry is predominantly in Europe anyway, you know, 18 to 35 dominated. If you look at the amount of members in the clubs, I think we're around 80 percent or slightly more than 80 percent of members who are 18 to 35. I'm 61 and I make up one percent of the membership base in Europe. And 50 plus is only two percent or three percent, although it's going a little bit higher, but it's still not there. So I think for me, when myself and my partner, George Haltenboss, decided that we were going to launch this brand, we did it because we could see that we just aren't very good in the fitness industry, I think, through my career and engaging with people that don't like to work out.

11:14And I'm not being, you know, opportunistic. I was part of that problem. And I see that, you know, when I was a younger trainer, I didn't have the empathy maybe with somebody who was struggling with with illness. But I actually have autoimmune disease as well, which is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So my family has a history of thyroid problems. So I got this in my 20s and I've had to manage this illness through my life, through exercise. So giving you this kind of background just to kind of give you an idea that I haven't kind of become an evangelist trainer later in life. It's always been part of my interest in the industry.

11:52I did a sports science degree back in the 90s. Actually, Fitness First paid me to do an ACSM. We were studying with the American College of Sports Medicine. It was a requirement in the 90s, you know, to do onboarding, very specific, very detailed onboarding. And we were all about bringing people into the gym that didn't like to work out. And when Fitness First became the first affordable fitness quality gym, we were attracting a lot of people who normally didn't work out in the past. And I think, Matthew, you remember that the biggest dumbbells we had in Fitness First in the beginning were 20 kilos.

12:24and I was actually going to another gym sometimes to work out because the dumbbells weren't quite big enough for what I needed at the time but it was what we were doing it was all about looking after the person that found exercise difficult now we succeeded in some ways we failed in others but the whole ideas behind Zenergy are based on absolutely there's a market there's a big gap in the market, you know, for a plus 35 gym concept. Talking about longevity is absolutely exciting for my age group, for sure. People 50 plus want to live till 100. So it's kind of like good timing and a good moment, I think, in the industry to take this.

13:09But I think there's some, you know, there's a big commercial opportunity in this space. And we feel that we've created something to really look at that space and start the conversations about how to capture this 35 plus market. Well, Rod, I believe you are calling us in from Spain. You decided to launch Energy in Barcelona. And just in preparation for this episode, I did a bit of research into why Spain. So I just want to take a step back and just for the audience, talk through what's happening in Spain right now and why it's more than just one brand. Spain, in a lot of ways, is quietly becoming one of the epicenters for fitness and longevity.

13:54Even big brands like Planet Fitness have recently opened clubs in Spain as well. Yeah. Well, my relationship with Spain started a long time ago because I actually came to Spain with Fitness First back in 1998. So we started opening clubs in Spain in the late 90s. and I actually bought a house in Barcelona in 2002 and then I came back here in 2007 to live. So I've been living in Spain for many years for many different reasons. I mean, Spain's a great country, climate-wise, food-wise, quality of life. It's a great place to be and there's certainly a booming economy going on right now. I mean, if you look at the...

14:38Well, there was a report last year from The Economist that names Spain the world's number one economy based on growth, based on future potential. And so, you know, Spain's undergoing an incredible transformation in the last 20 years. Real estate is very, very hot. That could be storing up some problems in the future, because again, you've probably seen some protests against tourism in Spain, just recently in Barcelona. Yes, I've heard about that. Well, something too, Rod, that people I think don't really know is Spain has one of, because this is not talked about, but Spain has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, which is over 83 years, which is phenomenal.

15:23By 2050, one in three Spaniards will be over 65, which is why I think what you're building right now is so relevant. And population, though, even though you're getting older, what I've at least learned and read about, it's not aging in a decline in fact they're aging more to strength and vitality so the culture what you also have in spain which we don't have in the u.s it's a little bit different than the uk it's you've got the mediterranean lifestyle in fact people from the u.s and uk go to spain to get recharged you've got movement you have access to clean food you've got it's a deeply kind of socially connected um culture and in a lot of ways that mediterranean diet and the Spanish lifestyle is the original longevity hack.

16:06When you think about even the benefits, for an example, of taking a siesta and having a nap, we now know the benefits of having a little nap in the afternoon increases longevity. So you add in affordable healthcare, like you mentioned, year-round sunshine, a more relaxed pace of life, and you've got a foundation that is really built for what you're trying to do. Today, again, from Prepping for this episode, what I've really found is that there's really an emerging ecosystem that is around proactive healthcare. Recovery studios, AI-powered diagnostics, and certainly what you're doing with Zenergy, to your point that is specifically designed for the 35, I'm going to say 35 plus, but you're probably going even higher than that, population.

16:53It's really not about fitness anymore, but I think you're really focused on preventative care with measurable outcomes and so on. So I think it's just such a tremendous market that isn't represented well enough, which is why we're excited to speak with you. Yeah, yeah. Look, you know, Spain, Spain has done very, very well in the last few years. I mean, the lifestyle here is very flexible. The day's quite long in Spain, you know, the siesta. People don't nap potentially, you know, in the big cities, but the day, you know, most people are actually now working out, you know, during the day. But what's great about Spain is the day's very long it's very flexible and you know the shops are open till nine ten o 'clock at night everything's easy you know and um you know Spain's done very very well also from South American immigration in the last in the last years um and maybe a lot of South Americans now coming to Madrid maybe where they went to Miami before a lot of the time there are a lot of South American immigrants coming into into into Spain um you know everybody speaks Spanish obviously you know from South America apart from Brazil but a lot of Brazilians also coming to Spain so they've really added to the country's productivity to the workforce in a generally very positive way and also you know culturally they're not so far away so it's a very seamless integration and so Madrid is really driving you know Spain, Barcelona so you know Madrid typically has a kind of bridge to South America, Barcelona facing Europe you know you've got cities like Valencia growing, you've got Alicante growing, you've got Zaragoza, Bilbao, you know, so Spain's a very diverse and very, you know, regional country with a lot of different cultures and a lot of different climates and, you know, in the powerhouses.

18:35And if you look at, you know, you look at the big groups here, you know, fashion industry, Spain's leading the world. I mean, the Inditex group, the owners of Zara, they're still by far the largest fashion group in the world, you know, going from strength to strength. I think they've had a little bit of a dip, but they've, you know, they've created multi-brands, you know, Zara, Oysho now, their sportswear. In fact, we've signed a deal with this group for a clothing range for Zenergy based on, you know, because we're going to be delivering yoga and strength training. And we see that the mix between longevity and retail is also another space, which is very interesting.

19:12And we're keen to investigate because if we're dealing with people that are a lot of people who aren't typical gym goers I think it's great to be able to give them an onboarding where you can you know you can really get involved in in you know retail clothing you know what to wear different things like that so we really we're really pushing that as well as part of our as part of the future of of what we're doing and we also think in here there's a lot of retailers who who are creating wellness spaces in their department stores you need to become more relevant and so wellness longevity integration is something that we're looking to do with um with the um with the retailers and then just finally yeah blue zones mediterranean diet mediterranean lifestyle i mean my um i mean i can explain you a little bit about our structure here with we have a company called fit brands international so myself and my partner george houtenboss who's dutch my partner's dutch he's been also living and working in spain for about as long as I have been.

20:10So we got together in the pandemic to do a project together. And we actually brought Energy Fitness to Spain online. We didn't go to the UK. We bought the master franchise for Energy Fitness. And then our goal was to develop multi-franchises under this umbrella of Fitbrand. So Zenergy is kind of our own. So we own the master for Energy Fitness Spain, where we created a box-in-a-box model, a little bit of an upgrade, if you like, on the Energy UK product. And now we actually own the global trademark for Zenergy Body and Soul. And we're going to be looking to develop that from Barcelona to the world.

20:48So made in Barcelona and looking to deliver that Mediterranean lifestyle message longevity. And you're very right, Mo. I mean, I think I read somewhere that Spain would surpass Japan in the next 20 years as the longest living country in the world. And you've got Andorra up there, that little principality up in the up in the Pyrenees where people live a hell of a long time so I think it's something to do with the altitude up there as well and walking up walking up mountains quite a lot.

21:15Matthew Januszek:Well I'd like to go back to the demographic it's something that you and I have spoken about or philosophized for for quite some time maybe because that we're moving into that age group and recognizing that we don't fit into the to the traditional gym. I don't know what Everyone was saying, you know, you've been doing this for too long. Can you do something where you're dealing with old guys? But I have to be clear, it's not a silver concept per se, you know, because I just don't think silver gyms work. And for a guy who's obviously quite silver these days, I still don't associate myself with silver.

21:48Matthew Januszek:I don't know if that was anything to do with. Well, yeah, I think if, you know, looking at your history, you've looked at a number of different models serving a very similar channel. So Fitness First Days, you then were very successful. You opened and operated Anytime Fitness and was responsible for their international development, which I believe was very successful. You then were involved in the boutique sector tribe, which although they had challenges with their model in other countries, from what I understand, Spain continues to be a big success in Spain for certain reasons. And now, I guess, going into what most of the fitness industry would seem as a market that isn't quite as appealing.

22:38Matthew Januszek:And so, clearly, you've put a lot of time into what would seem like an obvious shift in a model that caters for a slightly different demographic. explain your thought process from you know seeing what's going on in the market looking at what you've done historically and then taking what could be seen as a little bit of a gamble for going outside of the 20 percenters or even in Spain's case 16 percent of the people that traditionally go to gyms and and and putting putting your money where your mouth is to to attract somebody that's a little bit older well I think I think part of it is getting older them at you know I mean I think that's obvious you know because you start to feel differently you start talking to people and having different conversations and you start to realize that that there's a lot of people out there looking for different different solutions and I think you know just going back to going back to the to the fitness first days we were we were on the stock market okay and when we were on the stock market we had to justify our results and a lot of the time the analysts back in the 90s were all saying you know go international expand internationally because and they thought fitness was a fad they thought fitness was a fad back in the 90s and so when our stock i mean for those people who don't know the story fitness first was doing very very well and what really hurt us was the dot-com crash back in the early 2000s and so fitness first share price was so high that it got caught in the coattails let's say of the of the dot-com crash and our share price collapsed, but we never really ever convinced the analyst, the investment community or the general investment community that fitness was a health product.

24:26And, you know, part of my journey, I think has been really that I see the opportunity to create a evaluation for our industry. I think the time has come where we have to decide, you know, do we want to make fit people fitter? Or do we want to make people who've got illnesses, chronic illnesses, or people who are struggling are we going to make those people fitter and is it a little bit harder it is a little bit harder but i think that one of the big changes for me was our relationship with with egym we've signed a deal with egym to be a global deal and you know from a scaling point of view that changes the game a little bit because we don't need to have so many sports scientists in our clubs which is also obviously a challenge to find you know sports scientists or type trainers who can do the you know the programming for people with chronic illnesses and things like that they're taking that away we need great people there's no doubt about it and we committed but i've come to a stage in in my career where there's not so here's the here's the thing we've got um we've got a we've got a pharmaceutical industry um looking at multiples of valuations um like you know no you let's talk about you know ozempec and some of the other things that are coming out in the weight loss market.

25:40And I was astounded. I've been digging into this a little bit. And I was astounded to know that the value of Novo Dansk, the makers of Ozempic, their business is worth more than the GDP of Denmark. Okay, it's the most valuable company in Europe right now. And it's come from nowhere to be valued at this kind of level. And I sometimes speak to people in our industry who still say, you know, there's a lot of information out there, you know from influencers whatever saying that you know exercise doesn't help you lose weight I just don't agree with that you know and and I have the because obviously we're you know I always thought that we're the energy expenditure side of the business and and we've got a message that maybe we should try to recover now it's not everything but it's something important you know that our industry could play a role but I think we've missed that opportunity a little bit because you know we've let the pharmaceutical company come in with a solution and and the other argument you know should we be teaming up with with these with these businesses and helping people to get started well maybe you know maybe i don't know the answer but definitely our industry i think is missing the opportunity to position itself as the preventative option and obviously managing illnesses and myself with Hashimoto's i've had this feeling inside for many many years that conventional medicine is fantastic when you're critically ill in most countries.

27:04And that's the feedback I get from many people who've had critical illness. And I'm not saying that medicine doesn't have its place, but for chronic illness, for metabolic illness, for man-made lifestyle diseases, our industry, I think, we're now seeing that we're far, far and by far the best option for many, many people managing chronic illnesses and managing chronic diseases without any of the nasty side effects that tend to come with taking medication. So talking about diabetes, we're talking about, you know, high blood pressure, cholesterol, managing, you know, muscle mass and all the great things that, you know, strength training can do with, you know, with managing blood sugar and all the rest of it.

27:45So for me, from my background in sports science, this for me is a very exciting opportunity. And I see when the pharmaceutical industry are able to get huge valuations based on drugs that do work, but create secondary problems, which we're starting to find out about, certainly in the UK, it always hits me to say, why as an industry, are we not talking more about power of medicine as exercise, as medicine? You can look at some of the work that someone like Peter Attia is doing. and it's astounding you know because we've always had the solutions to longevity in our hands in the fitness industry because when you talk about all the biohacking all the different things that are going on i talk to people on a regular basis and they say hey rod you know i'm taking um i've my magnesium and i feel great um i'm doing this i'm doing the infrared i'm doing the plunge pool i'm doing everything else and i said okay so what about your cardio training oh no i haven't started working out yet okay so you know this is the thing again uh that with us with zenergy we want to democratize longevity to some degree and really bring it down to the market that aren't exercising and trying to de well to demystify a little bit which is not going to be easy but we're on a mission you know to demystify and to really give people control over their bodies a little bit so So what I'm saying is that, you know, by far and away, the number one indicator for longevity is cardiovascular fitness or VO2 max, right?

29:18I mean, it's by far the biggest indicator. If you're in the top 20 % of the population of the world with VO2 max, you're pretty much going to get over 80, I would imagine. If you're in the bottom 20%, you're probably not going to do so well. Secondly, strength, muscular strength, endurance, strong bones, joints. And number three, emotional well-being. you know so those are our three major and you could you know for nutrition is going to be our fourth pillar but at the moment we're saying let's not put too much pressure on people it's cardiovascular fitness it's strength and it's emotional well-being which is more important is debatable i think the science that some of the longevity scientists like peter atia are finding out is that vo2 max shows that it's very good but you could be you could be very good on vo2 and under muscled and overnourished so there's a balance between all this stuff so it's not quite so black and white but definitely those three things if you're not doing any of those three things magnesium and creatine and extra protein is not going to give you too much extra help if you're not focusing on those three main pillars of longevity so we believe with zenergy body and soul that we're delivering um the basics in longevity because we've always had the solutions We've just not been maybe communicating it in the right way.

30:38So we're seeing sharing information, education. And we don't want to patronize our members. But we really see that people need to have some control. Obesity crisis is out of control. In Spain, it's not maybe as bad as in the UK, but it's getting worse in lower populations. We're a little bit at the mercy of the food industry and the drug industry. It's not all negative. But there's some negativity, I think, coming in when you're looking at weight loss and you're looking at some of the food that we're putting on our tables and giving to our families. So that's a little bit our soapbox, my soapbox moment.

31:14But that's really where we sort of want to demystify a little bit of longevity. Now, I understand there's other operators going for the more high-end longevity. They're looking at scanners. They're looking at all these kind of things. But we really want to bring Zenergy to the democratized movement and exercise as a longevity medicine. And I think if you look at all the stats, if you look at all the science behind strength training, it's a miracle thing, you know, for people to prevent diabetes, to prevent osteoporosis, to prevent, you know, back in the 90s, Matt, we were talking about studio strength.

31:47We were talking about some of this stuff in the 90s. We were talking about behavioral change when we onboard people into our gyms. And that's all kind of gone away, maybe because the prominence in Europe of low cost. So the staffing element was kind of taken out a little bit. So we're kind of going back full circle. And I think maybe it's because of the age, maybe it's because we're a little bit idealistic, but we really think that it's much, much better to deal with people over 35 because while they have more money, they have more need. And if we can engage them in the right way, they'll be more loyal.