Home gyms strut their stuff
No more hiding away those ugly machines in the quest for the body beautiful – the new wave of home gym equipment approaches the status of sculpture.
It used to be that the latest flat screen televisions and accompanying home theatres were the hot-ticket items, lavishly displayed in editorials about luxury pads dedicated to finding the perfect placement for maximum pleasure. But as we adapt to a life of intermittent lockdowns that force us to stay at home, the coveted must-have listed by interior designers and home magazines is high-tech gym equipment that offers the full intensity of a PT session at the swipe of a touchscreen. Thanks to technology that enables your workout to connect to a global database of trainers, fellow riders, runners or even lifters, anyone with access to WiFi and the space to work out can recreate the best of the world’s most luxurious gyms without having to wait for a machine ever again.
The world has come a long way since the early days of home fitness, when morning television infomercials would spruik the benefits of the latest pastel-hued strength-and-toning contraption. Their sell: easy storage under the bed so you’d never have to look at it again until you threw it out in the monthly council collection frenzy. But the regular closure of gyms and a populace unable to leave the house courtesy of lockdowns has created the perfect storm for the designers and distributors of exercise equipment that scratches the luxury itch as much as it gets the heart rate up. And if the workout doesn’t achieve the latter the cost might, with some of the ensembles guaranteed to be more than the price of a small car.
The concepts of luxury, design and fitness may sound like odd bedfellows, but this intersection is exactly what the likes of Technogym, cult American brand Peloton and NordicTrack have cornered. They specialise in state-of-the-art equipment that’s simultaneously designed to be aesthetically appealing so you’re less inclined to hide it under the bed, instead letting it have pride of place in the corner of the living room or designated workout area. No more rubber dumbbells and Swiss balls. Now we want our rowing machines to harmonise perfectly with our Minotti sofa and Henry Timi side tables.
“Basically, every single piece of Technogym equipment comes as a combination of three fundamental elements,” explains Nerio Alessandri, Technogym’s president and founder. “So design, beauty and style are an element. Then, of course, all the technology. Then the science of biomechanics and movement. We have three teams working on these elements, as well as collaborating with external designers [to create this] key combination of style, technology and movement.”
Technogym’s philosophy is simple: make it efficient, sure. But also make it beautiful, with an elegant silhouette to entice you to use it more. And when it’s not in use it’s still a visually appealing presence in your home. Machines – made using up to 95 per cent of recyclable materials – look more like designer objects than a piece of equipment built to burn excess calories. To achieve those sleek, fluid lines, Technogym employs a full suite of designers and engineers, including the Italian architect and designer Antonio Citterio.
“Luxury is an element of the uniqueness of our product,” explains Alessandri. “We have unique products both in terms of innovation and beauty... you are buying a piece of design, a piece of art. This is the luxury element you want for your house.”
Take the Kinesis, from the brand’s Personal Line, an elegant pulley-system workout that could just as easily be a piece of installation art by American artist Martin Puryear. It may cost less than a Puryear, but only just. The specs of the Kinesis, which is said to offer more than 200 different kinds of workouts accessible through the Technogym App, are more like those of a customised Rolls Royce or Bentley. Choices of wood finish and leather backing let you tailor it to seamlessly match the design details of your home. It also happens to be Alessandri’s personal favourite.
Technogym’s early days resemble the success stories of familiar tech disruptors. Alessandri was 22 when he launched the brand back in 1983, building first concepts of equipment in his parent’s garage in the city of Cesena. Ten years later he was in California, defining a health concept steeped in the idea of wellness long before Instagrammers put their filters and hashtags all over it. In 2000, Technogym became the official supplier for the Olympic Games. Today, internal data declares that Technogym is used by more than 40 million people around the world.
Technogym’s connection to Australia, first made in 2000, was to be cemented in September this year with the launch of a local edition of its world-class immersive Experience Centres. The 800sq m state-of-the-art facility, the first of its kind in the Asia Pacific region, had picked the Sydney gallery district of Rushcutters Bay, of course, as its base, where it would give health-conscious folks a chance to test run the full range of Technogym equipment with a range of experts to create a bespoke, at-home training system.
The Centre was – and will be, when life returns to normal – a hybrid education and wellness facility where you can be coached through a variety of equipment offerings, from the Personal Line for beginners or Skill Line for high-performance lifestyles, lifestyle being the operative word. You would also be given a run-through on designs that would best complement your living space in order to maximise your usage.
While talking to WISH from Technogym Village in Cesena, Alessandri compared the operations of the Centre to those of a tailor – a customised experience designed to create a completely bespoke package that fits the client perfectly.
But even though restrictions and extended lockdowns have delayed the Centre’s grand opening, Alessandri says Australians can’t get enough of his company’s design-led workout equipment. “Australia is the key market for Technogym,” he says. “Australian people are very sporty… [and] Technogym has a strong and historic presence in Australia. We have been there for more than 20 years, since the Sydney Games, when Technogym was, for the first time, the official supplier for the Olympics. This was a very iconic moment for us.”
Delays notwithstanding, the pandemic has definitely been a boon for brands such as Technogym. The market for home fitness equipment has seen an enormous boost, courtesy of Covid’s scrambling of life plans. Analyst reports conducted in November of last year predicted that the market would grow by up to 9 per cent between now and 2025, hitting close to $US12 billion in the Asia-Pacific region alone. Gyms might be closed, but our desire to maintain the gains is still clearly there. Once upon a time, we may have even settled for the old Suzanne Somers Thighmaster. But as we face a future that looks to be defined by life between lockdowns, people are seeking to invest in the kind of professionally advanced equipment that can recreate the experience of their favourite CrossFit box or F45 class inside the home.
For American Peloton, the pandemic’s impact has gone even beyond this expectation, according to its most recent shareholder letter. Since the beginning of the 2021 financial year, Peloton saw exponential growth in sales and memberships. Its third quarter alone raked in $US1262.6 million, while its fourth quarter confirmed more than two million active connected fitness subscriptions. But Karen Lawson, Peloton’s country manager for Australia, says this shift back into homes and personal settings was inevitable; the pandemic just made it all happen faster. “I think we saw that trend in home fitness already happening,” she says.
Lawson compares it to entertainment targeting at-home experiences, particularly the move from the cinema release of films to home streaming: “We used to go to the movies to watch James Bond, but then Netflix came along and we could have this experience with great technology and televisions in our homes.
“The gym experience has so many barriers. You have to get the right time, have to be able to get in the car. You’ve got to get into the class that you like at the time you can. It’s actually not that easy to get all those things matching up. Whereas when it’s in your home and it’s on demand, it’s almost like every other piece of digital or technology adoption has kind of prepared us to then think, ‘Well, it feels a bit old-fashioned to be going to a gym now’.”
Peloton was in fact founded on the principle of accessibility, says Lawson. New York-based founder John Foley had struggled to find time to attend his local SoulCycle class. Necessity being the mother of invention, Foley simply decided to create a bike for the home that would offer access to the same training experience available in a studio.
In the years since he launched Peloton, its iconic Bike and Bike+ have become cult status symbols, the Rolex Submariner of bikes. This has been due in part to some heavy-hitting celebrity name association that came from investing in one of the key features of a gym that tends to occur below our awareness – music. According to one report, Peloton’s music budget for licensing was three times more than is usually allocated.
In 2018, a media blitz featuring Jay-Z and Meghan Trainor had both credibility and commercial impact. Then, in 2020, came Peloton’s collaboration with the biggest name in music: Beyoncé. Themed classes to the singer’s catalogue and acknowledgement from Beyoncé herself, who said she had been a Peloton member for several years, cemented its status in the public eye. All this aside, Lawson says the brand owes its success to two factors: the bike, and the system it operates in. “I think about it as the Three Cs, in that we’ve got the best content, the best community and the best convenience.”
What began as a bike has now evolved into a complete holistic training system, says Lawson, one that now goes beyond the home, courtesy of the Peloton App and accessories such as weights and resistance bands. This opens up a full range of training options that can be done with or without the bike, including yoga, strength or even running outdoors.
“It’s really immersive, and the overarching experience is one of personalisation and choice,” he says. “We’ve got more than 10 different fitness categories. Even if you pick something like strength training, it’s so deep inside that category, again. That could be upper body, lower body. That could be Pilates, barre. It could be prenatal, for example. There’s so much personalisation and choice.”
The importance of personalisation and technology, especially the ways they merge, can’t be underestimated in the rise and success of these home training systems. Instant accessibility to workouts and trainers via an app or screen attached to equipment feeds perfectly into our demand for services that are adaptable to our lifestyles, not the other way around. With so much else in our life, from food to medical advice, now accessible at the swipe of a finger, interactive fitness is the latest to make the move.
“Technology is the key element, absolutely primary,” says Alessandri. “Technology is the element that allows our product, our solution, our equipment to become fully bespoke and fully personalised, because today our app is the touch point for everybody, for every consumer, to obtain better results faster. So at the moment our goal is to provide every single individual with a very personalised experience. We know that people are reaching better results faster thanks to this.”
For evidence of just how much impact technology has had on the achievement of commercial success for home training systems, look no further than NordicTrack. Founded in the mid ’70s, the American brand directly parallels the way we as a society consume and interact with media. When VHS hit the scene, NordicTrack was quick to jump on the opportunity, seeing a way to give buyers better instructions on how to use and maximise their benefits with a simple 30-minute video. iFit (then known as Icon Health & Fitness) brought the brand under their wing in 1998, and like Dylan in ’65, NordicTrack went electric. Well, digital.
iFit’s Australasian general manager Clayton Scott says NordicTrack has innovation built into its DNA, and was an early adopter of technologies that would give its equipment that edge fitness and health gurus seek out.
“NordicTrack was an innovator and always had been,” he says. “We were the first to put speakers, or a TV [on our equipment], or to even create a folding treadmill in someone’s home. So NordicTrack has always been the first to market with innovation and technology.”
Where NordicTrack is the grunt of equip-ment, iFit provides the software that connects the user to a world-class online training system. Whether your poison is the bike, rower or treadmill, you can log on and begin competing within a global network. Or use the screens as a window to a new vista in another country, suggests Scott. “One of the things Australians are really missing right now is travel, and Australians love to travel. And you get that on this product, you can go visit Puerto Rico. You can run in Thailand, you can climb to base camp at Mount Everest, and you can run in Antarctica. So one of the cool things is you get the benefit of global travel, choosing places that you might never ever get to in your life, or may choose to want to go someday, and get to see your destination while you’re getting the benefit of exercise.”
The current jewel in the crown, however, is a digital mirror known as the Vault. What looks like a human-sized iPhone is in fact a massive digital screen that takes you through an array of strength, yoga and pilates workouts. It also doubles as your storage space for weights and other equipment, creating a neat package that looks like something out of Star Trek. The Vault’s system also touches on one of the main reasons most of us would still keep our gym memberships: form. Even one session with a personal trainer can tell you just how good, or bad, your relationship is with your own biomechanics and proprioception.
“With the Vault, you’re doing a strength or CrossFit workout and you’re watching the trainer [on screen] and they’re talking to you about your technique,” says Scott. “Or you’re doing your press-ups in the reflection of the mirror and you can see if your shape is correct, if your body is nice and flat, if your chest is touching the floor, your head is looking forward, because that’s what they’re telling you to do. And then you can actually get that feedback live looking at yourself in the mirror, and I think that’s a really exciting thing.”
It’s not only global players that are spicing up the home gym offering. Here in Australia, the Perth-based Vitruvian and its V-Form trainer brings an element of that old-school, easy-storage fitness equipment but packaged in a slick, black and neon design.
A former high-frequency trader with a background in applied physics, founder Jon Gregory says he was observing the rise of the fitness influencer while at the same time struggling to find a more streamlined system of resistance training that was mobile, minimal and easy to do at home. “I was convinced there was a better way in the 21st century to do resistance training,” he tells WISH. “Surely we can combine some applied physics and some motors and engineering and software and firmware, and make a product that’s adaptive, full of data.”
The instant access that Instagram’s fitspo lot offered to their followers was key to Gregory’s a-ha moment: “I saw this opportunity where maybe we could make a hardware platform that connects fitness influencers with people in the home to make a physical and engaging exercise experience. They were the milestone moments. Fast-forward to here, which is where we are, it turns out you can do it. People are interested in it and it’s way better than I thought it would be.”
The V-Form’s resemblance to a Dan Flavin artwork makes it easy to underestimate the fact that it’s built for an intensive workout. Gregory’s design uses electricity to put torque onto a spool of rope that is connected via pulleys to two handles on the outside. That torque on those motors becomes effectively force in the handles. Additional firmware and software adapts that force on the handles according to your own ability and how you want to be working out at that particular instant.
With this kind of equipment available in the home, will the traditional gym be a thing of the past?
“The future of fitness will be hybrid,” suggests Alessandri. “So people will be trained both at home and at the gym, exactly the same way you eat at restaurants and sometimes it’s delivery.”