The Most Important Piece of Exercise Equipment Isn’t What You Think It Is

I have some big news to share, but first, a quiz: What’s the single most important piece of fitness equipment around the world? Not the best-seller, but the one with the potential to help the most people get healthy the fastest?

If you’re a cardio person, you might guess it’s a treadmill or an exercise bike. If you’re into strength, you’re lobbying for free weights, kettle bells or battle ropes. If you’re about flexibility and mindfulness, you might choose the yoga mat. If Pilates is your thing, you’re probably thinking “Reformer.” And if you’re the clever type, you’re thinking “it's our bodies themselves!” because of the effectiveness of bodyweight exercise.

You’re all wrong. (And I really hate burpees.)

To be clear, all these tools are important. But after spending 35 years in the fitness industry and investing billions in machines as the CEO of Anytime Fitness and SEB, I don’t think the answer to this question has ever been clearer.

Today, the most important piece of fitness equipment is your phone.?

Do I say this because there are nearly 100,000 fitness apps[1] ? No. I say it for three other reasons:

1.?????? Despite a boom in gym and studio locations over the past 15 years, depression[2] , type 2 diabetes[3] and obesity[4] have actually grown worse.

Gyms (and the machines inside them) are fantastic tools, but they’re not a total solution. Two-thirds of American adults are now overweight or obese, and 86% of health care costs go to treat the chronic diseases stemming from those conditions[5] . That’s a humbling stat. Gyms are vital, but they’re just one piece of a huge puzzle.

2. Hybrid work is here to stay.

We might never go back to working in offices five days a week[6] . And if your home is an unhealthy environment, then going to a gym or studio a few times a week isn’t going to reverse the negative effects of that. We need a holistic approach. If you manage a gym, you can’t expect people to come to you anymore. You have to go to them. Think of it as “hybrid working out.”

3. We now spend nearly 4.5 hours a day on our phones[7] .

Think about this: Before Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, we did something else with nearly ONE QUARTER of our waking hours. Is that going to change anytime soon? No. People in the gym industry can either treat phones as the enemy or the solution. As you’re about to see, I’m on Team Solution.

Which brings me to my big news …

What happens when the world’s largest fitness club brand partners with world’s largest company? You’re about to find out. Because Apple is teaming up with Anytime Fitness, and it’s the first time Apple has ever integrated at this level with a fitness club brand.

The short version of our partnership is this: Starting tomorrow, Dec. 1, all Anytime Fitness members in the U.S. and Canada will get a free Apple Fitness+ subscription. So in addition to the inside-the-gym resources and coaching we offer, our members will be able to access 12 outside-the-gym Apple Fitness+ modalities related to meditation, yoga, dance, Pilates and even “Time to Walk” and “Time to Run” features with their favorite celebrities.

Of course, we are keeping an eye on opportunities to expand Fitness+ access in the future to the other countries worldwide with Anytime Fitness clubs.

Why is this partnership so significant? Because it’s the biggest effort ever undertaken to meet people where they’re at and improve health and wellbeing through a combination of proven virtual and in-person resources. And the world needs it. We all need to eat better and move more, and our phones (as well as our iPads, laptops and Apple Watches) need to be our allies, not our enemies.

But that's not all we're doing to transform the phone from a “sit machine” into a “fit machine.”? Anytime Fitness just launched our Smart Coaching Ecosystem, which gives every member a coach — anytime, anywhere — and a personalized plan to match their goals and lifestyle. The Smart Coaching Ecosystem enables coaches to educate, motivate and engage with more members, more frequently, both inside and outside the club.?

Add in Apple Fitness+, and our coaches will take a member's personalized plan to a whole new level.

When you combine:

·?????? a global network of nearly 5,500 clubs,

·?????? passionate franchise owners,

·?????? 10,000 technology-supercharged coaches, and

·?????? world-class content from Apple Fitness+?????

- you have the best value proposition in fitness.

Face it: We’re in the middle of a public health crisis, and we’ll never escape it if we don’t make improving health as convenient, frictionless and fun as ordering your next pizza.

So maybe instead of ordering that pizza, you’ll now want to order up a workout from your phone. Because as the saying goes: "An apple a day keeps the excuses away!”

[1] https://straitsresearch.com/report/fitness-app-market#:~:text=Market%20Overview&text=According%20to%20the%20online%20public,devices%20(Health%20Works%20Collective) .

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-new-highs.aspx

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html

[4] https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7077778/

[6] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/511994/future-office-arrived-hybrid.aspx

[7] https://fortune.com/well/2023/07/19/how-to-cut-back-screen-time/