Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 141: 2022's 8 Biggest Fitness & Wellness Trends *Predictions*

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

In this episode, coach Danny makes 8 predictions about how he thinks the fitness industry will change as well as highlighting some trends he sees continuing in the new year.---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, we're going to highlight eight fitness trends for 2022 that I think paint a picture for the general direction the fitness industry is heading across, perhaps, let's say, the next decade. I think taking a look at trends is a really, really good thing to do. It's something I've learned from my experience in investing and monitoring financial markets so I can build my own personal wealth and manage my personal finance. But I think there's a

lot to be learned from looking at other people's behaviors, what they're buying and what they're interested in. Not just talking about fads or search keywords or buzzwords or just flash in the pan stuff that's coming and going. I want to actually talk about the direction I think our industry is headed. And for those of you who are coaches and trainers, there's a ton to learn here. You might disagree with me. If you do, I'd love for you to send me a message on Instagram. You can follow me at danny.matranga over on that platform. It's one of my favorite platforms, probably the primary platform I engage with my audience on. So please follow me there. But if you disagree with anything in the podcast,

send me a message. I'd love to chat with you about it there, but I'd like to highlight eight trends that I'm seeing in the fitness industry and make some predictions about where we will be in 2022 and what I think the biggest fitness and wellness changes are going to be, I guess you could call them, in the next decade. So exciting stuff should be a little bit of obviously, you know, conjecture. None of this stuff is particularly factual. I don't have hard statistics or data to back up some of these things, but these are some trends that I have seen quite a bit over the course of the last, let's say one to five years. And we'll talk about how they might continue on moving forward. But I think these are 2022's eight biggest trends to monitor in the fitness

industry. Number one is I believe that home fitness solutions and body weight workouts will maintain their popularity amongst busy professionals, socially anxious people who are still not necessarily reintegrating into the throes of the world post pandemic. And I do believe that even though a lot of people were getting quite sick of training from home, for many people, it's very, very practical. It's very, very convenient. And I think people have seen what's possible if they create space and compartmentalize a certain area of their home, apartment, even room, whatever living space they have for training. I believe this trend will probably accelerate more quickly with women than it will with men. We have already seen a small boom in

women's only gyms and in gyms offering women's only training spaces because quite frankly, not necessarily all women feel super comfortable in your typical big box gym. We'll talk more about those when we get to point number eight or trend number eight. But I think what we have seen is there are a lot of people who are simply more comfortable working out from home. It's more convenient for them to work out from home. And I think that the market is starting to acknowledge that. I think that the industry is starting to lean in that direction. Some examples, we're seeing devices like Tonal, Mirror. These are these electromagnetic cable-based home training systems that also have an interactive UI. For those of you who don't know, UI is a technological term that means user interface. So your iPhone has a UI. It's not

particularly interactive, but it is engaging. Whereas Tonal has this very interactive UI where you actually are coached through certain workouts. And for some people that works really well. Now, what I can say is these technologies are far from perfect. They're in their infancy and they have a lot of problems. A lot of, let's call them bugs, need to be ironed out in the next year or two, I think, for these to become long-term, really viable, not necessarily trendy, fatty products. But I do believe that things like Tonal, things like Mirror, things like Apple Health, which is now not just a monitoring option, but a workout option, things like Peloton are here to stay. And I think that this portion of the industry will continue to grow and evolve. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Garage

Gym Reviews, hosted by Coop. That is his name. Ironically, the same name as my dog. I think I might just generally be inclined to like people who are named Coop, but I've been following along with his channel for quite some time and using his reviews and recommendations to build out my own home gym. And I find it to be a phenomenal luxury to be able to train in my garage. It's immensely convenient. It has enhanced my productivity and I think it's here to stay. I really do believe it's here to stay. I don't think I will ever have a primary dwelling that does not include a place where I can go to exercise. And this is still as somebody who is actively working as an in-person personal trainer,

strength and conditioning coach, and nutritionist who would prefer to train my in-person clients out of my home. I would rather my clients come to me. It's easier. It's more convenient. I don't have to pay rent or have huge overhead. It's also more private, cleanly, intimate, creates better training space for my clients. And even though I'm actively in the process of finding space to open up a personal training studio and physical therapy clinic in the Sonoma County area, which has been harder than I would have originally anticipated, most of the clients that I work with

would rather just come to my house and train there. Now, I do have a phenomenal environment for that. I have put almost $40,000 into my gym in my garage, which again, underscores another problem, which is that due to supply chain bottlenecks and the general cost of a lot of equipment and the things that are used to make equipment like steel, like some of the vulcanized rubber, right? There's a lot of things used to actually construct gym equipment that make it very cost inefficient. So this is something that will price a lot of people out of building home gyms, but I think this is here to stay. And I think our number one trend going into 2022 is going to be the continued growth of home training, gym training,

and training away from commercial gyms. We'll touch more on that when we get to point eight. Point or trend number two is I think that personal training is going to move increasingly into the online space, into the online coaching space, and into a more boutique, intimate one-on-one environment. For the first five years of my fitness career, I worked at a big box gym right in the heart of town, a chain gym, 24 hour fitness to be more specific. And there were several 24 hour fitnesses in my area. Uh, one about 10 minutes North of my location and one about 10 minutes South. There was over 424 hour fitness across

the United States when I left the company four years ago. Interestingly, that particular sector, or I should say that particular component of the business, personal training, was critical for the health of these clubs. And I think it's critical for the health of most commercial gyms. You see, membership-based EFT dues tap, the memberships that people pay for, are important. They're what keeps the doors open. And the way big box gyms make money is from people not showing up, but they also make a good chunk of their money from personal training. You see, people pay between $70 to $120 for a personal training session, depending on the package, the price, the location, and the health club. And maybe if you're lucky, 50 to 60% will go to the trainer, but usually it's somewhere between 20 to 40. So gyms

are getting at least a 50% profit, oftentimes more, and trainers are the ones doing most of the selling and their clients are paying quite a bit. When the club that I worked at was operating at full speed, we were regularly doing $150,000 to almost $200,000 in personal training revenue a month across 15 to 20 trainers. And this wasn't too far off from the club 10 minutes north and 10 minutes south of us. So there were a lot of trainers driving a lot of revenue. I occasionally visit the club that I used to work at from time to time. And now granted, I go at different times of day. So I'm not, I don't have a necessarily standard sample size here. I'm not always going at the same time every day. So maybe clients are moving around, but I also think that

going at different times gives me some insight. And I only see at this point, four trainers working at this club, and I've only seen maybe one or two of them ever training a client. And look, I know we're coming back after a pandemic and it's hard to build a personal training business anyway. I mean, it took me quite some time to get my feet off the ground and running almost a year after getting started in the industry before I was a full-time trainer doing 40 plus sessions a week. Now, that's not necessarily everybody's goal. Some people want to do it part-time, but I have noticed a massive drop-off of personal training and personal trainers in these commercial gyms. And I'm sure most of this is due to the pandemic,

but I think a lot of trainers have been smart and they've pivoted to offering hybrid models where maybe they'll train you in person once a week and give you a program to do on your own, or maybe they're doing something similar to what my company offers, and that's online coaching. Now, not all online coaches are created equal, and not all online coaching systems are created equal either. I think it's critically important that you do in-person personal training previous to doing online coaching because you need to work with people. You need to experience how people move, how people behave, how people struggle. I don't think it's as easy as setting up shop and being like, hey, I'm offering personal training over the internet. I'll tell you what to

do and you execute it on your own. I found that that's incredibly inefficient. There are so many nuances, so many communication things, so many systems that need to be in place to effectively coach people remotely that it's not just for everybody. And I don't think all personal trainers are cut out for it, especially those who just want to make money or who just want to work out all the time. To be an effective online coach, you have to be good at communicating and you have to be pretty good in the digital space. And I think a lot of trainers are moving towards that because the in-person personal training in big box gym environment isn't appetizing to clients and customers post pandemic. I do think that small, intimate group style, personal training, Pilates, cycle bars, spin classes, boot camps, or even just one-on-one personal training in more intimate boutique spaces will grow. I think people want that in-person connection still. I think they might even be craving it after the pandemic. I just don't necessarily know if they'll be going back to commercial gyms to get it. And I certainly

have not seen that even since most of the commercial gyms in my area have reopened. Again, we'll get more to what I'm thinking we will see from the commercial gym space as far as a trend in 2022 when we get to point number eight. Number three, I think that misinformation will continue to be a huge problem and the lack of regulation around supplements, the lack of regulation around fitness communication and evidence-based health communication on social media will continue to be a problem. We have seen a massive amount of misinformation being spread across Facebook and Instagram when it comes to things like the vaccine, and it's deeply disappointing. I understand that many of you are hesitant about getting the COVID vaccine for a variety of reasons, and far be it for me to make judgments about that.

But one of the things that's frustrating to me is when people's rationale for anything is effectively just politicized or rooted in misinformation. That's not how my brain operates. And that's me. I know. I get that. But whenever I think somebody has made a fundamental decision based on misinformation or falsehoods, that bothers me. I mean, this is not dissimilar to how I feel about people who think waist trainers are going to actually reduce the size of their waist or that fat burner pills are going to actually help them mobilize fat, right?

These are common misinformation tactics spread by assholes on the internet. And I think if we've learned anything from the last year, we've learned that social media companies and social media providers like Facebook, Instagram, same company, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, they're grotesquely, grotesquely incapable, absolutely, completely, entirely incapable of policing misinformation on their platform. Nor do they really fucking care because there isn't necessarily a fundamental ethical route here for why they do what they do. They do what they do to make money. They don't do what they do to connect people. People can say that, oh, we built this platform because we want to connect people.

Fuck out of here. We all know that's not true. All of these massive corporations in social media right now are predominantly focused on generating as much money as possible through data aggregation, selling that data to advertisers. And the way this model works is not optimal for disseminating factual, scientific, truthful information. And there are plenty of grifters, plenty of shitbags, plenty of phonies who are going to continue to sell bullshit on the internet. And I think the more people that get access to these apps, the faster we see the growth of TikTok, because I think that of all of these apps, I really believe that of all of these apps, of all of the different offerings, the short snippet videos that you see on TikTok that are

between three and 60 seconds, YouTube is now copying this and calling them YouTube shorts. Instagram has copied this and called this reels. Facebook has incorporated reels onto their platform. So people's attention spans are only shrinking and access to these shrinking attention spans, unfortunately, is up for grabs. Anybody who wants to misinform you can misinform you. And I don't think that that goes away. So I do believe that in the next year, even in the next decade, we will have to see some pushback because we've seen, unfortunately, with the pandemic, a number of people make decisions about their health that may or may not have been rooted in misinformation.

When we move away from the pandemic, as we get further and further away, as more and more people get vaccinated, as we continue to see increased availability of these pharmaceuticals like the pill that Merck or Merrick has made and Pfizer has made that help reduce the likelihood of hospitalization from COVID, the closer we get back to normal, the better. We're not going to see as much chaos and misinformation around this particular issue. However, the people who were spreading it in the first place will still very much be inclined to make money selling bullshit. And I think that unfortunately, the fitness, health, wellness, and nutrition spaces and the supplement spaces are incredibly attractive to those kinds of people. And I just believe that they're going to pivot and pollute our space that's already quite polluted with bullshitters, marketers, shysters, and grifters. So this is something to be aware of. I do think, unfortunately, this is a trend that will take us in the wrong direction and talking about it to me really matters. Number four, I think the trend in wearable technology is going to become even more prevalent, predominantly piggybacking off of our obsession

with our devices and smartphones. I think that right now, smartphone addiction, smartphone obsession is ubiquitous with American society. It's not going anywhere. I have clients who are in their 70s and 80s who are completely addicted to their phones. My mother is completely addicted to her phone. I am likely addicted to my phone. I definitely have addictive tendencies around my phone use. And I think that for many people, the introduction of wearables that are tethered to your phone, such as Apple Watch, Android Watch, Fitbit, etc., those create an even deeper and more ubiquitous connection with technology. And a lot of these wearables actually generate

somewhat useful data like heart rate, which again, isn't super accurate. Calories burned, which for most of these is actually very inaccurate. Steps, which tend to be fairly accurate. Sleep tracking, which varies massively depending on the product. But they generate data that people are interested in and data that is specific to their health. And I don't think that people are going to become any less interested in that, especially if these devices are basically second phones. Like it's okay, my phone is in my pocket, but when I have my Apple Watch out, I will actually still be able to interface with my phone even if it's in my pocket. My messages come to me on my watch, my emails come to me on my watch, my notifications come

to me on my watch. That keeps people invested in the technology. And I think that we will see a lot of these technology companies continuing to make big pushes towards wearables. Now, some of these wearables like Whoop, for example, are independently owned. But the real question here is for how long? real question here is for how long? Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. How long before Whoop sells to a company like Samsung or Google or Apple? And we already know that Amazon, who is kind of one of the secret aggregators of data, right? You know, Google collects your data because if you search for anything on Google, the next time you go on YouTube, you're going to get

an ad for that, right? We know that Apple aggregates our data because if you say something to your damn phone, it almost hears you and starts giving you ads back. Facebook and Instagram, of course, are some of the most dubious, particularly in that they will push you into a small bubbly echo chamber quite rapidly because not only are they interested in your data, they're very interested in your likes and dislikes, particularly your dislikes, because they're very well aware that what you do on their platform, right, is exponentially more engaging when you're angry and agitated. Amazon though, we think of them predominantly

as a marketplace. It's where you go to shop for things that you want delivered to your house in two days. But that's not all that they do. Amazon Web Services is one of the fastest growing technological sections of any company in the world. It's outpacing growth of almost every other part of Amazon's business. And Amazon Web Services is a server-based business. Amazon also has Whole Foods. So they are in the grocery and food, let's call that market or sector now. So they have become essentially massive in that they're the number one online marketplace. They have an in-person marketplace with Whole Foods that does grocery delivery. They do web services and web hosting

for some of the largest websites in the world. And even they're in the wearable space. They've launched their own or are in the process of launching their own wearable. They're also getting into the pharmaceutical space. You can go on amazonpharmacy.com, type in any pharmaceutical you want. And so long as you have a prescription, they will be able to fill it. If you don't see, and this isn't me trying to be a conspiracy theory or a conspiracy theorist. I find it greatly frustrating when people just launch this out. But if you don't see a clear connection between Amazon's ability to collect and aggregate data through their marketplace, collect and aggregate data through your shopping and food preferences at Whole Foods, collect and aggregate data by

looking at what the traffic is to the various thousands of websites they host on Amazon Web Services. And you don't think for one second that if you get that wearable, they're not going to be gathering data about your sleep, your stress, your hydration, everything that you might be able to gather from a wearable next year within the next decade. You're crazy. I don't think Amazon wants to get into the wearable space because they care about making wearables. I think they want to get into the wearable space because they care about getting as much data as possible. And they're very much in the same data race that Apple is in, that Facebook is in, that TikTok is in, that Google is in. They're all in, that Google is in, they're all competing for effectively the same resource, which is our data. And I think the more people make

these wearables, the more we become interested in our own data and our technology for the better, the more ubiquitous these products will become. So I think we can expect even more wearables moving forward in the new year and definitely more as we move into the next decade into the 2030s. Okay, number five, I think that exercise and mental health companies will boom. I think that we will see more profit in these sectors than ever before. We're already seeing companies like Better Health exploding, offering online therapy. I think that the pandemic really allowed people the necessary time to sit with themselves. And it obviously brought with it a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression, a lot of addiction.

The last two years have been really challenging for people all over the world. But I do think it's underscored and highlighted that many of us were not taking very good care of ourselves. And being able to stop, pump the brakes, and really examine our behaviors, particularly our behaviors around wellness has been beneficial for most of us. And I don't think that's going to stop. I think this is one of the trends

that I think is exceptionally positive and I hope that it continues. I hear more people interested in exercise, nutrition and monitoring their mental health than ever before. And I don't necessarily want that to stop. So that's a trend that I'm really looking forward to seeing expand and grow and continue. But I definitely believe we're going to see the growth of online mental health providers, whether that be like better health, zoom based therapy, I think that we will see more people

taking their mental health and seeking the help of a mental health professional in the new year and into the next decade. Number six, and this is almost the opposite side of the coin, I think we're going to see continued growth with obesity and rates of being overweight. I think we will continue to see rates of anxiety increase, and I think we will continue to see rates of depression increase. We've seen these things decreasing slowly and steadily with both young people and adults. And even though we have a lot of access to interventions, which I just mentioned, I don't think these things are going to go anywhere anytime soon. And so these are trends that when we talk about health, fitness, and wellness trends,

this now includes mental health. Not to meme-ify it, but mental health has entered the chat. And that is a good thing. More people are thinking about their health mentally. More people are talking about their mental health. More people are considering their mental health because what we are seeing right now, especially here in America, is a mental health crisis. A lot of people are living with some serious anxiety, serious depression. And you pair that with the fact that obesity and overweight or being overweight have been steadily on the rise for quite some time. And you have a ticking time bomb because not only do you have people who are struggling with their mental health, you also have some clearly damaging physiological states

and having over 50% of the country being obese. That does not trend well if you look at, okay, well, how does that set us up long-term for our healthcare in this country? Are we going to reach a healthcare bottleneck? We talked so much throughout COVID, and I'm not one to minimize COVID. We talked so much about COVID. What would happen if, in fact, we saw hospitalization rates reach a point where people were actually unable to get a bed if they need it? We saw this happen, and that was problematic. I wonder what happens if we get through the baby boomers over the course of the next 15 to 20 years, and most of them die off. I know that sounds macabre, but it's the truth. Most of the boomers will die off in the next 15 to 30 years. What if the largest generation that replaces them, the millennials, the Gen Xs,

the Gen Zs, what if their rate of obesity and being overweight reaches 60, 70%? Right now, we're closing in on 50, right? That again, that's the entire population. But we know that childhood obesity is even outpacing adult obesity. So we know that the younger people right now are heavier, larger, fatter, more obese than their parents, than their parents' parents. We're not headed in the right direction. I wonder if you could reach a healthcare bottleneck where the amount of people who needed pharmaceutical intervention to continue to live or the amount of people who are struggling with largely preventable diseases due to being overweight or obese became actually so problematic that it bogged down things like Medicare. It bogged down our hospitals. It bogged down our ability to

deal with other things. And I'm concerned about that. And I think that we will see this trend continue throughout the next decade. And a lot of the trends I mentioned are actively working to fight against it. And I think somebody's going to win this battle. Something's going to happen here. And we've seen pharmaceutical interventions like semaglutide or semaglutide, I forget how it's pronounced, but weight loss drugs now that are very effective. And so it's going to be an interesting next couple years as we get more clarity in leaving the pandemic, what the heck's going to be an interesting next couple years as we get more clarity in leaving the pandemic. What the heck's going to happen with these escalating rates of anxiety, depression, obesity,

overweightness, or being overweight, however you want to articulate that. Are we going to adjust? Are we going to pivot? Are we going to get creative? Are we going to find solutions? Is the free market going to offer those solutions in the many ways I've outlined now? Or are we going to continue on this path for another 10, 20, 30 years? And if we do that, and we don't stop the trend, what happens? You know, what happens if over half of the population

struggles with anxiety and depression and over half the population is obese? We already know that 70% is overweight. And I think we've crossed that 50% obesity threshold. We just haven't gotten that data. I think the last CDC data relating to obesity put the number somewhere between 46 and 48%. So we're probably there. We just obviously the CDC has not been focused on collecting obesity data. So I am concerned about that. Point number seven, trend number seven, I think you're going to see more corporate responsibility and more corporate incentives for employees, which I think is a good thing. We are seeing a new era of corporate involvement in politics, whether you

like that or not. Corporations are huge. They are massive. They are influential. And they are quite possibly the single most powerful entity in America today. Corporations like Apple, Facebook, Tesla, Amazon, large technological companies like Twitter, you name it, they have a lot of pull, not just with what they do on their platforms, but with what their employees ask of them and how they interface with our political system. If, in fact, companies find that their employees perform better when they are active, when they are at healthier weights, when they have mental health care available to them, which, again, might not necessarily be available to them through their insurance that's offered by their employer, I think companies are going to start to pivot. I think you're going to see more corporations offering incentives like gym memberships,

offering to provide help or some type of allowance for things like personal training, offering better healthcare programs so that people can get their mental health practitioner like therapist fully paid for. Some corporations have health plans that will cover things like therapy. Many do not. And if they do, a lot of times what you're actually getting is group therapy or not necessarily the level of one-on-one help that you might want. So I think we're going to see more corporate responsibility and we're going to see more corporations incentivizing their employees to stay with them by doing a better job of giving them direct access to these things.

Because these corporations are immensely profitable, regardless of how you believe they should or shouldn't be taxed. They're not necessarily taxed in such a way that is, not all of them are hurting for money. Let's put it that way. And I think a lot of their employees are hurting. And I think that they're going to find real quickly, our employees do better if they're healthy. How can we do that? How can we enhance their health? We can actually start giving them allowances or stipends or incentives to monitor their health and take care of their health. Many corporations and companies already do this. When I worked for 24 hour fitness, there were dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of different corporations that we had corporate rates with. But what this looked

like was somebody would come in and be like, Hey, I work for Starbucks. I want to get a gym membership. We'd be like, Oh, cool. It's 59 99 a month. Oh, well, do you have a corporate rate? Oh, cool. Yeah. Actually Starbucks has a corporate rate. It's 54 99 a month. Oh, well, do you have a corporate rate? Oh, cool. Yeah. Actually, Starbucks has a corporate rate. It's $54.99 a month. Insignificant paltry $5 isn't going to sway somebody either way. But I think you might see corporations moving forward actually offering free memberships for their employees, which I think would be really cool. We're seeing corporations step up to the plate and vouch for the wants, needs, and desires of their employees. Sometimes that seems like bowing to the mob, if you will, depending on which side of the political aisle you land on. But corporations are becoming more involved in the body politic generally,

and I think they're going to become more involved in helping their employees live healthier, happier lives because they'll realize very quickly, we make more money when our employees are happy and healthy. Number eight, our final point is I do think that we will see a slow, small trend and eventual death and decline of commercial gyms. Now, I don't necessarily think this is going to be due to members, but I do think this is going to largely be due to employees. And we're seeing labor strikes and stuff like that all across the country. People just aren't happy to work for anything less than a livable wage. And we can argue back and forth about that, but this is not that discussion. Most commercial

gyms operate by having one to two managers now. Back in the day, they used to have managers for service and operations, managers for fitness departments and trainers, managers for memberships, managers for the entire club. But you have seen a lot of the executive and managerial positions at these companies slashed. And so by and large, you have minimum wage employees doing everything from membership to sanitation, to cleanliness, to club operations, to auditing stuff, you name it. The kind of things that people don't necessarily want to do for minimum wage. And I think that when you pair the fact that over 9,000 health clubs, 22% of the nationwide

health clubs have closed since the beginning of the pandemic, and 1.5 million workers in those companies lost their jobs, right? This is from IHRSA, right? We've actually seen the gym mitigation and survival act, the gyms act, which was introduced by Tammy Duckworth, a Senator, uh, from the state of Illinois, if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on that. I think she's from Illinois, but this is basically a $30 billion, a $30 billion act, $30 billion recovery funds made available through the SBA, small business administration, just for gyms, fitness centers, et cetera, because these clubs got hammered. And like I said, 22% of them closed. I don't necessarily believe those companies are going to have an easy time getting back in the black or getting back to a point where they then

become profitable again. And I know they're not going to be able to pay their employees anymore. Just based on my own experience, when I watched 24 Hour Fitness go through their bankruptcy and their precipitous decline, I can't disclose any of this information, but you could tell pretty quickly, not everybody who was employed there got to keep their job through this because this, one of the largest chain gyms, was hurting financially, especially after COVID. And when you ask a lot of people to do a lot of jobs for not a lot of money, I think you will end up eventually with a labor shortage. And so long as you have commercial gyms, you'll have people pooping in hot tubs, people blowing their nose on paper towels and throwing them on

the ground, people spilling protein and energy drinks all over the place. And cleaning that shit up and taking care of it isn't exactly the most glorious job in the world. And I will often go into this local big box gym and see one, maybe two employees managing the entire damn box with maybe one trainer. And that doesn't necessarily seem like a recipe for long-term success. And I don't know how long you can continue to put up a product that's going to bring people in the door, especially when you really look at the actual member bases across these places nationwide, they are shrinking. Many people canceled their gym memberships during the pandemic. And I think you see the increased rise of homestuff. So I don't

know if we're going to have a bunch of commercial gyms in 2030. I think there's a small likelihood that these things could completely explode and come all the way back around. I do think that's a less likely outcome, but it is possible. It is very much possible. I just think that you're going to have a very hard time getting people to do these kinds of jobs for minimum wage for much longer. We're already seeing it happening in various different industries. So it's something that I'm interested to watch. So guys, 2022 trends that I am watching, eight of them for the fitness and wellness industry. I think we're going to see home fitness solutions, body weight workouts, training from home,

building garage gyms, continue to grow and develop post pandemic. Not because people need to, but because people have experienced the convenience of being able to work out from home. One of the biggest reasons so many people say they don't have time to work out is because they are rushed. They are busy. They are constantly commuting. They have things to do. And when you can get rid of that excuse of, I don't have time because it's right there in your fucking house, it's really damn helpful. I think personal training will pivot to being more online and boutique than it will being operated out of big box gyms. Unfortunately, I do see misinformation running rampant. And I think post-pandemic science misinformation will leak ever more into the fitness, wellness, and supplement space.

I think wearable technologies like Fitbits and Apple Watch continue to explode, change, and morph across the next decade to the point where we're basically going to become cybernetic organisms. I think that exercise and mental health companies will continue to grow and become more common. I think that the rates of obesity, anxiety, and depression will continue to grow and become more common. I think that the rates of obesity, anxiety, and depression will continue to rise. I think that more corporate responsibility in the areas of keeping employees healthy and active will show up. I think that some of these larger corporations will actually begin incentivizing their employees to stay healthy and active. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean certain weights, um, because

that could get a little sticky, but I do think we will see that. And I do think number eight, the final point, there will be a decline in the number and popularity of large big box commercial gyms. So there you guys have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did be sure to share it, tag me so I can say thanks and leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Uh, but to close, nothing helps a podcast grow more than word of mouth. So if you enjoy it, text the episode to a friend, share it, any bit of exposure helps. Thanks again so much for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.