As the fitness industry rapidly evolves, data from smart equipment and wearables is becoming a must-have tool for gym owners and operators. This technology is reshaping how members engage with their workouts, and the ability to effectively collect and act on this data is driving member retention, engagement, and overall business growth. To explore how clubs can leverage this data for success, we asked our own industry experts Chris Clawson (General Manager, EGYM Gymtech) and John Ford (Chief Product Officer) 3 key questions about the impact of data on the industry.
 

Question 1: How can a club owner or operator leverage data from smart equipment and wearables to grow their business?

Chris:  There are layers to this answer since the owner, staff, trainers and, and members can all benefit from it. The combination of smart equipment and wearables brings multiple facets of the exercise experience together including asset utilization (everything in the facility is part of the potential workouts and will be suggested), tracking/prescriptive exercise (good for trainers and clients), better results mean lower attrition, members stay engaged and find success more often.

John Ford - EGYM Chief Product Officer

John:  It depends on the scale and technical sophistication of the operator. For smaller operators, fitness data is important because of the interactive training experience that it can enable. Smart equipment relies on an understanding of the user's activity and performance in order to deliver a hyper-personalized training experience. The more data that can be captured, the higher the personalization potential. Having a more personalized training experience than competitors is going to help with member acquisition and retention, and can be incorporated into upsell products, all of which drive growth of the business.

For larger and/or more technologically sophisticated operators, the above is all still true, but there are additional ways that fitness data can be used to grow. Organizations that can incorporate fitness data into their data warehouses can take advantage of better member segmentation and understanding because fitness data represents their specific behaviors concerning the gym's main product: exercising. This adds the potential to improve sales, marketing, operations and many other aspects of the business through a deeper understanding of the customer.

Question 2: How do you see the role that data plays in gyms changing over the next five years?

John:  The scale and importance of data-driven experiences will continue to increase. I believe that within 5 years, most major gym organizations will have a data/AI-driven onboarding and personalization experience integrated into their new joiner journey.

Chris Clawson - General Manager EGYM Gymtech

Chris:  Most operators are stuck in a decades-old approach of selling memberships, turning clients loose in the facility and hoping for success. When that fails – and it will some 40%+ of the time – they look to replace past members with new members. When onboarded with EGYM the process has a method, and the madness of "hoping" is replaced with a recipe for programmed success. BioAge is the thread that makes the complex easier to understand, and show progress or regression. Exercisers will have paths to gains clearly laid out and only have to follow the suggested exercise program.  Data makes the whole thing real for everyone from beginner upwards.

Question 3: What challenges do you see data from smart equipment solving for gyms? 

Chris:  Data, when delivered in a digestible format, leads to better conversations with trainers (where applicable), better outcomes for the exerciser and a story based upon truth for the facility staff and trainers to tell and retell to prospective clients.

John:  Three key challenges: Making strength training accessible to beginners at scale, onboarding to and continuous personalization of the training experience in the gym, and increasing engagement through data-driven, community-oriented features.