Edited by Dr. Emanuele Santinelli
Right now the world of fitness is experiencing a transition phase that is not yet perfectly defined. Fitness centers are adapting to market demands; new structures, new designs, a multitude of ancillary services: all this to align with the increasing demands of customers.
At the same time, the large multinationals are entering the market and will gradually broaden their range of action and make small gyms disappear, unable to keep up with the times.
The number of corporate and multi-company gyms will grow more and more; already today it can be seen that it is a growing sector, so much so that so far about 100 have been set up in Italy, 600 throughout Europe. These large centers will aim more and more at the well-being of individuals and less and less at the aesthetic beauty conquered with effort and sweat.
This new way of living fitness will bring more and more people to the practice of physical activity, making the centers more and more attractive and accessible to the huge mass of potential customers.
The objective sought will be to restore centrality to man to the detriment of the machine and this will lead in the near future to a fitness that is no longer concentrated only in gyms.
Physical activity will have fewer and fewer fixed times and even less and less codified physical spaces in which to carry it out. Once more and more individuals understand the need for both physical and mental well-being, fitness will no longer be practiced as a daily duty but will become a lifestyle. The idea that tranquility, serenity, harmony, are values and conditions of the spirit to be permanently sought in everyday life, and not to be relegated to extraordinary moments of spiritual or philosophical research, will become a common acquisition.
Life trails in the parks will increase in number, where it will be possible to practice exercises suitable for everyone and modifiable according to individual abilities, with the possibility of doing them either on foot or by bike.
By following these paths, equipped with fixed tools installed at regular distances from each other, and accompanied by explanatory signs, it will be easy for everyone to follow a correct, healthy and regenerating training program.
The fitness-demand models will be guided by individual customers, not by bands, in an "already perceptible wave. The activities of the clubs will be increasingly nuanced and" will interface transversely: in an aerobics course, technological elements will appear, in "strength training there will be there will be cardio implications and specific muscle groups will also be involved in cardio-fitness exercises.
The equipment, already extraordinarily conceived today for aesthetics and functionality, will become impeccable. Fitness will not change in the sense of product / result that comes from a wellness / hospitality service, to refer to the jargon of tourist villages, but its technological evolution will slow down in place of a relaunch of "conversations". Supporting conversations between client and client, between client and employee-club, between employee and employee will be the strategic hub.
Improving this communication and reciprocating it will give not only tactical indications to the clubs of the future but will give the customer that well-being that is so much talked about, but which is not yet well known. Well-being is by definition indefinable, in fact there is no one-sided strategy to produce well-being, because when you feel good you often don't understand why; moreover, well-being is the product of rebound mechanisms that start only if, as mentioned, they are reciprocated.
Therefore, once the myths of strength of the Eighties and resistance to high aerobic impacts of the Nineties have fallen, fitness will leave us and go down in history to evolve into sensations, into experiences.
The quality of the fitness technologies will become expected, discounted quality compared to the main service. But similar changes will also have to take place in the world of management control software, in the computerization of training programs that are still too long and boring, and in the ergonomics in the changing room installations: in 2010 we would not want to find large lockers-boxes yes and no. two hands, because that situation technically definable as procedural micro-phase of access to the club will produce well-being removed and not added well-being.
We identify ample room for improvement in all areas of accessory service, so investing technologically in this direction will mean recovering price margins on the quantity and quality of added well-being to be downloaded, then, on the customer, to his total benefit.
And so, after technologies have dominated the field for a few decades, we will witness a process in which man will return to manage his own well-being in the first person. Of course: they will no longer be managers, fitness entrepreneurs or producers of tool, but it will be the customers themselves who will propose their individual wellness solution. By virtue of this "individualization-pleasure, non-standard approaches will be needed.
