EGYM Continues To Lead Fitness Tech Revolution

EGYM is on a mission to make the entire gym “smart” by leveraging tools like AI, gamification and other tech features

In an industry ripe for technological upgrades, EGYM is preparing another step in the evolution of fitness. Fresh off continued expansion in North America and a financing round that saw it reel in €207 million ($225 million), the global leader in tech-based fitness clearly has no plans to slow down.

Heading into the new year, the EGYM team is looking to combine the principles that allowed the company to become an industry leader with revolutionary technology by adding artificial intelligence (AI) to its arsenal. While AI remains more of a buzzword than anything else for many in the industry, EGYM is successfully harnessing its capabilities to take a huge step forward in fitness tech.

The AI Revolution

At IHRSA 2024, EGYM will unveil a new innovation that collects member workout data, learns from that data, and then applies it to the entire fitness floor and beyond. The feature promises to elevate and personalize a user’s individual workout experience as the AI learns from their exercise habits and creates a unique training plan accordingly.

“We want to make the whole gym ‘smart’,” said EGYM North America General Manager, Dana Milkie. ”By understanding members’ preferences, their goals, experience levels and combining it with the data we are able to track on our platform, we can deliver a workout tailored to the member and the operator’s facility.”

“In other words, anything that’s on a gym’s fitness floor, we want to connect in a smart way to drive prescriptive and hyper-personalized workouts to members,” Milkie adds.

EGYM’s new innovation will continue to link up with wearable fitness tech to enable members to add data from workouts done outside the gym so the AI can develop an even more personalized workout plan.

This innovation represents a commitment from EGYM to continue pushing the boundaries of the relationship between tech and fitness. Even with some notable steps already taken to further digitize health and wellness, EGYM believes there’s still a great deal of untapped potential. 

“In our industry, we tend to lag a little bit behind other consumer-facing businesses,” Milkie said. “While there have been some really good advances, I don’t think (tech’s) been as important as it could and should be. That’s where I think companies like EGYM are going to pull the industry forward to where technology is how people engage with fitness. We have to look at how technology becomes core to how members experience fitness facilities.”

Tech-Focused From Day One

EGYM was founded to make fitness more accessible to the masses with technology as the highway. It started when the Munich-based company’s co-founders Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer and Florian Sauter, two German natives, walked into an American gym looking for a workout. With no knowledge of how to use the equipment, they thought to themselves, “How can we apply technology to this experience to lower the barrier for entry and make it easier for people to engage in and commit to fitness?”

The company has since grown to supply 15,000 gyms worldwide. But again, EGYM still sees a gap in the fitness community which it intends to address.

“The best technology helps people track and organize their daily lives in a very personal way and I think they expect that throughout all their experiences, including fitness,” Milkie said. “Where EGYM will continue to make a huge difference is by applying technology to automatically track members’ preferences, workouts and progress to deliver a workout that is tailored specifically to an individual member’s goals. That’s what health and fitness operators are going to ultimately have to provide to their members in order to differentiate their brands.”

Gamification Drives Engagement

Even as EGYM continues to focus on next-gen tools like AI, the company also continues to assist the fitness community by playing off one of its most basic principles: the human drive to compete. Milkie also spoke on the company’s ongoing commitment to gamify products via its software as a key contribution to the tech and fitness partnership going forward. 

“Gamifying the experience is important because it keeps people engaged for longer and improves their motivation to come back the next day and the next day and the next day,” Milkie said. “On one of our user interface screens, we have a feature where you collect ‘coins’ based on the cadence with which you’re pushing and pulling the weight.”

“As someone who works out on our equipment regularly, I can tell you catching 100% of those coins is all you think about,” he adds. “At the end of the workout, you’re shocked to see that you lifted 2,000 pounds, because you were so focused on getting a 100% score! Those little things, where we think about the way people immerse themselves in the experience and how we can provide positive reinforcement, are all important at EGYM. From beginning to advanced exercisers, we want to make the fitness experience as engaging as possible.”  

EGYM features gamification elements that incorporate AI as well. The company created Gameday earlier this year to add interactive workouts that motivate fitness enthusiasts via performance-based experiences, pitting them against themselves or against others.