The New Year is fast approaching and 2015 will be coming to a close. Jonathan Ross, a senior consultant on personal training at the American Council on Exercise, highlights some of the trends that dominated the year and looks forward into 2016. Which trends will stick around and what new ones will emerge?
Top Fitness Trends of 2015
Boutique Fitness Studios: Boutique studios offer a more community-based experience (drafting off of one of the main reasons for CrossFit’s popularity). Studios provide users a social connection to fellow class attendee or studio members, thereby enhancing adherence to the workouts and the physical results, while also providing emotional benefits of social connection and belonging.
HIIT: High-intensity exercise is popular because it provides focus, clarity and a washing away of the day’s concerns and distractions. It also provides results — potentially with less time than with traditional exercise. There is nowhere to hide in a high-intensity workout, since there is only one way to do it. And if you are doing it all, you are working reasonably hard. They are not “boring” like many forms of less intense exercise and frequently fit time-pressed schedules more effectively.
Bodyweight Exercise: These exercises are popular because it can be done anywhere and the endless options and limitless variations provide a fresh stream of new exercises, which prevent boredom. And the ease of spreading and sharing new exercises on the internet anywhere with a smartphone camera means the ideas are flowing from all over the globe and keeping new bodyweight exercise ideas coming out.
Looking Forward To 2016
Recovery – Self-massage and mobility techniques will be popular for two reasons: One, the focus on high-intensity training has placed more strain on bodies, necessitating a need for an equally high-focus on recovery strategies to optimize performance and minimize injury. Second, our understanding of the inter-connectivity of many body structures and our understanding of fascia means we will have to continue to think of the body as a system and how any given structure affects all surrounding structures.
Fun and Fitness Combined – Despite the popularity of boutique studios, if you look closely, they are really just a smaller version on a large health club and simply directing their space to one or two of the elements in a larger club. It’s not that different of a fitness experience except for the smaller, community feel since more people know each other. To reach previously unreached fitness audiences, fitness professionals will come up with creative new workouts to deliver a few laughs along with the intensity. This ability to divert focus away from the intensity by getting lost in an enjoyable, fun experience is going to be the secret to motivating the 80 percent of the population who is never going to buy-in to the traditional approach to fitness.
Health Coaching – With an intense fitness experience available to anyone with the internet, a smartphone, books, magazines, etc. fitness training will have to become about more than the workout for any trainer to survive. People who deliver heat and noise with no substance will have a short career in the fitness industry. Health coaching will continue to become important and relevant because its focus is on helping people uncover hidden strengths they may not have known they have and connecting what they value about life to fitness. This helps direct people’s desire and actions toward health — as opposed to the all-too-common experience of people working out because they should, while not enjoying it.
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Emily Harbourne is the former assistant editor of Club Solutions Magazine.
