2022: The Year of Growing Together

Ben Hackney-Williams, the head of content for Myzone, shares the importance of growing the industry together in 2022.

Stop solely chasing the end of month sales and find new ways to engage your community – not just your customers. Through teaming up with others, you can offer more to every one of your members while also showing new leads how valuable being a part of your community is. Now is a time when the eyes of the world are on the fitness industry, and it’s our responsibility to show everyone that gyms and fitness studios are more than just about treadmills and bench presses.

We have to step up to the front line of fitness together, with the benefits of physical activity for more people. This means appealing to those who aren’t already interested in physical activity, instead of only those who are looking for a gym to join. It’s the only way we’re going to be better understood by the decision-makers in government, better embraced and utilised by populations around the world and better placed to help more people stay healthy for longer.

Through raising our standards and embracing digital, it’s no over-exaggeration that we can get the world moving with us on a scale that we’ve never seen before. Create challenges that encourage members to move with friends who aren’t already in your network. Approach other businesses on the periphery of fitness and wellness with ways of partnering and talking to each other’s communities. Even creating a healthy sense of competition with other gym owners in your area has proved to be a positive way of getting more people seeing the hard work that goes in day after day.

Most importantly within the community setting, when we see efforts for inclusivity and “people like us” moving more, it shows us how we can do the same. Get families working out together, or simply running around in a field playing. The main thing is to find a way to reward their every effort, and shout about the great work everyone is doing.

We’re in the midst of a physical activity revolution, and if we’re all pushing in the same direction for the greater good, rather than looking inwards solely at our own vision, then great things will happen in 2022.