Gyms and health clubs have historically been the leading destinations for proactively taking care of your health with the traditional focus being on exercise, movement and more recently nutrition. A shift has been slowly developing over recent years however, where people are valuing a previously overlooked aspect of health, recovery and wellness. The growing popularity of recovery and wellness as a health routine has people looking outside of health clubs and gyms for access to these services.
Recovery and Wellness as a Service
Recovery and wellness are now believed to be just as important, if not more important than diet and exercise. This rapidly growing trend is leading to the proliferation of retail recovery and wellness studios such as Restore Hyper Wellness, iCRYO and more. Members are actively leaving the gym to spend more time and money in these wellness studios to compliment the full spectrum of their health in addition to exercise. This means a lot of money left on the table that could be captured by health clubs rather than watching it walk out the door.
Recovery and Wellness Inside the Gym
Many gyms and health clubs have already started adding recovery and wellness inside their facilities in an attempt to circumvent their members from doing these services elsewhere as well as offering the most in demand amenity by gym members. By adding recovery and wellness, gyms are not only capturing more revenue and increasing their member retention levels, but they are also seeing increased member satisfaction as well as attracting other members from competing gyms that don’t offer these services. Additionally, people from outside of the fitness community are starting to visit the gym specifically for the wellness services offered. Many of these people view recovery as something that needs to be earned by working out or being in shape, and thus do not do it. Wellness however, is for everyone and there is an increased level of interest from non gym members coming in for wellness services and walking out with a gym membership.
So What Do I Need to Add?
It’s anticipated by the year 2030 that every gym will have some sort of recovery or wellness offering. If you haven’t at least dipped your toe into this area by now, you may very well be losing members at a rapid pace. But what services do you need to offer? It’s very easy to add some compression pants and massage guns to a corner of your gym but members are increasingly asking for more.
The most popular services being added in gyms that are ahead of the curve all happen to be what is considered “touchless wellness” products and devices. These are services that can be offered to members for self use for the most part. This cuts down on staffing expenses, allows members to have a private experience and increases ROI on these services. By far, the most sought after recovery and wellness service in the gym is electric, whole-body cryotherapy. Cryotherapy is great because it can be used as a pre-workout to get the adrenaline going and energy boosted to crush that workout or also as a post workout recovery method and tool for wellness such as improved sleep and mental well-being. Other in-demand services include leg compression, massage chairs, percussion guns, infrared saunas and red light therapy beds.
What is Cryotherapy?
Whole-body cryotherapy is the brief exposure to ultra low air temperatures in a fully-enclosed, insulated room or chamber with the intention of activating the body’s natural response to extreme cold in a convenient way. While this sounds painful, it’s much more comfortable than a cold plunge or even a cold shower. This is because whole-body cryotherapy uses hyper-cooled, oxygenated air rather than a fluid such as water to cool the body. Air has a much lower insulating factor than water, so your body gets the great benefits of cold without the pain of being covered in water. For best results, cryotherapy should be experienced in a fully-enclosed, electric cryotherapy room with your head inside and exposed to the cold.
