298 – Mike Pullano – Is Self-Serve ARX the Future of Fitness?

Comments

1. David Siu says

   December 2, 2020 at 11:49 pm

   I’m an Anytime Fitness franchisee. I understand the 24 hour convenience gym. I think I had the same thoughts last year about self serve ARX when I tried to have Anytime Fitness corporate understand that this is the future. They rejected the preferred vendor application that’s required to get a new piece of equipment into their system, ostensibly because of the price of the machine and ongoing license fees that they don’t want to saddle franchisees with. Instead, even after COVID, they’re still sticking with the social group training model (which is even more expensive with payroll and harder to build and maintain over time, since group training depends on good trainers and sellers).
   They haven’t tried the machine. Even though I told them REC was in Minneapolis last year, the headquarters of AF!

   If I may jest, the best thing to happen to ARX is for a bigger company like LifeFitness or Precor buy you guys out and churn out machines around the $7000-8000 price, just a little above the high end Technogym equipment price. Or negotiate some insane discount with a big franchise like planet fitness or crunch, since AF doesn’t see that an ARX fits its model much better than those big box gyms.

   Reply

   • Mike Pullano says

     April 29, 2021 at 9:08 pm

     Hi David! Thank you for the comments!

     First off, we have machines in the Minneapolis area that commercially available so if you Anytime Fitness crew want to try them, we can recommend a location to do have them by for a demo.

     In regards to working with big box gyms, in general, our team is thinking down a different path. We have talked on HIB a few times about our concern with big box gyms retracting year-over-year as we think the model is antiquated and doesn’t serve the next generation of exerciser as well as they used to.

     ARX allows for a new paradigm to emerge that is one that is truly democratized and is available to linebackers and grandmothers and everyone in-between. 🙂 Improvments in technology have a wonderful way of breaking down barriers to entry that existed in the past (think smart phones) and were originally reserved exclusively for the most knowledgeable or motivated groups.

     Will ARX be in some big box gyms in the future? Certainly. However, we see the groundswell trend of use happening at a smaller, more boutique studio level well before the Planet Fitnesses get on board last.

     Reply

2. Grep P. says

   December 3, 2020 at 3:01 am

   Interesting discussion.

   Back when you first started talking about the scalability of HIT businesses, I noted for myself that one on one personal training is very labor intensive, and that kind of business can be difficult to scale.

   Group training is one way this gets addressed, but that obviously requires a different kind of training product. It works better for group cycling classes, Cross-Fit met cons, and Jazzercise than it does for strength training, especially strength training that requires multiple machines or specialized machines.

   The old nautilus model had people shuffling through a line of 10 or 12 machines, and in theory, they could have probably started a new customer down the line every 3 or 4 minutes. But I’m not sure that many of them were ever able to operate at that kind of efficiency.

   A self serve ARX facility could certainly reduce labor costs and training issues. I imagine the bigger issue might then become scheduling. In theory, you could train 6 clients an hour with 10 minute workouts. But keeping the training schedule full, while avoiding long vacant stretches or customer conflicts could be a different kind of challenge. And I wonder how customer expectations about session costs and value might change if there is limited trainer support, and the equipment starts to be viewed as ubiquitous and generic.

   Reply

   • Mike Pullano says

     April 29, 2021 at 8:59 pm

     Hi Greg! Thank you for your thoughtful response!

     One main thing I can add in response to your comment: we have multiple of our customers doing self-driven ARX workouts (no trainer is directly guiding them through the workout) and the results of those sessions tend to be just as good as ones where there is a trainer overseeing the workout. The key point to consider in this situation is that the majority of what a trainer does (guide, motivate, form correct, etc) can be off-loaded to the ARX software.

     Since ARX remembers everyone’s individual ROMs, speeds concentrically and eccentrically, and shows a second-by-second comparison to a former workout, the user can focus 100% of their effort on performing the best exercise possible. No more guessing if the weight was correct. No more trying to slow down the rep speed. No more wondering if you are improving.

     What I’m trying to say here, is that instead of being in the mindset that you HAVE to have a trainer guide clients, ARX wants to offer people the OPTION to have a trainer rather than be forced to have one in order to perform high-quality resistance exercise. If your business takes the second approach, this lowers overhead in various ways while keeping the quality of the training at a very high level.

     Reply