Having someone just feeling comfortable walking into the gym is important

The future of working out in the age of COVID-19 will be a hybrid of at-gym and in-home fitness, with an increasing focus on digital offerings, predicts celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak.

Pasternak is a personal trainer and nutritionist, who made his name working with celebrities including Halle Berry, Orlando Bloom and Rachael Weisz. He also has a fitness gym facility design business, and works as Global Fitness Advisor for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts.

“I think fitness providers will be okay,” he said, talking to HCM. “I think things will come back to very close to what they were before the pandemic, but there will be more of a focus on hygiene, ventilation and private spaces to work out. More home fitness will exist than before, but people will come back to gyms for the social aspect and for pieces of equipment that it doesn’t make sense to have at home.”

His advice to gym operators is to, “Think about who’s going to be using your facility. How you cater for them, how you prioritise function over form, create different spaces for different people with different goals and comfort levels.

“With COVID-19, the idea of creating personal pods where people can exercise in a very hygienic and private way is a new area we haven’t looked at yet. And whenever you can create an outdoor amenity, that’s also very helpful.”

He also advises gym operators to increase their use of digital workout offerings. “It’s the future and present,” he said. “From a staffing and financial perspective it makes so much sense. You’re able to personalise things even more digitally than you are with one person in a class. A machine can keep track more and knows way more exercises.”

Attracting new members
With COVID-19 acting as an incentive for many to lose weight, Pasternak advises gyms to become more welcoming for people at the start of their fitness journey.

“Keep it simple,” he said. “Not all workouts have to be an hour and half long with 20 exercises. Having someone just feeling comfortable walking into the gym is important. Maybe giving them two simple moves to start with. I think people should start on free weights rather than machines – if machines are people’s first exposure to resistance exercise, they can actually create bad habits, but as they become more advanced, they can be great tools for variation and isolation.”

Forme Life
Pasternak is behind the design and development of several pieces of widely-used strength equipment, and is always on the lookout for the next big thing in fitness, he said. When he was asked to be chief fitness adviser for recently-launched Forme Life – a full length mirror designed by Yves Behar with resistance training equipment and a touch screen experience, offering a wide range of live and on demand workouts – he was instantly keen.

“When Trent Ward, the founder of Forme Life, approached me as they were developing this product, I thought, yes! I’m hitching my wagon to this horse,” he said. “I was very excited – it’s going to be a revolutionary product.”

Forme Life comes in two models: Full Studio and Screen-Only Studio. When turned off, it becomes a sleek full length mirror designed to blend into the home.

“If the Mirror is an audio cassette and Tonal is a CD, Forme Life is today’s modern digital music,” said Pasternak. “This is what I’ve been telling my clients to hold out for.”

Looking ahead, Pasternak’s gym design company has a range of gym designs underway, including several for Four Seasons, and an updated version of his bestselling The Body Reset Diet book is due to come out early in early 2021.