Les Mills has launched a suite of digital solutions to help gyms future-proof by expanding their reach in the booming online fitness space, while complementing their live offerings. Steph Eaves talks to Les Mills International’s CMO Anna Henwood to find out more

Tell us about the development of Les Mills’ digital solutions
We’ve worked closely with our partners to develop a suite of digital solutions to help future-proof clubs by expanding their reach in the booming online fitness space, while complementing their live in-club offerings. Leveraging 52 years of group fitness expertise, we’ve created a range of LES MILLS™ On Demand (LMOD) and livestream products designed to support clubs in driving new revenue and meeting growing consumer demand for a ‘blended’ fitness offering. This combines the best of digital and live fitness to produce a connected member experience enabling members to work out however they choose – whether in-club or at-home.

How do you envision these solutions will help clubs to recover post-COVID and also stay relevant in the coming years?
There’s no getting away from the fact that Big Tech – Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook – are sizing up the fitness industry and represent a major threat for clubs. COVID-19 has changed the game forever, making digital fitness a core expectation of every club member in the world in just a few months – and that’s precisely why Big Tech is preparing to strike.

Clubs may not have the financial might or brand power of major tech firms, but they have assets that Big Tech can’t yet match: highly-engaged communities centered around authentic, live experiences. For those willing to be bold, the digital fitness boom can fast-track club growth and help operators thrive in the new age of fitness by enabling them to combine the best of live workouts with the scalability and convenience of digital – a compelling proposition for consumers.

How will these solutions help clubs who don’t yet have a digital offering?
First and foremost, it will help them to stay relevant. Since lockdown, the phrase ‘Innovate or die’ has shifted from being a fitness conference catchphrase to the harsh reality of operating a club in 2020. Digital fitness is becoming a basic expectation among consumers, so clubs that fail to provide a solution will struggle to compete.

And with health and fitness now a top-tier priority for people of all ages, there are big opportunities for clubs to grow their business by offering a connected member experience encompassing both live and digital solutions. Digital tools help clubs to reach more potential members and a connected member experience ensures that they keep them for longer.

How does Les Mills work with clubs to tailor a solution to their needs, and then help implement it?
Technology has understandably dominated the fitness industry discourse in recent months, but technology isn’t the answer to our challenges; our people are. Technology is still just a tool to help us deliver motivation to members beyond the club. It’s our people – the faces our members know and love – who remain at the heart of these solutions, and that’s the approach we take when supporting our club partners. How can we use technology to enhance their existing strengths and support their goals?

Whether it’s LMOD Affiliate (where clubs can upsell LMOD to their members and receive a share of the revenue), Les Mills workouts clubs can embed into their existing app, Virtual, Immersive Fitness, livestream or live, we have a host of solutions to support clubs, and a wealth of experience in how to implement them. As operators of a successful chain of clubs in New Zealand, we understand the problems that operators face and we only bring our products to market once they’ve proven to be a success in our own clubs.

Do you think Les Mills’ digital solutions can act as a gateway to getting more members coming in for in-club workouts?
Digital offers huge opportunities for clubs to reach beyond their traditional local catchment. Now, anyone with an internet connection is a potential target for digital memberships. By taking the club experience into people’s homes through digital solutions, operators have the chance to reach huge swathes of the population who wouldn’t typically visit a club and help them start their fitness journey. We can support people to build their fitness skills and confidence at home, so they can then graduate into clubs.

There’s clear appetite for such fitness progression among non-gym members using LMOD, with 53 per cent stating they’re interested in trying live Les Mills classes in a club (research from May 2020). Providing digital stepping stones will be key to gyms driving up the penetration rate and reaching mass adoption.

How can clubs integrate their digital offerings with their physical offerings, ensuring one complements and supports the other?
I’ve mentioned it already, but offering a connected member experience really is key – and a big component of that is consistency. Are you offering digital versions of the workouts that members love doing in your club? And conversely, are you offering better live versions of the workouts on your digital channels, so that users are enticed to come to the club more?

The marketer in me is going to insist on a slick customer experience and journey that takes an omnichannel approach – using the club as a promotional channel for digital and vice versa. How are you demonstrating the value of your total membership package (with digital included) and pricing it attractively to encourage the upsell? Does the digital user experience match the standards you set when people visit your club? Is your app/website consistently branded and easy to navigate? Is it bug-proof? These are the basic elements that need to be executed well for the offering to be considered a total package that the member sees value in.

How do you plan to keep LMOD fresh and exciting moving forward?
We’re constantly working on ways to enhance LMOD and raise the bar. We added our 1,000th workout to the platform in June and our audience has never had a greater choice of world-class programmes than they do today. These are the workouts you’ll find in clubs around the world and we’re working hard on new features to encourage more LMOD users to go out and experience live classes at their local club.

We’ve recently introduced daily workouts led by rockstar Les Mills Trainers – these are proving really popular as they’re short, sharp workouts that have never been seen before. We’ve also ramped up our range of challenges and workout plans designed to support specific user goals and we’re starting to include more diet and nutrition advice to support this. Personalisation is becoming ever more important – both for us and the industry as a whole.

What are your predictions for how the fitness industry will change over the next few years?
The growth of digital workouts isn’t a sudden shift in consumer behavior sparked by COVID-19, it’s actually the acceleration of a trend that’s been taking hold for some time. The 2019 Global Consumer Fitness Survey showed that 85 per cent of gym members also exercised at home – and that was before COVID-19 – so this is a longstanding trend which I fully expect to continue.

That said, live workouts in a pumping club studio will always be the most motivating fitness experience because we’re pack animals, so working out in groups is in our DNA. Our research has shown that group workouts produce increased levels of individual enjoyment, exertion and satisfaction – we call this the group effect.

After months of isolation for much of the world’s population, people are craving connection more than ever, so the opportunity for clubs is to be the bridge between the digital and the physical fitness space by taking an omnichannel approach. Fusing the best of digital (innovation, accessibility and scalability) with the motivation of live fitness experiences will be the key to stealing a march on Silicon Valley and setting up clubs for long-term success.