Ep 124 - Sweat 2020: New audience, new opportunities.

OK Boomer… Time to get fit! The Baby Boomers, ageing fitness, over 55s, the grey pound… Call it what you like, there’s a sector of the fitness industry full of people that are underappreciated and underserviced. In this special episode of the Escape Your Limits, live from ukactive’s Sweat 2020, we explore how to grow the industry, grow our engagement and grow old healthily.

With so many opportunities within fitness – what are we missing? How can we provide the best fitness experience for us all as we age? Join Joan Murphy of FRAME and Kenny Butler of ukactive in conversation with Matthew Januszek to find out.

For more information visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Joan Murphy is co-founder and CEO of FRAME. Energetic and enthusiastic about all things fitness, she has previously represented her home country of New Zealand in sports such as pole vault and track cycling. Today she’s using a finance and marketing background to understand juggling a business, motivating both staff and class attendees, along with being a mum of two.

Kenny Butler is head of health and wellbeing development at ukactive. From a physiotherapist background, he’s improved the wellbeing of individuals, and today is working to better the health of the national by getting more people, more active, more often.

FRAME is a studio in London offering fitness, Pilates, yoga, barre and dance classes, plus personal training. In true boutique style, there’s also an activewear shop full of the best from the big brands alongside niche finds, and a cafe where you can order smoothies, juices and healthy food to eat in or take away. You’ll find FRAME in King's Cross, Shoreditch, Victoria, Hammersmith, Fitzrovia and Farringdon.

The team at ukactive strives to get more people, more active, more often. Its a long-standing vision to improve the health of the nation through promoting active lifestyles. Working between the fitness industry and government, ukactive provide a supportive, professional and innovative platform for its partners to help the fitness sector thrive.

 

Episode highlights - 

• How the marketing needs to change within the fitness industry to accommodate a huge section of the market with the largest percentage of spend – the over 55s.
• Why it’s more important to focus on independence and mobility than exercise and sport when it comes to customers, members and clients in the ageing fitness sector.
• What’s changed with perceptions of age, and how the age of 60 is very different now to what it was two decades ago.
• How boutiques have made fitness accessible for people that didn’t want to do PE, but why we need the same generational shift for older members who want to stay active without necessarily taking on a HIIT class.
• The pressure that social media puts on both businesses to appeal to their target demographic, but also to anyone else who wants to work out while potentially not falling into that perceived market.
• How programming is going to be key for ensuring that workouts are at the right level for the audience – especially with ageing members.
• What issues there are with the career progression of personal trainers, and how we need more older personal trainers to appeal to the baby boomer market.
• What the global challenge is for healthy ageing as a result of people being inactive.
• How the effect of long-term conditions can be alleviated by fitness at an older age, taking a lot of pressure off institutions such as the NHS.
• Why ageing and loss of fitness is often confused, and how being physically, mentally and emotionally active often helps the ageing process.

 

Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Joan Murphy and Kenny Butler