Every December, the fitness industry's most informed observers look back at what they got right and forward at what's coming — and few conversations capture that ritual better than the annual predictions special on LIFTS. In this episode, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed Iqbal are joined by Anthony Vennare, co-founder of Fitt Insider, to score how the 2025 forecasts landed and lay out a detailed map of what 2026 is likely to hold for fitness, technology, and consumer behavior.
LIFTS — Matthew and Mo's weekly industry show at liftspodcast.com — was built for exactly this kind of high-signal, no-filler conversation: two experienced operators and a dedicated industry analyst talking honestly about which trends have real legs and which ones are running out of runway. The 2026 predictions episode covers wearables, GLP-1 drugs, AI fitness apps, strength training, local wellness concepts, and the accelerating shift from aesthetics to holistic health.
What This Episode Covers
Anthony Vennare co-founded Fitt Insider, one of the fitness and wellness industry's most respected research and media platforms. Fitt Insider tracks investment activity, brand strategy, consumer behavior, and technology adoption across the sector, and its annual prediction reports have become a benchmark for operators, investors, and founders who want to understand where the market is heading rather than where it has been.
Vennare brings an analyst's precision to conversations that often drift toward opinion — grounding forecasts in actual investment data, consumer survey findings, and the real performance of businesses that tried to capitalize on the trends of the previous year. His annual review with Matthew and Mo on LIFTS has become a high point in the fitness industry's calendar, offering the kind of honest scorecard that most industry media avoids.
The 2026 edition of the predictions special is particularly consequential: the fitness industry is navigating the aftermath of post-pandemic normalization, the practical impact of GLP-1 drugs on gym membership and consumer health behavior, and a shakeout in the AI fitness app category that has forced a reckoning about what technology can actually deliver for real people with real fitness goals.
Key Moments from the Conversation
- A detailed review of which 2025 fitness and wellness predictions actually came true — and which ones were wishful thinking — provides a calibration point for how credible any set of forecasts can be.
- Wearables and biometric monitoring have crossed a meaningful threshold into mainstream adoption, moving from enthusiast gear to everyday tools that ordinary consumers use to make real decisions about their health.
- The rise of GLP-1 drugs is not a niche pharmaceutical story — it is generating industry-wide impact on gym membership demand, consumer body image, and the products and programs that fitness businesses need to offer.
- AI fitness apps may be heading toward a significant shakeout as the gap between marketing promise and actual user outcomes becomes harder to obscure; the apps that survive will need to demonstrate measurable behavior change, not just engagement.
- Local, premium wellness concepts are outperforming big national brands in several key markets — suggesting that community, specificity, and physical experience still command a premium that digital alternatives cannot fully replace.
- Strength training continues to dominate global fitness trends across demographics, and the data suggests this is not a cycle but a structural shift in how people define fitness and approach their training.
- The consumer shift from aesthetics to holistic health and longevity is reshaping what people buy, what programs they commit to, and how they evaluate the value of their fitness investment.
- What 2026 holds for fitness, technology, and consumer behavior is a function of these converging forces — and Matthew, Mo, and Vennare map the intersections with the specificity that operators need to make real decisions.
Why This Conversation Matters
The annual LIFTS predictions special with Fitt Insider is one of the clearest windows available into where serious fitness industry thinking actually lands — not the confident claims of brand marketing, but the evidence-grounded analysis of people who have been tracking the numbers long enough to know what they mean.
For Matthew Januszek, whose work spans equipment, content, and the North American expansion of Escape Fitness USA, and for Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, the exercise of scoring predictions and making new ones is also a discipline: it forces intellectual honesty about what operators, founders, and investors got wrong and what they need to update. That honesty is exactly what the LIFTS Podcast was built to model.
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube
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About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
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