Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal recorded live from FIBO in Cologne, Germany for part one of the LIFTS Podcast's coverage of the world's largest fitness trade show — and they brought together a panel of AI and fitness tech experts for a conversation that cuts through the hype to address what operators and brands actually need to know about AI right now.
Matthew and Mo work through the practical realities of implementing AI in fitness contexts — from the foundational importance of data quality to the thorny questions of privacy, governance, regional compliance, and how to build consumer trust when the technology is moving faster than most people's understanding of it.
What This Episode Covers
AI's arrival in the gym is not a future event — it is already happening, in the form of personalized program recommendations, member retention tools, facility management software, and recovery monitoring systems. But the gap between AI as a marketing claim and AI as a genuinely useful tool for fitness businesses is significant, and most of the work of closing that gap happens at the level of data infrastructure rather than product features.
The panel Matthew and Mo assembled at FIBO 2025 brought together practitioners who are building AI-powered products in the fitness space and who have direct experience with the challenges that abstract conversations about AI tend to skip over — from data quality to governance to regional compliance.
LIFTS — Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal's industry show tracking the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — has consistently brought the fitness community conversations that are grounded in practice rather than theory. The FIBO AI episode is a strong example of that commitment: real builders talking through real problems in a setting where the energy of the industry's biggest annual event is palpable.
Key Moments from the Conversation
- Data quality is the foundational challenge for any AI implementation in fitness — systems built on poor or incomplete data will produce outputs that are at best useless and at worst actively misleading.
- Evidence-based AI development requires confronting the historical biases embedded in fitness research data, much of which has not adequately represented the full diversity of the populations fitness products are meant to serve.
- Privacy concerns and data governance are not secondary considerations — they are central to whether consumers will trust AI-powered health and fitness tools enough to actually use them.
- Data sovereignty and regional compliance requirements vary significantly across markets, and fitness brands operating internationally need to build those differences into their product and legal strategies from the start.
- AI has genuine potential to accelerate the delivery of personalized healthcare and fitness recommendations at scale — but realizing that potential requires getting the infrastructure right before the consumer-facing product.
- Strategic partnerships are emerging as a critical mechanism for AI capability-building in fitness, allowing companies to combine specialized data, domain expertise, and technical capability in ways that no single organization could achieve alone.
- The fitness industry is at an early but consequential moment with AI — the decisions made now about how to build, govern, and communicate about AI tools will shape consumer trust for years to come.
Why This Conversation Matters
Matthew Januszek has spent his career thinking about how physical environments shape human performance — and AI's arrival in the gym is ultimately a question about whether technology can enhance that relationship or complicate it. For Escape Fitness USA, staying close to where AI is heading in the industry is not optional; it is part of the strategic work of building relevant products and spaces.
LIFTS exists to give the fitness industry access to the conversations that matter most, and an episode recorded live at FIBO with practitioners actively building AI fitness products is exactly the kind of access the show was designed to provide. Matthew and Mo's ability to draw out the practical, honest perspective from their guests is what makes this episode worth the full listen.
▶ 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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