When a consumer-focused investment bank publishes a report titled 'The Impact and Opportunities of GLP-1s for the Fitness and Wellness Industry,' the industry should pay attention — and Matthew Januszek did. On this episode of Escape Your Limits, Matthew sits down with Paul Byrne, Partner at Harrison Co, to go deep on what GLP-1 weight-loss medications actually mean for gym operators, equipment companies, coaches, and the broader health and wellness sector. Byrne is one of the most credentialed voices in the room: over a twenty-year career, he transformed Precor from a single-product company into a globally recognized multi-product brand, launching the elliptical (EFX) and the adaptive motion trainer (AMT) and pioneering gym floor technology with the introduction of Preva, Precor's personalized cardio-machine platform.

The episode draws directly on the Harrison Co report, which Byrne was instrumental in developing, to work through the full range of GLP-1's implications: how the medications work, how people access them, what they mean for gym attendance and body composition, and where the most compelling commercial opportunities lie for fitness businesses willing to adapt. The conversation runs for over an hour — and earns every minute of it.

About Paul Byrne

Paul Byrne is a Partner at Harrison Co, a consumer-focused investment bank that advises clients on strategic decisions in a rapidly changing consumer economy. His firm's report on GLP-1 medications and their impact on the fitness and wellness industry is one of the more rigorous pieces of sector analysis to emerge from the GLP-1 conversation — grounded in financial and strategic expertise rather than the fitness industry's tendency toward either uncritical enthusiasm or existential alarm.

Byrne's authority on this topic is built on his decades at Precor, where he operated at the intersection of product innovation, consumer behavior, and changing market conditions in exactly the way that GLP-1 demands. His experience launching iconic fitness equipment innovations and spearheading Preva's gym floor technology revolution gives him a clear framework for assessing how fitness businesses should respond when a significant external force reshapes demand: study the disruption, find the opportunity, and act before the window closes.

The Harrison Co report that anchors this conversation is available at harrisonco.com and covers the rationale behind GLP-1 analysis, a definition of how these medications work and how they are accessed, their likely disruption of the fitness industry and other sectors (including weight loss, home fitness, and healthcare), and a detailed look at the commercial opportunities for operators who choose to lean in rather than wait and see.

What Paul Byrne and Matthew Januszek Talked About

• Byrne explains how GLP-1 receptor agonists work and how people currently access them — including through prescription healthcare providers and, increasingly, through retail channels — providing the factual foundation operators need before forming a strategic response. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical advice, and anyone considering GLP-1 use should consult their own healthcare provider.
• The episode makes a detailed case that GLP-1 adoption is likely to drive more people into gyms rather than fewer, because the medications create both a physical need (muscle preservation during rapid weight loss) and a psychological context (commitment to health improvement) that fitness facilities are uniquely positioned to address.
• Gym design and facility layout are identified as areas requiring adaptation: Byrne discusses the need for fitness environments that welcome and actively accommodate members who are obese or in early stages of significant weight change — a design and cultural challenge that many operators have not yet seriously engaged.
• Body composition, specifically the risk of losing muscle mass during GLP-1-driven weight loss, is examined as a critical issue that creates a clear mandate for resistance training and coach-led programming among GLP-1 users — and therefore a direct opportunity for gyms that can deliver that programming effectively.
• The opportunity for coaches to specialize in supporting GLP-1 users is explored as both a professional development pathway and a commercial differentiator: Byrne discusses the gap between what most fitness professionals currently know about these medications and what they need to know to serve this emerging client segment well.
• The fitness industry's opportunity to capitalize on GLP-1 requires intentional market segmentation, with Byrne arguing that operators who can clearly identify and program for defined member types — those pre-medication, on medication, post-medication, or medication-adjacent — will outperform those who apply a single generic response.
• The merging of fitness and wellness with traditional healthcare is presented as the structural shift that GLP-1 is accelerating, with Byrne and Matthew discussing how US healthcare costs, corporate wellness programs, and population health outcomes are creating conditions in which fitness businesses can position themselves as genuine partners to the healthcare system.

Why This Conversation Matters

Matthew Januszek has spent his career building fitness products and businesses at the frontier of where consumer demand is heading. His conversation with Paul Byrne is the kind of deep, research-grounded dialogue that the Escape Your Limits podcast was built for: not a surface summary of a trend, but a real examination of what operators need to understand and do. The GLP-1 moment is one of the most significant structural shifts the fitness industry has faced in a generation, and this episode gives it the seriousness it deserves.

For listeners building or running fitness businesses — whether as operators, investors, or equipment professionals — Byrne's combination of investment-banking analysis and fitness-industry credibility makes this one of the more actionable GLP-1 conversations available anywhere. The Harrison Co report itself is worth requesting; the episode is the guided tour.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Ross Campbell →
• The Performance Medicine Era →
• GLP-1s and the Regain Effect →

HIIT built a decade of boutique fitness businesses — and now the data is catching up with it. On this episode of LIFTS, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal are joined by Ross Campbell, Founder and CEO of Beyond Activ, for a sweeping industry conversation that takes in the shifting fortunes of training modalities, the extraordinary rise of wellness-oriented hospitality, and the disruptive force of GLP-1 medications. Campbell's perspective is shaped by running one of the world's most influential global networks for fitness, wellness, and leisure — giving him access to trends across markets and business categories that most operators see only from within their own segment.

The episode draws on Beyond Activ's recent event in Saudi Arabia as a lens through which to examine how wellness is being built into large-scale real estate and hospitality projects in new markets, and what that signals for the global fitness industry. The conversation also examines the growing crossroads for boutique fitness between specialization and saturation, and the emerging case — led in part by Dr. Stacy Sims's research — that HIIT may not be delivering for every demographic the way its proponents once claimed.

What This Episode Covers

Ross Campbell is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Activ, one of the largest and most respected global networks connecting businesses in health, fitness, wellness, sports, hospitality, and leisure. Beyond Activ's events and community bring together operators, investors, brands, and innovators across continents — with a particular recent focus on emerging markets in the Middle East and Asia where wellness infrastructure is being built at remarkable speed and ambition.

Campbell's vantage point is genuinely global: where most industry executives speak from the perspective of a single brand, format, or geography, he draws on conversations with leaders and operators across the entire wellness ecosystem. That makes him an authoritative guide to macro trends — the shift from HIIT toward strength and Pilates, the wellness hospitality boom, GLP-1's disruptive potential — that are playing out simultaneously across very different markets.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly podcast co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, available at liftspodcast.com. The show's conversation with Campbell exemplifies its core purpose: finding the people closest to the industry's most consequential shifts and building a substantive conversation around what those shifts mean for practitioners and operators everywhere.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• The decline of HIIT as a dominant training format is discussed through both commercial observation and emerging research — including work by Dr. Stacy Sims suggesting that high-intensity interval training may produce suboptimal or even counterproductive outcomes for certain populations, challenging the consensus that HIIT is universally effective.
• Strength training and conditioning workouts are examined as the beneficiaries of HIIT's waning dominance, with Campbell and the hosts exploring how the industry is repositioning its programming and equipment investments to reflect members' growing preference for resistance-based training.
• The boom in Pilates is explored as one of the clearest illustrations of how member preferences are evolving — with low-impact, precision-focused training capturing demand from demographics that boutique fitness previously struggled to serve at scale.
• Beyond Activ's recent Saudi Arabia event is discussed as a window into the extraordinary scale of wellness investment in the Middle East, where large-scale hospitality and real estate projects — including Equinox's engagement with Neom — are integrating premium fitness and wellness as core infrastructure rather than ancillary amenities.
• The growth of wellness-centric hospitality is examined as a structural shift in how health and fitness is being positioned commercially — moving from standalone gym or spa provision toward integrated wellness offerings embedded in hotels, residences, airports, and lifestyle destinations.
• GLP-1 medications are addressed as a genuine disruptor for the fitness industry, with Campbell bringing a global perspective on how different markets are processing the emergence of weight-loss medications and what fitness operators need to be thinking about as GLP-1 use spreads across demographics and geographies.
• The airlines and airports wellness opportunity is identified as an emerging commercial space, with the episode noting that travel infrastructure operators are reinvesting in lounges and wellness facilities in ways that create new distribution channels for fitness and recovery brands.
• Meaningful, in-person connection through events is defended as a durable source of value in an increasingly digital industry landscape, with Campbell explaining why Beyond Activ continues to prioritize live events as the context in which the most important relationships and deals actually get made.

Why This Conversation Matters

Ross Campbell's role at Beyond Activ gives him a perspective that is genuinely difficult to replicate: he is watching the same macro trends — GLP-1, strength training's rise, wellness hospitality — play out across dozens of markets simultaneously, with both the granular operator data and the 30,000-foot view. For Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal, whose LIFTS podcast is built on exactly this kind of informed, cross-market intelligence, the conversation represents the show at its most ambitious scope.

For Escape Fitness USA and the broader industry audience LIFTS serves, this episode is a reminder that the most consequential shifts in fitness are rarely confined to a single format, geography, or business model. Campbell's account of what he is seeing — from Saudi Arabia's wellness build-out to the research questions being raised about HIIT — is a prompt to zoom out and think about the industry as a whole.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Dan Summerson →
• The GLP-1 Game Changer →
• Fitness Technology as Infrastructure with Al Noshirvani →

Is the mid-market gym living on borrowed time? At PerformX 2025, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal sat down with Dan Summerson, Managing Director of Everlast Gyms at Frasers Group, to take the question seriously. Everlast has been one of the more interesting operators to watch in recent years precisely because it occupies a space — large-format, brand-backed, hybrid in its programming and experience — that sits right at the fault line where the mid-market either reinvents itself or gets squeezed from both ends by budget disruptors and premium boutiques.

Summerson brings a clear-eyed account of what Everlast is building and why: a hybrid fitness model that integrates retail, appeals to younger demographics, takes wearables and data seriously, and deliberately aims to deliver a boutique quality of experience inside a big-box footprint. The conversation examines leadership approach, organizational culture, the impact of social media on member expectations, and what it means to stay innovative inside a large corporate structure.

What This Episode Covers

Dan Summerson is the Managing Director of Everlast Gyms, the fitness brand within the Frasers Group portfolio, and has led the company's transition toward a hybrid model that combines traditional gym access with retail integration, performance-oriented programming, and a deliberate focus on attracting and retaining younger members. Summerson's career trajectory through the fitness and retail sectors gives him a perspective that bridges the operational realities of big-box fitness with the consumer trend intelligence more typically associated with boutique operators.

Everlast Gyms' hybrid model is central to Summerson's conversation with Matthew and Mo: the idea that a large-format gym can compete not just on price and equipment range but on experience, community, and the kind of data-informed, socially shareable environment that younger fitness consumers increasingly expect. The integration of retail — in a Frasers Group context, that means proximity to brands like Sports Direct and an understanding of how sportswear and fitness culture intersect — is a differentiator that most mid-market operators cannot replicate.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly podcast co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, available at liftspodcast.com. The PerformX 2025 recording captures both hosts engaging with one of the industry's most thoughtful operators at a moment when the structural questions facing the mid-market are coming to a head.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• Summerson's career path to Everlast is discussed as context for the strategic choices he has made there: his background gives him a hybrid perspective that shapes how Everlast thinks about its market position — neither pure value nor pure premium, but a deliberate synthesis of elements from both.
• Everlast's hybrid fitness model is examined in detail, with Summerson describing how the integration of different training formats, retail presence, and member experience design allows the brand to compete for members who might otherwise choose either a discount gym or a specialist boutique.
• Economic model and retail integration are explored as a distinctive competitive advantage: Frasers Group's retail infrastructure creates opportunities for Everlast that standalone gym operators do not have, and Summerson explains how the company is thinking about that integration as a strategic asset rather than a distraction.
• The focus on younger demographics runs throughout the conversation, with Summerson discussing how Everlast is designing environments, programming, and digital touchpoints specifically to attract and retain the members who will determine the brand's trajectory over the next decade.
• Social media's impact on member expectations is addressed directly: younger members arrive with higher aesthetic and experience expectations, informed by the content they consume, and the episode examines how Everlast is responding to that demand through space design, equipment curation, and community programming.
• Wearables and data integration are discussed as an area of active investment for Everlast, with Summerson explaining how the brand is thinking about connecting member health data to the gym experience in ways that increase engagement and perceived value.
• Building a boutique experience inside a big-box gym is presented as the central design challenge Everlast is working through — with Summerson sharing both the wins and the honest difficulties of delivering premium-feeling experiences at large-format scale.

Why This Conversation Matters

The mid-market question matters because it is not just about a segment of the industry — it is about whether size and value can coexist with experience and community at scale. Matthew Januszek has spent his career building equipment that serves exactly the kinds of large-format and performance-oriented environments Everlast operates, and his conversation with Summerson reflects the practical curiosity of someone who understands what operators at that scale actually need.

For the LIFTS audience — which includes operators, investors, and industry professionals watching the competitive landscape reshape itself — Summerson's account of what Everlast is doing differently is one of the more honest operator conversations the show has hosted. The hybrid model he describes is not a theory; it is a live experiment in whether the mid-market gym can survive on its own terms.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Jeff Zwiefel →
• Ross Campbell →
• AI vs HI: The Future of Fitness →

Longevity has become one of the fitness industry's defining conversations, but few operators have moved from discussion to execution with the ambition of Life Time. At PerformX 2025, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal sat down with Jeff Zwiefel, Executive Director of MIORA Longevity & Performance at Life Time, to understand what it looks like to actually build a longevity program inside a large-scale fitness business — the philosophy behind it, the operational complexity of delivering it, and the pricing and staffing realities that most industry observers overlook.

MIORA is Life Time's integrated longevity and performance offering, representing the company's formal bet that healthspan — not just fitness — is what premium members will pay for in the coming decade. Zwiefel and the hosts explore everything from the evolution of personal trainer roles in a longevity context to the challenge of democratizing recovery services across different market segments without losing the premium experience that makes those services viable in the first place.

What This Episode Covers

Jeff Zwiefel serves as Executive Director of MIORA Longevity & Performance at Life Time — the longevity-focused program that sits within one of North America's largest and most vertically integrated fitness and wellness companies. MIORA represents Life Time's commitment to what the company describes as a 'healthy way of life' concept, moving beyond exercise to encompass biomarker testing, personalized programming, recovery modalities, and the kind of ongoing member relationship that more closely resembles a health partnership than a gym membership.

Zwiefel's operational experience is central to what makes this conversation valuable. He can speak not just to the vision of what longevity services should deliver but to the hard realities of scaling them: how to train and certify staff, how to price services in a way that sustains the program economically, how to manage premium pricing alongside the company's broader membership base, and where the early learnings from MIORA's rollout have forced the team to adapt.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly show co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, available at liftspodcast.com. The PerformX 2025 series brought the show into one of the industry's most important professional forums, and Zwiefel's conversation with Matthew and Mo represents exactly the kind of high-level operational candor that distinguishes LIFTS from more surface-level industry coverage.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• Longevity and healthspan have moved from niche wellness positioning to mainstream fitness industry strategy, with Life Time's MIORA program serving as a high-profile case study in what it takes to build a comprehensive longevity offering at scale inside a large fitness operation.
• Consumer empowerment in health is discussed as a driver of demand for longevity services — members are increasingly arriving with wearable data, biomarker awareness, and specific questions about how to extend their healthy years, which creates an opening for operators who can meet that sophistication with appropriate expertise.
• The evolution of personal trainer roles in a longevity context is examined, with Zwiefel discussing how MIORA integrates trainers into a broader team that may include health coaches, registered dietitians, and medical professionals — expanding the trainer's remit while changing how their work is structured and compensated.
• Life Time's 'healthy way of life' philosophy is explored as the conceptual foundation of MIORA: the idea that a fitness facility's job is not to sell workouts but to support a member's overall health trajectory, which requires a longer time horizon and a more holistic service design than traditional gym programming provides.
• Democratizing recovery and longevity services is identified as one of MIORA's stated challenges — Zwiefel discusses the tension between delivering premium, high-touch services at a price point that sustains quality and the desire to make these services accessible to a broader segment of the Life Time membership.
• Premium pricing for value-added services is addressed directly, with the episode examining how Life Time thinks about what members will pay for genuine health outcomes versus what they perceive as premium-for-premium's-sake, and the importance of demonstrating tangible results to justify the investment.
• Staffing and scaling recovery services emerge as one of the most practical challenges in the episode, with Zwiefel discussing the labor market realities of hiring people with the right combination of credentials, empathy, and technical skill to deliver longevity programming at the quality level MIORA requires.

Why This Conversation Matters

The longevity conversation is no longer a futurist talking point — it is a present-tense operational challenge for any fitness business that wants to serve the next decade of consumer demand. Matthew Januszek's work at Escape Fitness USA is informed by the same conviction that the most enduring fitness businesses will be those that position themselves as genuine health partners, not just exercise venues. Zwiefel's account of building MIORA gives that conviction concrete operational detail.

For LIFTS listeners — whether they run boutique studios, large clubs, or equipment-focused businesses — this episode offers a rare inside look at what one of the industry's most ambitious longevity programs actually required to build. The lessons in pricing, staffing, and member expectation management apply well beyond Life Time's specific scale and context.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Richard Boyd →
• Dan Summerson →
• The Aescape Collapse with Frank Britt →

At PerformX 2025, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal sat down with Richard Boyd, Director of Global Wellness Designs, to confront a question that is no longer hypothetical for the fitness industry: will artificial intelligence fundamentally change what personal trainers do, how they earn a living, and what members expect of them? Boyd brings a global design and consulting perspective that goes beyond the typical tech-optimism or tech-skepticism of these conversations — and the result is one of LIFTS's most substantive explorations of how human expertise and technological capability can coexist in a coaching relationship.

The episode covers the lasting behavioral shifts that COVID-19 accelerated in how people approach training, the growing challenge trainers face as clients arrive with more self-directed knowledge from social media, the evolving role of empathy and assessment in effective PT, and the real opportunity that GLP-1 medications create for coaches willing to specialize. It is a conversation built on nuance: neither a dismissal of technology's power nor a surrender of what is irreplaceable about skilled human coaching.

What This Episode Covers

Richard Boyd, Director of Global Wellness Designs, works at the intersection of facility design, fitness programming, and evolving wellness strategies for operators around the world. His career has given him a broad view of how personal training has changed across different markets, cultures, and business models — making him well suited to assess whether the current wave of AI-assisted coaching tools represents an enhancement of the profession or a genuine threat to its economic and professional foundations.

Boyd's perspective on trainer authority is particularly grounded in observation: he discusses how increased consumer access to information — through apps, influencers, YouTube, and now AI tools — has shifted the dynamic between trainer and client in ways that create both challenges and new opportunities. Trainers who adapt, he suggests, will find their roles expanding rather than contracting; those who don't will find themselves competing on territory where machines have a structural advantage.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly fitness industry podcast co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, published at liftspodcast.com. The show's PerformX 2025 recordings brought together some of the industry's most forward-looking voices, and Boyd's appearance sits at the center of what that series was designed to capture.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• COVID-19's disruption of the personal training industry created lasting shifts in how both trainers and clients approach fitness, with remote training, self-directed exercise, and digital tools all accelerating trends that were already underway before the pandemic.
• The rise of consumer-facing fitness content — from social media influencers to AI-powered apps — has changed the authority dynamic in the trainer-client relationship, with many clients now arriving at sessions with pre-formed opinions, specific requests, and information that challenges the trainer's traditional role as sole expert.
• Boyd and the hosts discuss how effective trainers are responding by doubling down on what technology cannot replicate: empathy, contextual judgment, emotional support, and the ability to read a client's physical and psychological state in real time.
• AI integration in program design is explored as a practical reality that is already shaping the profession, with the episode examining how trainers can use AI tools to improve efficiency and personalization rather than treating them as competitors to their professional value.
• Expanding PT roles and compensation models are discussed as the natural response to a changing market — with Boyd identifying a range of adjacent services, from wellness coaching to GLP-1 support programming, that position trainers for income growth rather than income compression.
• Social media and fitness influencers are examined not just as competitors to traditional PT but as forces that have expanded the overall market for fitness engagement — raising the challenge of how trained professionals differentiate their value from content creators who look authoritative but lack clinical depth.
• The GLP-1 moment is identified as a significant opportunity for personal trainers specifically: the episode makes the case that coaches who understand how to work with clients on these medications — including the muscle-preservation challenge — are positioned to command premium relationships and referrals from the healthcare system.

Why This Conversation Matters

The question at the center of this episode — whether AI will end personal training as we know it — matters because the answer shapes training business models, equipment investment, and facility design decisions across the entire industry. Matthew Januszek has spent decades building fitness products and programming that serve the trainer-client relationship; his perspective at Escape Fitness USA is grounded in the conviction that great equipment and environments make great coaching more possible, not less necessary.

Richard Boyd's answer, borne out through this conversation, is not that AI will replace trainers — it is that AI will accelerate a sorting process already underway, rewarding trainers who invest in the distinctly human dimensions of their craft. For LIFTS listeners building facilities, managing teams, or thinking about the next phase of their fitness business, that is exactly the kind of clarity the show was built to provide.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Bryan Myers →
• Jeff Zwiefel →
• The 2026 Fitness Industry Prediction Report →

Fresh off FIBO, Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal brought one of the fitness industry's most seasoned executives into the LIFTS studio: Bryan Myers, 2023 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Mid-Atlantic and President and CEO of [solidcore]. The conversation spans three major topics — the launch of HYROX365 and what it says about the evolution of functional fitness formats, the sweeping findings of The Global Wellness Economy Report, and a candid, respectful examination of the mental and emotional dimensions of weight and body image.

Myers brings both strategic depth and firsthand entrepreneurial experience to each thread. The episode reflects on what post-FIBO momentum looks like for the industry, examines the wellness economy's extraordinary growth trajectory, and takes seriously the complex personal and societal dynamics that shape how people relate to their bodies — including the challenges of parenting healthy habits in a modern media environment.

What This Episode Covers

Bryan Myers is the President and CEO of [solidcore], the low-impact, high-intensity Pilates-based studio brand, and was recognized as the 2023 EY Entrepreneur of the Year for the Mid-Atlantic region — a distinction that reflects both the growth he has driven at [solidcore] and his standing among peers as a strategic operator. His career spans senior leadership roles across the fitness and wellness sectors, giving him a panoramic view of how business models, consumer behavior, and cultural forces interact to shape the industry.

Myers's perspective on the wellness economy is shaped by his direct experience scaling a premium boutique concept in a competitive and rapidly evolving landscape. When The Global Wellness Economy Report documents the scale and momentum of health and wellness spending globally, Myers can translate those macro numbers into the day-to-day realities of building a business in that environment — which is exactly what makes his contributions to this episode substantive rather than abstract.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly fitness industry show co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, available at liftspodcast.com. The show routinely brings operator-level perspective to the stories shaping the industry, and Bryan Myers's appearance is a strong example of the caliber of leaders Matthew and Mo convene.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• FIBO's continued growth as an international trade show is discussed as a marker of the industry's global confidence, with Myers and the hosts reflecting on what the post-FIBO period reveals about where energy and investment are concentrating.
• The launch of HYROX365 — which expands the HYROX brand from a racing format into a year-round training experience — is examined as a significant strategic move, illustrating how event-based fitness concepts can build ongoing community and commercial infrastructure rather than relying solely on episodic competition.
• Findings from The Global Wellness Economy Report are explored in the context of how the overall scale of wellness spending creates structural tailwinds for fitness operators positioned at the intersection of health, performance, and lifestyle.
• US healthcare spending and outcomes are discussed as a backdrop to the wellness industry's growth, with the conversation examining why the gap between what America spends on healthcare and what it achieves in population health outcomes creates both an urgency and an opportunity for preventive fitness and wellness providers.
• The episode addresses the mental and emotional dimensions of weight and body image with care and directness, drawing on the perspectives of all three participants to examine the genuine complexity of how people experience their bodies — separate from the simplifications that often dominate media coverage of these topics.
• The challenges of parenting healthy lifestyles in a modern media and social environment are discussed honestly, with Myers contributing personal perspective alongside industry observation about how culture shapes children's relationship with physical activity and self-image.
• The conversation closes with a broader look at wellness, consciousness, and the personal and generational investment in health — framing the fitness industry's growth not just as a market story but as a societal one about how people are choosing to live.

Why This Conversation Matters

For Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal, this episode does what LIFTS does best: it uses the industry's current headlines — HYROX365, the Wellness Economy Report, the post-FIBO mood — as entry points into larger questions about where fitness is going and what operators need to understand to stay ahead. Bryan Myers's combination of strategic experience and personal candor makes these conversations feel grounded rather than theoretical.

The body image section of this episode deserves particular note: Matthew and Mo handle a genuinely sensitive topic with the seriousness it warrants, centering the psychological complexity of the issue and the responsibility that fitness brands carry in how they communicate with and about the people they serve. It is the kind of conversation that reflects well on LIFTS as a show — and on the standard that Escape Fitness USA brings to industry dialogue.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• Lise Kuecker →
• Richard Boyd →
• How YouTube Is Reshaping Fitness with David Sherman-Presser →

When Costco announced it would begin offering GLP-1 prescriptions to its members, the fitness industry had to reckon with a new question: what happens when mainstream retail beats healthcare to the weight-loss medication conversation? Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal tackled that question head-on in this episode of LIFTS, joined by Lise Kuecker — serial entrepreneur, public speaker, and founder of the boutique fitness consultancy Studio Grow — for a wide-ranging look at the trends reshaping both the gym floor and the business of fitness.

Beyond GLP-1s, the conversation moves through the merger of Orangetheory and Self Esteem Brands (parent of Anytime Fitness), the strategic calculus of franchise expansion, Technogym's impressive 2023 financial performance, and a compelling argument for the commercial opportunity hiding in plain sight: the resale market for used fitness equipment. The episode also zooms out to ask whether the hardware-centric model of fitness equipment companies needs to evolve into something service-led.

What This Episode Covers

Lise Kuecker is the founder of Studio Grow, an international consultancy that has worked with boutique fitness operators across multiple continents on everything from launch strategy to retention and scaling. Her reputation in the industry rests on a combination of hands-on studio-building experience and a systems-oriented approach to business development — making her an authoritative voice when the conversation turns to franchise models, consumer behavior, and the strategic decisions that separate thriving boutique operators from struggling ones.

Kuecker's perspective on GLP-1 medications is grounded in what they mean for boutique fitness specifically: she brings the consultancy lens, asking not just what these drugs do to the body but what they do to gym attendance patterns, programming demand, and the kinds of coaching relationships that members on medication will increasingly seek out. Her practical orientation distinguishes this discussion from more theoretical industry commentary.

LIFTS — the Latest Industry Fitness Trends and Stories — is the weekly show co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks, available at liftspodcast.com. The show is designed to give fitness professionals a fast, well-sourced read on the stories that matter, and Kuecker's appearance exemplifies the caliber of practitioner the hosts bring to those conversations.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• Costco's entry into GLP-1 prescriptions represents a significant mainstreaming moment for weight-loss medications, raising immediate questions for gym operators about how to serve a growing segment of members who are using these drugs as part of their health journey.
• The episode explores evidence that exercise can meaningfully reduce the side effects associated with GLP-1 use, reinforcing the argument that fitness facilities are well positioned to become valued partners — rather than competitors — to the GLP-1 treatment pathway.
• The merger of Orangetheory and Self Esteem Brands (the parent group behind Anytime Fitness) is discussed as a landmark consolidation move, with the hosts and Kuecker examining what large-scale franchise mergers signal about where the industry's power and scale are concentrating.
• Franchise expansion strategies come under scrutiny, with the conversation looking at the conditions under which boutique and mid-market brands can grow successfully without diluting the member experience that made them worth scaling in the first place.
• Technogym's strong 2023 financial performance is highlighted as evidence that premium fitness equipment continues to command real market demand, and the discussion draws out what operators can learn from the company's positioning.
• A substantial part of the episode focuses on the used equipment resale market as an underappreciated commercial opportunity — one that benefits both operators looking to monetize outgoing kit and buyers seeking quality equipment at accessible price points.
• The hosts and Kuecker examine whether the traditional hardware-led model for fitness equipment companies is sustainable, or whether the real value in the next chapter lies in transitioning toward service, software, and ongoing operator relationships.

Why This Conversation Matters

This episode captures a particular inflection point in the fitness industry: the moment GLP-1 medications moved from specialist conversation to mainstream consumer product. For Matthew Januszek — whose work with Escape Fitness USA focuses on how fitness facilities can remain essential in a rapidly changing health landscape — Kuecker's practical, consultancy-level perspective on how boutique operators adapt is exactly the kind of intelligence LIFTS was built to deliver.

The Costco GLP-1 story, the Orangetheory merger, and the used-equipment opportunity are three very different headlines, but they share a common thread: the industry's center of gravity is shifting, and the operators, brands, and equipment companies best positioned for the next decade are the ones paying attention to all of it at once.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

Related Episodes & Interviews

• The ClassPass Debate →
• Bryan Myers →
• Why Humans Age with Dr. Bill Andrews →

ClassPass has been one of the most argued-about forces in boutique fitness for years — praised by some operators as a customer acquisition engine and criticized by others as a discount treadmill that erodes pricing power and brands the studios who rely on it as secondary options. Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal decided to host the argument directly, bringing in two informed and opposing voices for a structured debate on the LIFTS Podcast, moderated by Jack Thomas of Fitness Business Asia.

Jeff Bladt, who has worked inside ClassPass (now operating under the Playlist name), and Rachel Hirsch, studio owner and founder of Wellness Growth Ventures and The 2% Club, each bring real operational experience to the question. The episode doesn't resolve the debate — it probably can't — but it gives studio owners a far clearer picture of what the data shows, what the risks look like in practice, and what strategies reduce overexposure to any single aggregator platform.

What This Episode Covers

Jeff Bladt brings an insider's perspective on ClassPass: its origin story, how it has shaped consumer behavior in fitness, and the revenue data that supports the case for operators using the platform as a growth lever. His argument centers on ClassPass as a discovery engine — a way for boutique studios to reach consumers who would otherwise never find them, and a platform that has consistently driven new-to-category participation in fitness.

Rachel Hirsch's perspective comes from the studio owner's seat, and it is more cautionary. As founder of Wellness Growth Ventures and The 2% Club, she works closely with boutique fitness operators — including many who are women-led — and she has seen firsthand how over-reliance on ClassPass can compress margins, weaken direct booking habits, and leave studios exposed when platform terms change. Her argument isn't that ClassPass is always harmful; it's that dependency is the risk, and that too many studio owners treat ClassPass revenue as a foundation rather than a supplement. Jack Thomas of Fitness Business Asia joined as a guest co-host to moderate the exchange, bringing an Asia-Pacific market perspective to a debate that is largely framed around North American dynamics.

LIFTS is the weekly fitness-industry podcast hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks (https://www.liftspodcast.com/). The decision to run a debate format reflects the show's commitment to honest industry conversation rather than consensus-building, and it connects to Matthew Januszek's broader focus through Escape Fitness USA on helping operators build businesses with durable economics — not just strong top-line numbers driven by third-party platforms.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• The origin and evolution of ClassPass is traced from its founding premise — making fitness accessible through a flexible subscription — through its impact on consumer expectations around pricing, variety, and commitment.
• ClassPass is compared to aggregators in travel, dining, and delivery to examine whether the dynamics that have shaped those industries — and the operator relationships within them — offer any predictive insight for fitness.
• Free trials and discounting are debated directly: Hirsch argues that ClassPass pricing power erodes studios' ability to charge full rates to direct members, while Bladt presents revenue data showing studios that use the platform strategically see net positive outcomes.
• The 'discovery engine' argument is one of the strongest in Bladt's case: for studios in crowded urban markets, ClassPass exposure to users who would otherwise never book a class directly represents real marketing value that is difficult to replicate cheaply.
• Hirsch's counter-case focuses on behavioral habituation: ClassPass members who discover a studio through the platform often continue booking through ClassPass rather than converting to direct members, which limits the studio's ability to build its own relationship with those clients.
• Women-led boutique studios are examined as a specific category where ClassPass dependency patterns may create particular risk, with Hirsch drawing on her work with The 2% Club community to illustrate the dynamics.
• Strategies to avoid over-reliance on ClassPass are discussed practically — from capping platform availability to creating direct-booking incentives to using ClassPass as a deliberate acquisition channel rather than a revenue base.
• The episode ends with a shared call from both sides for better collaboration between aggregators and studios: the industry-wide goal of growing participation is better served by partnership models that protect studio economics than by a dynamic where operators feel forced to choose between visibility and margin.

Why This Conversation Matters

The ClassPass debate is a proxy for a larger question every boutique fitness operator faces: how much of your business should run through platforms you don't control? The aggregator dynamic in fitness mirrors what has happened in hospitality, food delivery, and media — and the operators who build resilient businesses in those categories are the ones who use platforms intentionally rather than drifting into dependency. This episode makes that lesson concrete with real data and real operator voices.

Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal bring exactly the right perspective to moderate this kind of debate through LIFTS: neither cheerleaders for any platform nor reflexively skeptical of technology's role in growing the fitness market. The goal is helping operators make informed decisions — and this episode delivers that more directly than almost any other format could.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

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• Rami Alhamad →
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Rami Alhamad has built two companies at the frontier of fitness technology — first PUSH, the pioneering strength-tracking wearable that was later acquired by WHOOP, and now Alma, an AI-powered nutrition companion taking on one of the most persistent unsolved problems in health: getting people to actually track what they eat. Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal invited Alhamad onto the LIFTS Podcast to trace that journey and extract the lessons that apply broadly to anyone building in fitness tech.

The conversation moves from the founding of PUSH and the decision to sell to WHOOP through to the pivot to AI and nutrition with Alma, covering persistence, startup timing, decision-making frameworks, and what it looks like to compete in a market where ChatGPT is your main rival. Alhamad's story is as much about the craft of building companies as it is about any specific product — and that's what makes this episode worth an hour.

What This Episode Covers

Rami Alhamad describes himself as an entrepreneur and engineer, and both identities show up in his work. PUSH was a strength-tracking wearable that brought barbell velocity measurement — previously a tool only elite sports programs could afford — into commercial fitness. Its acquisition by WHOOP validated both the product and the market thesis, and gave Alhamad a ringside view of how one of the fitness industry's fastest-growing tech companies operates.

Alma is Alhamad's current venture: an AI-powered nutrition companion designed to make food tracking frictionless enough that people will actually do it. The challenge he's addressing is well-documented — nutrition tracking has enormous impact on health outcomes but notoriously poor adherence, because manually logging food is tedious and imprecise. Alma's approach involves voice logging and AI interpretation to lower the barrier while maintaining the data quality that makes tracking useful. Alhamad is candid about what he sees as his real competitive challenge: not other nutrition apps, but ChatGPT and general-purpose AI that people are already using to answer food questions.

LIFTS is the weekly fitness-industry show hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks (https://www.liftspodcast.com/). Alhamad's story spans both hardware and software, strength and nutrition, early startup and post-acquisition — making it a particularly rich conversation for the fitness professionals and entrepreneurs who make up the LIFTS audience. Matthew Januszek's own experience building Escape Fitness into a global equipment brand gives him real common ground with Alhamad's builder perspective.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• Persistence is identified as a founder's core advantage: Alhamad reflects on how the ability to stay committed through the extended timeline of hardware development — longer and harder than most software founders anticipate — was the decisive factor in PUSH's success.
• Timing in startups is examined with real specificity: PUSH was early to strength-tracking wearables, and Alhamad shares his framework for deciding when being early is an asset and when it's a liability that should change the strategy.
• The decision to sell PUSH to WHOOP is discussed as a strategic choice with clear reasoning — and Alhamad shares what he learned about when selling a startup is the right move versus when it leaves value on the table.
• The pivot from hardware to AI-powered nutrition with Alma is traced through the logic of where Alhamad saw the next genuine unsolved problem: strength tracking was becoming commoditized, but nutrition adherence remained as hard as ever.
• ChatGPT is framed as Alma's real competitor — not other nutrition apps — because consumers are already turning to general-purpose AI for food and health questions, meaning Alma must deliver a meaningfully better experience to earn dedicated use.
• Voice logging is highlighted as a key design choice in Alma's approach to nutrition tracking: the premise is that reducing the friction of data entry is the most important variable for long-term adherence, more important than feature depth.
• Branding and offline communities are discussed as underappreciated forces in fitness technology adoption, with Alhamad pointing to Nike as an example of a brand that has consistently used community and identity to drive behavior change in ways that pure product quality cannot.
• Generational shifts in technology adoption are examined in the context of fitness: younger consumers' relationship with AI, data, and health tracking is meaningfully different from older cohorts, and building products that span those differences requires intentional design choices.

Why This Conversation Matters

Rami Alhamad's career is a case study in what it looks like to build at the frontier of fitness technology across two distinct product categories. His experience with PUSH and Alma covers hardware, software, acquisition, and the challenge of competing with general-purpose AI — a range that makes his perspective unusually relevant for anyone thinking about where fitness tech is headed and what it actually takes to build something durable in the category.

Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal built the LIFTS Podcast to surface exactly these kinds of builder conversations: not just industry trend coverage, but the decision-making frameworks and lessons learned that help practitioners and entrepreneurs make better moves. Alhamad delivers on that promise — and his work on AI nutrition tracking connects directly to the data and personalization themes that Matthew explores through Escape Fitness USA's focus on the next chapter of fitness.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

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• Marco Benitez →
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Your smartwatch might already know more about your health than your doctor. That's not a provocation — it's a working hypothesis that Marco Benitez, co-founder and CEO of ROOK, brings to this episode of the LIFTS Podcast. Matthew Januszek and Mohammed (Mo) Iqbal sit down with Benitez — a former Taekwondo champion turned biomedical engineer — to map out how wearables from Apple, Samsung, Oura, WHOOP, and others are reshaping the way fitness professionals, clinicians, and consumers understand health.

The conversation covers the competitive landscape across wearable platforms, what FDA approval for consumer devices actually means, how coaches can turn wearable data into better client outcomes, and where the category is heading as implants and continuous monitoring push the frontier further. At the center of it all is the challenge Benitez built ROOK to solve: the data exists, but making sense of it across fragmented platforms requires a middleware layer that most fitness operators don't know they need.

What This Episode Covers

Marco Benitez's path to building ROOK — from competitive Taekwondo to biomedical engineering to health tech — gives him an unusual vantage point on the fitness-to-healthcare convergence. ROOK is a health technology company focused on transforming wearable data into actionable health insights, functioning as a platform layer that normalizes and interprets data from devices across Apple, Samsung, WHOOP, Oura, and other ecosystems. Benitez describes ROOK's role as middleware: connecting the data that already exists into a form that coaches, gyms, and healthcare providers can actually use.

In this episode, Benitez addresses one of the most practically important questions in the wearables conversation: accuracy versus trends. Individual data points from consumer wearables carry error margins, but the longitudinal trend data — HRV patterns, recovery scores, activity consistency — can be deeply meaningful when interpreted correctly. He also discusses HRV tracking specifically, examining how Apple Watch, WHOOP, and Oura differ in their methodology and what that means for practitioners using these metrics to guide training decisions.

LIFTS is the weekly fitness-industry show co-hosted by Matthew Januszek and Mo Iqbal of SweatWorks (https://www.liftspodcast.com/). This conversation extends a recurring LIFTS theme — the convergence of fitness, wellness, and healthcare — into its most data-driven form yet, and it connects directly to Matthew Januszek's interest through Escape Fitness USA in how operators can build smarter, more outcome-oriented fitness environments.

Key Moments from the Conversation

• Benitez argues that consumer wearables have already crossed a meaningful threshold of health relevance — the question for fitness professionals is no longer whether to use wearable data, but how to interpret it responsibly.
• Apple, Samsung, and Oura are compared across their health data capabilities, with Benitez offering a practitioner's view of what each platform does well and where each falls short for professional-grade health monitoring.
• HRV tracking is examined in depth: different wearables use different methodologies to calculate heart rate variability, which means practitioners need to understand the measurement approach behind the metric they're relying on.
• The accuracy versus trends distinction is important for anyone using wearable data professionally — individual data points carry error margins, but pattern data over time carries genuine predictive and diagnostic value.
• The future of wearables extends beyond the wrist: Benitez discusses implants, rings, and continuous monitoring devices as the next frontier, pointing toward a health monitoring ecosystem that becomes increasingly passive and ambient.
• Fitness coaches and gym operators are identified as having a real, practical pathway to using wearable data to improve client outcomes — the barrier isn't the data itself but the infrastructure to normalize and act on it across platforms.
• The Apple Watch is examined as a public health tool at scale, with Benitez pointing to its broad consumer adoption as a factor that makes it uniquely positioned to generate population-level health insights regardless of its limitations in clinical precision.
• ROOK's vision is framed as wearables becoming the next class of medical device — not replacing clinical tools, but occupying a genuine monitoring and early-detection role that bridges the gap between fitness tracking and healthcare intervention.

Why This Conversation Matters

The fitness industry has been talking about data and personalization for years, but the wearables conversation is now mature enough that operators face real decisions about which platforms to support, what data to surface to members, and how to train staff to use health metrics responsibly. Marco Benitez and ROOK are building the infrastructure layer that makes those decisions actionable — and this LIFTS episode gives practitioners a clearer map of the landscape than most.

For Matthew Januszek and Escape Fitness USA, the wearables conversation intersects with the broader question of what a modern fitness facility actually provides: not just equipment and programming, but a data-informed environment where members can understand their own health trajectories and trainers have the tools to guide them effectively. That's the vision this episode makes concrete.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

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