Matthew Januszek and Mohammed Iqbal of LIFTS Podcast sit down with Will Brereton — longtime group fitness leader, Les Mills presenter, and founder of SH1FT Fitness — for a candid look at how group exercise has transformed across decades and what the model needs to become to stay relevant for the next generation of members.
From the historical eras of group fitness to the rise of a new hybrid community era, this conversation draws on Will's frontline experience across New Zealand, the UK, Europe, and the US to explain the shifts that club operators, instructors, and boutique owners most need to understand right now.
What This Episode Covers
Will Brereton has spent his career at the center of group fitness — as a Les Mills presenter, a club operator, and ultimately as the founder of SH1FT Fitness, a platform built around the belief that group exercise's future lies in hybrid community rather than broadcast performance.
His experience spans multiple continents and decades, giving him a perspective on group fitness that cuts across regional trends and market cycles. He has witnessed the rise and fade of rock-star instructor culture, the pandemic's role as the industry's biggest inflection point, and the emergence of Gen Z as a generation choosing the gym as a primary social environment.
SH1FT Fitness reflects Will's conviction that meaningful instructor-member interaction — not spectacle, not scale — is the real engine of retention. His work examines how technology, certification, and community design can be realigned to serve what members actually need from a group fitness experience.
Key Moments from the Conversation
- Will Brereton mapped the historical eras of group fitness and introduced a new hybrid community era — characterized by a shift from instructor-as-performer to community-as-product.
- The pandemic was identified as the industry's single biggest inflection point, accelerating changes in member expectations, digital integration, and the role of physical space that had been building for years.
- Gen Z is choosing the gym as a social hub rather than a nightclub — a behavioral shift the episode frames as one of the most significant opportunities in group fitness's recent history.
- Meaningful instructor-member interaction was shown to drive substantially higher retention, making the quality of human connection inside group fitness classes a measurable business lever rather than a soft aspiration.
- The instructor shortage and the ways technology is beginning to fill that gap were discussed practically, with Will addressing what skills and qualities operators should prioritize when building their instructor pipelines.
- The changing role of certifications was examined critically — with the conversation exploring the gap between what credentialing programs teach and what members actually respond to inside a class.
- The episode addressed where Pilates, strength training, and boutique programming are heading within the group fitness context, identifying the programming combinations that are showing the strongest retention and growth signals.
- Large-scale rock-star classes were discussed honestly, with Will explaining what has replaced them and why the shift reflects something deeper about how people want to experience fitness together.
Why This Conversation Matters
Group fitness remains one of the most powerful retention tools available to gym operators — but only when the experience is designed around genuine community rather than performance. Will Brereton's frameworks give operators a practical vocabulary for diagnosing what their group fitness programming is and is not delivering.
For Matthew Januszek and Escape Fitness USA, the evolution of group fitness is directly relevant to how equipment is designed and how facilities are laid out. The shift toward hybrid community experiences, the rise of strength-based programming, and the retention premium of meaningful human connection all shape what the best fitness environments need to be able to support.
▶ 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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