Matthew Januszek and co-host Emma Barry take the Escape Your Limits Podcast to the floor of the IHRSA 2023 Tradeshow, where Escape Fitness was among the exhibitors and where the broader industry gathered to show off new products, share ideas, and take the pulse of where fitness is heading. The event offered featured speakers from a wide range of industries, inviting fitness professionals to discover parallels and innovations across a broad spectrum of expertise.
In this first of multiple IHRSA 2023 episodes, Matthew and Emma move across the tradeshow floor, stopping to speak with the CEOs, founders, and senior executives behind some of the industry's most recognized brands — covering everything from connected fitness technology to recovery, cycling, and the mobile fitness concepts redefining where workouts can happen.
About IHRSA 2023
IHRSA — the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association — hosts one of the fitness industry's premier annual trade events, drawing thousands of professionals from across the globe to explore new equipment, technology, programming, and business strategies. The 2023 edition was notable for the breadth of innovation on display, from established equipment manufacturers to emerging fitness technology startups.
The IHRSA Tradeshow functions as both a commercial marketplace and an ideas forum, giving operators and suppliers a shared space to test concepts, build relationships, and identify the trends that will shape their businesses in the year ahead. For brands like Escape Fitness, showing up at IHRSA is both a sales and a research exercise — a chance to see what the market is responding to in real time.
The voices featured in this episode include the President and CEO of IHRSA, Liz Clark; the Chief Commercial Officer of Life Fitness, Frank Van De Ven; the CEO of Precor, Dustin Grosz; the CEO USA of Technogym, Kay Oswald; the Senior Director of Business Development of Hyperice, Star Sage; the President and CEO of JK Products and Services, Brynn Scarborough; the Owner and CEO of Soulbody, Stacey Seward Vandiver; the CEO of Total Gym, Jesse Campanero; the Founder and CEO of Myzone, Dave Wright; and the Co-Founder of Fit Truk, Hailee Bland Walsh.
Key Insights from the Conversation
- The IHRSA 2023 Tradeshow reflected an industry that has moved past pandemic-era uncertainty and is now actively investing in new equipment, technology, and concepts — a signal of renewed commercial confidence.
- Connected fitness technology, represented at the show by brands including Myzone, continues to evolve from a novelty into a core infrastructure layer for both commercial gym operators and home users.
- Recovery is becoming a product category in its own right, with Hyperice and others demonstrating that operators who invest in recovery offerings can meaningfully differentiate their member experience.
- Traditional equipment manufacturers like Life Fitness, Precor, and Technogym are adapting to a market that now expects seamless integration between hardware and software — and their senior leaders described how that pivot is playing out.
- Mobile and non-traditional fitness formats — including Fit Truk's trailer-based concept — represent a growing segment of operators willing to bring fitness to where people are rather than waiting for them to walk through a gym door.
- Consumer trends are shifting across both the commercial and home equipment markets, with executives at the show describing how purchasing behavior has changed since the pandemic peak.
- The diversity of business models on display at IHRSA 2023 — from large equipment companies to boutique cycling studios to mobile fitness providers — underscores how fragmented and innovative the fitness industry has become.
Why This Conversation Matters
For Matthew Januszek, IHRSA is personal — Escape Fitness has a long history at the show, and walking its floor is a practical way to take the temperature of the market he has spent his career building for. The conversations he and Emma had at IHRSA 2023 captured an industry in genuine motion, investing in new ideas and new formats.
Those observations continue to inform how Matthew approaches his work at Escape Fitness USA and shapes the conversations he brings to the LIFTS Podcast. Knowing what the major players are prioritizing — and where the emerging disruptors are placing their bets — is exactly the kind of intelligence that keeps a founder thinking clearly about where to focus next.
▶ 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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