Matthew Januszek traveled to Los Angeles for Les Mills Live 2023 — the ultimate training festival — and this episode of Escape Your Limits captures a series of expert conversations from the show floor. Les Mills Live returned with a combination of performance, innovation, and community that made it one of the year's defining events for fitness professionals, and Matthew used the occasion to speak with some of the industry's most forward-thinking voices about where the market is heading.
The conversations in this episode cover a wide range of themes: how fitness brands maintain relevance as demographics shift, the role of AI in improving the training experience, and the particular challenge of attracting and retaining Gen Z members. Across several expert exchanges, a clear picture emerges of an industry in transition — and the strategic bets that leading operators and brands are placing on that transition.
About Les Mills Live 2023
Les Mills Live 2023 was staged in Los Angeles and brought together the global Les Mills community — instructors, presenters, program directors, and industry leaders — for what the brand describes as the ultimate training festival. The event's emphasis on the newest innovations and the next generation of trainers gave it a distinctly forward-looking energy, making it a natural fit for the Escape Your Limits audience.
Leaders from across the Les Mills organization contributed perspectives on how the brand is using AI to improve the experience of movers — both in-club and through digital channels. The distinction between measuring intrinsic and extrinsic behavioral drivers emerged as a theme, reflecting how data-informed programming is becoming more sophisticated.
Across the conversations, recurring topics included the importance of mental health as a fitness industry priority, the need for operators to listen to their members rather than assume they understand them, and the commercial opportunity in building a holistic, well-rounded offer that goes beyond traditional exercise programming.
What Les Mills Live 2023 and Matthew Januszek Talked About
- Maintaining relevance in a changing market was a central theme across the conversations at Les Mills Live 2023, with multiple experts emphasizing that what worked for previous generations of gym members will not automatically translate to Gen Z.
- Les Mills is actively using AI to improve the mover experience — both by personalizing content delivery and by measuring the intrinsic and extrinsic behavioral signals that indicate genuine engagement and retention.
- Understanding what makes each generation tick was framed not as a marketing exercise but as a fundamental operational requirement: clubs that fail to genuinely understand their members' motivations will struggle to design programming that holds attention over time.
- The importance of dialogue and listening — hearing directly from members rather than relying on assumptions — emerged as a core operating principle endorsed by multiple speakers across the event.
- Mental health was positioned as a non-negotiable area of focus for fitness brands, with several contributors arguing that the industry's credibility depends on its willingness to address psychological wellbeing alongside physical performance.
- Core values around healthy people and a healthy planet were woven through the conversation — reflecting an organizational commitment to framing fitness as a contribution to broader societal health, not just individual improvement.
- The concept of a holistic, well-rounded fitness offer — one that supports consumers across their entire wellbeing journey rather than just during workout sessions — was identified as both the right thing to do and a genuine commercial opportunity.
Why This Conversation Matters
Les Mills is one of the most influential organizations in global group fitness, and what they are investing in at their flagship annual event is a reliable indicator of where the industry is heading. For Matthew Januszek and the team at Escape Fitness USA, the conversations at Les Mills Live 2023 are directly relevant to how equipment is designed, how facilities are laid out, and what operators need from their suppliers to serve a changing member base.
The Gen Z question — how to attract and retain the next generation of gym members — is one of the most commercially consequential challenges in fitness right now, and it intersects directly with the technology and programming debates that the LIFTS Podcast covers each week. Episodes like this one from Escape Your Limits provide the deeper context that makes those news-cycle conversations more meaningful.
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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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