Health clubs and home gym equipment companies have always operated as separate, even competing, businesses. 



In one model, you provide access to space and equipment for your customers. In the other model, you provide equipment for your customer's space.



Unfortunately, no fitness company to date has built a business that offers both. 



I felt this was an opportunity while working at my previous company. I even floated the idea described below by a few people at the time. Today, I feel confident that this is how to capitalize on the current social and economic environment and stand apart from all other membership-based fitness companies.





2020 Was a Wake-Up Call



This past year should be a wake-up call for health club operators around the world. National and local governments could close your business at any time, for as long as they can (un)reasonably justify.



Almost all health clubs lost money. Some closed completely. Thousands of fitness professionals found themselves on unemployment. 



That’s not to say fitness was the only industry rocked by lockdowns. The lockdowns hurt many other businesses as well. Local and state governments are unnecessarily handcuffing some still today.



With fitness, though, there’s a certain irony. To protect yourself from COVID-19 and almost any other disease or infection, you need to be healthy. The best way to get healthy is to follow a well-designed fitness program, which you can do at a gym or health club.



Instead of promoting how to build a strong immune system and get healthy and fit, public health "experts" and politicians have only focused on wearing masks and getting vaccines. That nonsense probably won’t change.



As a result, millions of health club members floundered at home with bands, bodyweight movements, and pastel-colored dumbbells. You can only get results for so long with such a limited amount of equipment.



An opportunity has long-existed for the top health club operators to help people get fit at home like they do in their gyms.



A Better Model: The In-Club At-Home (ICAH) Fitness Business



For simplicity, I called this the In-Club At-Home Fitness Business. For more simplicity, I refer to it as ICAH, where appropriate.



A couple of notes before continuing:



Suppose I pitched this concept as a corporate employee or looking for funding from an investment group. In that case, I'd include a plethora of financial data and other stats as part of an official business plan. However, you only need to use common sense to understand the reality of the current problems, opportunities, and value of merging in-club and in-home fitness.



Though any company with enough funding could build an ICAH fitness business, I believe existing health club operators have a few distinct advantages:



Existing membership, canceled membership, and prospective membership audienceExisting equipment manufacturing relationshipsSales and marketing teams that understand the consumers’ mindsetsA local footprint to begin promoting the new part of their business



The ICAH business model combines:



In-home equipment sales and leasing. For a health club to remain consistent with its exercise/training philosophies when guiding people in-club or at-home, it must provide a means for people to use similar equipment in either location. You can’t tell members that deadlifts and back squats are essential when they have access to the gym, and then tell them lunges and picking up grocery bags is good enough when they train at home.Access to online or app-based training programs. Numerous online training platforms already exist. If a company were to build their own platform, I wouldn’t expect it would be “cutting edge,” so it might be better to merge with an existing platform that allows trainers to work with multiple members and members or clients to get individualized programming or to participate as part of a group or team of people with similar goals.