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GHP 088 - The rise of wellness clubs
52 Plays3 days ago
An adaptation of a recent presentation I made at the Health & Fitness Association (HFA) Congress in Amsterdam, Netherlands focusing on the rise of 'wellness clubs'. I cover the key components of this new generation of health clubs, from contrast bathing to experiential saunas, add-on leisure facilities, hybrid training zones, outdoor gyms and diagnostics (the gym-as-clinic).
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 88
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to episode 88 of the Green Healthy Places podcast, in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and in our buildings and interior environments.
00:00:17
Speaker
This time around,
Future Fitness Space Design
00:00:19
Speaker
it's a bit different. I'm going to take you through a presentation or one section of a presentation that I made recently at the Health and Fitness Congress, Health and Fitness Association Congress in Amsterdam. in the Netherlands and that was a presentation really focused on the future of designing fitness spaces.
Evolution to Wellness Clubs
00:00:41
Speaker
In particular, i was interested in the concept of wellness clubs and how the briefs that I'm receiving from clients are moving always more in that direction towards real sort of 360 degree holistic health club concepts, or as they're being called now, wellness clubs, and in some cases, social wellness clubs.
00:01:04
Speaker
So I will give you a brief insight into that. Anyone who's interested can find the video version of this as well online. So I'll do my best to describe what we're looking at.
Features of Wellness Clubs
00:01:17
Speaker
But the idea, first and foremost, that There are a number of new pieces, facilities going into these spaces, right? So it's things like contrast bathing, experiential saunas, what I'll call like inclusive or non-inclusive design depending on where the club is located.
00:01:38
Speaker
There's a piece around diagnostics and health span, then recovery zones. hybrid training, outdoor gyms, and then wider leisure facilities that have arguably a particular focus for Generation Z. So what is this contrast bathing
Contrast Bathing Explained
00:02:00
Speaker
that's going on? Well, it it can range from anything in a small scale wellness club or even a private residency where you've got a ice tub or a cold plunge
00:02:14
Speaker
right next door to your traditional Finnish sauna, so inbuilt sauna and or an infrared sauna. Those two things going together typically gives you the basis for a contrast bathing scenario.
00:02:28
Speaker
If you were to go scale up from that, from the sort of private residence piece, you go into something, say like a co-living development. You then have perhaps a semi-private shower, cold tub and sauna zone somewhere that perhaps could be booked out and reserved.
00:02:45
Speaker
I did one recently for a client in the UK, it was a student co-living, of a luxury student co-living space. They didn't have a lot of space so we created something that could yeah be booked, reserved by groups of friends.
00:02:58
Speaker
They could go in and have access to a relatively small cold plunge, so like a vertical tub rather than a horizontal bathtub vibe. a A modestly sized sauna and obviously shower and we put in a nice bucket in there as well.
00:03:14
Speaker
You need to shower with these things because you're constantly moving, rotating between the hot, the cold and the chill out zone. So when I'm designing them, i'm always thinking about Not just the time you spend in the cold or in the heat, but also a space that's the in-between zone where you can just chill out, literally kind of let your body temperature regulate back down to something close to normal and then constantly showering as you're moving between those spaces. So those are the the sort of core components of a contrast bathing experience.
00:03:45
Speaker
You might do that for say 30 minutes overall or an hour, and that will give you the full full experience.
Cultural Influences on Design
00:03:53
Speaker
When we're designing it for an actual full-scale wellness club, so let's call it like you know the health club of old, now rebranded as a wellness club.
00:04:04
Speaker
Typically, you would either have separate male and female bathing zones where you basically have to repeat them. So the same concept, same facilities twice.
00:04:14
Speaker
We're doing that at the moment for a client. in Saudi Arabia, where cultural norms dictate that that is the only way that it can be. But if you are in, say, Marbella in the south of Spain, also doing another project, then could have male and female contrast bathing zones combined. and You might expand the overall footprint of that one zone to accommodate that.
00:04:37
Speaker
But again, same principal components. Cold plunges. That can be a cold plunge and an ice bath. only real difference is the temperature. We're typically thinking about something like say 3, 6 and 9 degrees or 4, 8 and 12 degrees C to give a bit of a range.
00:04:55
Speaker
And some people will just yeah be more comfortable with more extreme temperatures or not. Then the sauna itself, we'll come back to the sauna later on and and possibly an infrared sauna as well. Although infrared saunas, it's worth noting. Don't take too kindly to lots of moisture.
Social Sauna Experiences
00:05:12
Speaker
And so if you're moving from a shower to an ice bath and into the infrared sauna, you just have to be a bit careful in terms of maintenance and keeping it dry because there's more technology involved, whereas a traditional finished sauna is is much more rudimentary and hard wearing.
00:05:30
Speaker
So the sauna thing, right? I'm getting a lot of clients asking about experiential saunas. spent almost a month out in Bali in January of this year, researching this concept about wellness clubs and in particular, experiential saunas and social saunas. So what is it then that makes a sauna social or experiential beyond anything that we're all used to growing up? what
00:06:04
Speaker
what What has changed, if anything? I think, you know, there are a number of things to consider when looking at this beyond simply the size, for example, a small four seater, six seater sauna, it's just not adapted to a particularly social experience. It's just, it's just too small, and nothing else can really change that. So immediately the floor print, so the space that the the sauna is taking up is is an immediate limitation factor or potentially a factor in in your favor. So if you then go into say, creating a multi-sensory experience inside the sauna with a wider, larger foot plate. So going up to say 10, 15 or 20, even a 30 person capacity sauna.
00:06:59
Speaker
Now we're in a completely different game. If you then layer in say mood lighting, some music, you walk into a small space with no noise, no music, no background music, everyone's just sitting in silence.
00:07:13
Speaker
They may or may not speak to each other. It's never gonna be a social experience. But if you make it much bigger, people feel less like they're kind of like right up close against a complete stranger. There's a respectable amount of distance between people who have no idea. They most likely don't know each other.
00:07:31
Speaker
Give them more space to spread out. Create the right ambience and mood lighting so that you can actually see something of what's going on. It's not completely dark and you're sitting there in this sort of like steamy space, but now you can actually see what's happening. And there's some background music, get that right. And it can completely change the tone and the overall mood inside the sauna. And then perhaps some aromatherapy as well. it can go a lot further than just the typical sauna s sense nowadays. is' no reason why it can't go in lots of other directions.
00:08:04
Speaker
And then if you have someone actually guiding a session, guiding an experiential sauna session that can really help to break down barriers and and promote a more social experience. Obviously, no phones in the sauna as
Inclusive Design Challenges
00:08:21
Speaker
well. So it's really just a place where you can concentrate on yeah Be mindful and concentrate on what's happening to your body and what's happening around you I'm also seeing that there's quite a bit of innovation coming through finally now, for the first time ever, as far as I can tell.
00:08:37
Speaker
in terms of sauna design. So an element of visual design that's coming into the sauna space, both in terms of the layout of the seating and the distribution, but also in terms of yeah particular visual features and focal points that can create more of a wow moment.
00:08:59
Speaker
I'm seeing... In wellness clubs as well, there's there's a question that each club is is addressing in its own way. But the idea of either an inclusive design approach, which could be, for example, offering unisex changing facilities. If you are focused more on a a younger demographic and you're in a city like London, you can get away with it.
00:09:21
Speaker
The advantages of that are that you then can compress the number of square meters you dedicate to changing rooms, you have like a communal area for the wash basins, taps, mirrors, lockers, and then individual cabins for actually changing and showering.
00:09:43
Speaker
And overall, that means efficiencies in your total square meter, which dedicated to this stuff. So it's a space saver, essentially, but you come up against cultural norms, cultural issues that some people may struggle with, but it can work and it's already being implemented in a number of places.
00:10:06
Speaker
But you've got to be conscious of who you could, yeah if not offend, lose as potential customers when a wellness club does that.
00:10:17
Speaker
Some concepts can do the same space saving approach where they'll just put in one set of changing rooms, unisex, not delimited for only men or only women, but then with an operational policy, they split it.
00:10:34
Speaker
So they save on the space dedicated to changing rooms because there's just one area, but then operationally they run the wet area. So the spa slash banyan for example or yeah the contrast bathing experience and that's just split men on one day and women on another day. That's more common in things like Russian banyan concepts.
00:10:58
Speaker
It is a way operationally to complement a space saving technique around changing rooms. And then in some cases, you just need to split it completely. We do a lot of work in Qatar and Saudi and yeah there you just have to keep them separate.
Emergence of Specialized Workout Spaces
00:11:15
Speaker
It's just culturally what's expected. Whilst trying to avoid gender stereotypes, we also have to be respectful of local preferences.
00:11:27
Speaker
But you can also play with it. You can also play with the idea of there being a specific ladies zone. So, for example, in Bali, you get lots of what they call booty rooms where you're working on the ass, working on the glutes and specifically lower body posterior chain machines in in a gym. And it's a playful exercise.
00:11:48
Speaker
slightly risque approach without really offending anyone. I like it because you can really then focus on say six to eight machines really zeroing in on on the glutes and the posterior lower body chain.
00:12:05
Speaker
And that can then either be specifically for women only, or it's simply a zone that has some kind of a separate identity within a the Wellness Club gym floor itself.
00:12:18
Speaker
So I think you'll see more of that for a number of reasons, both in terms of yeah social media pressure and an increasing awareness of what's possible when you really work on that posterior chain with the right pieces of equipment. And that means dedicating a certain amount of floor space within the gym in the Wellness Club to that type of exercise.
00:12:44
Speaker
I'm also seeing spaces now and increasingly I'm suggesting that we put in things like, let's say a diagnostics room. There are great examples out there, things like the Biograph by Dr. Peter Atiyah. He's done a couple of those now in San Francisco and New York, where he combines biophilic design with indoor environmental quality measures and really advanced technology.
00:13:10
Speaker
where his his big concept is preventing not curing disease. So it's like medicine 3.0. And it's what longevity really should be about. So and MRI scans, CT scans, cardiovascular screening, even DEXA scans, VO2 max testing, and more accessibly, your biomarkers.
00:13:31
Speaker
So when I think about where the diagnostics piece can be integrated into a wellness club, There's a lot of extremely expensive tech that would be beyond what most gyms, health clubs, wellness clubs can realistically hope for or or consider integrating into their product and service offer.
00:13:54
Speaker
But there's a lot of more accessible stuff that's now becoming available. So it's things like on-demand health screening, you can get some like telehealth stations and dedicated spaces for even virtual consultations, right?
00:14:08
Speaker
with sports medicine doctors, nutritionists or or mental health professionals. And the gym then sort of becomes or the wellness club serves as a healthcare access point, rather than just a place to exercise.
00:14:24
Speaker
It's somewhere between a clinic and a pharmacy and a typical gym itself or fitness venue.
00:14:38
Speaker
So we mentioned diagnostics, I covered the idea of contrast
Diagnostics and Recovery Zones
00:14:41
Speaker
bathing. Contrast bathing in a sense could be something far more, one piece of a far larger pie. So that would be, let's say recovery for want of a better term. And that can cover red light therapy, PEMF, body roller machines, meditation pods, floatation tanks,
00:15:05
Speaker
the large format saunas that I mentioned as well as the contrast bathing, but also perhaps of like mid temperature pools, a hydrothermal some massage pools, magnesium baths, all of that is is now becoming broadly categorized as a recovery zone.
00:15:25
Speaker
Many of them within that category, it doesn't require any physical treatments by staff. So why these things are interesting is that within a wellness club context, you can create a recovery zone.
00:15:41
Speaker
And it's really minimal or light touch, or even touchless from an operations perspective. So it's more tech based or the clients and members are using these spaces themselves, rather than say a traditional spa therapy room where you're getting one on one
Hybrid Training Spaces
00:15:58
Speaker
treatment. It's just a very different interpretation of of wellness. And so the recovery zone is is operationally light, perhaps slightly more of a functional spa concept.
00:16:10
Speaker
But now it's I'm really seeing it sort of 50-50 up there with the more traditional spa in terms of space allocation.
00:16:20
Speaker
Hybrid training, just changing tack a little bit. So, you know, until relatively recently, say a couple of years ago, clients were were still referencing CrossFit or they'd say, look, we'd like at least the functional training zone in our in our wellness club, in our health club.
00:16:36
Speaker
And want it kind of look like this. They might send some reference for a usually a high-end CrossFit gym somewhere in on the East Coast of the USA. a big functional rig, squat racks and floor space for functional movements.
00:16:53
Speaker
And then along came Hirox, which reset the bar and changed the tone. And from my perspective has completely changed what clients are asking for.
00:17:08
Speaker
They see it as a new trend, yes, but it also has a direct impact on the type of equipment that I'm putting into these functional training zones.
00:17:18
Speaker
So if you imagine CrossFit has a far wider range of movements involved and therefore equipment that we need to consider. Whereas Hirox is more limited.
00:17:30
Speaker
It's more repetitive, smaller range of equipment involved. It's things like treadmills, push-pull sleds, the rowers, the wool ball targets, wool and the medicine balls themselves, etc. etc. Whereas CrossFit has a wider range or if I'm just designing a functional zone in a gym, then I have completely free range.
00:17:52
Speaker
Whereas with Hirox, I need more weight options of a smaller number of pieces of equipment. So it's much more specific. How long will this last? The whole Hi-Rex trend, I don't know.
00:18:06
Speaker
When I talk to clients, I usually counsel some caution that it could all yeah just pop the bubble just as quickly as it has arrived.
00:18:18
Speaker
The aesthetic is fairly monotonous as in all repetitive. It's usually black and white because that seems to be the colors black, gray, white are the colors used by the Hyrox brand and the spaces that they use for their events themselves. So again, from a design perspective, I'm looking at ways that yeah try and align with that without perhaps necessarily committing a client a hundred percent to the actual brand.
00:18:43
Speaker
because we just don't, yeah, if you want to future proof it, you need to consider where things will be in three to five years, for example.
Blending Indoor and Outdoor Gym Elements
00:18:52
Speaker
I think whereas high rocks could be something that's still here in three to five years, outdoor gyms went through the roof after COVID and I don't see that changing anytime soon, partly because the sort of regular outdoor gym concept of of a few cardio machines that need to be covered at night, perhaps like a 15 centimeter concrete base to give you a solid platform upon which to to add all of your gym machines and there lots of functional training equipment. You know that baseline has evolved over time to something much more, much closer effectively to splitting the difference between an indoor and outdoor gym. So first of all, we started seeing lots of storage solutions coming in with these sort of containers
00:19:41
Speaker
that were both outdoor gym structure, framework and the rig itself, combined with equipment storage solutions for the off season. And then slowly with the integration of sort dome-like semi-permanent protective covers that create what is to all intents and purposes an indoor gym, although exposed around the perimeter to the environment the outdoor environment, you can get pretty close to effectively taking an outdoor area now and equipping it as you would an indoor gym. There's interesting examples of that in Marbella as well. So where the climate allows, there's huge potential.
00:20:21
Speaker
Where you're in perhaps Northern Europe, for example, it's a bit more limited, but certainly in Southern Europe, where you're really in a dry climate for most of the year,
00:20:33
Speaker
There are really interesting opportunities now in terms of using an outdoor space and effectively converting it into full on extension of your you're indoor gym.
Recreational and Leisure Spaces in Gyms
00:20:45
Speaker
And then, you know as I mentioned, the idea of leisure facilities. So if we're designing a wellness club, you might think of the gym. cardio strength functional, you might have some group studios, perhaps Pilates, another one for kind of holistic and yoga, and then perhaps another for high energy HIIT training, for example.
00:21:04
Speaker
You might then have a traditional spa area and a functional spa area with contrast as we discussed earlier. And then there's this other stuff, and these other pieces that are getting thrown into the mix, which is where we're really looking to create unique selling points and go a bit further terms of what else can be there. And it doesn't necessarily mean huge amounts of space.
00:21:26
Speaker
I've been designing quite a few indoor basketball courts for the co-living student co-living client I mentioned in in the UK recently. And those indoor courts can be used for indoor basketball, but also badminton or group class activities.
00:21:43
Speaker
And then there's other things like Well, if you're still on the and the basketball course, effectively they can use that however they want. But then there's this other layer of e-gaming spaces and a really dynamic approach to integrating other elements of let's say games and play into a wellness club concept with a younger target demographic.
00:22:12
Speaker
And it's going much beyond what we typically expect to find in a in a standard health club.
High-Concept Gym Designs
00:22:18
Speaker
In a similar way, something's happening around gym design. but the the The rains have come off in recent years.
00:22:28
Speaker
There is now a shift towards high design concepts where the previous stages wasn't considered, it was much more limited, it was much more predictable in a sense.
00:22:39
Speaker
And recently now, I think imaginations have been able to go wild, creating these more marketable spaces with some real wow factor to them that yeah open the door to much more creative interior design of gym spaces themselves.
00:22:59
Speaker
The John Reed brand, for example, is a classic example of that. They've really made it their sort of cooling card terms of how they create their spaces. You'll notice if you ever look at their gyms and really break it down, the equipment itself may have some modifications, the flooring potentially to the actual gym flooring, but oftentimes it's more decoration on the walls.
00:23:26
Speaker
and and playing with murals and artworks on the walls. And sometimes it's also the floor, but they tend to be more on the circulation space rather than the actual training areas themselves. Nonetheless, it is completely different world out there right now, even from say five years ago in terms of what a gym can or should look like according to where you sit geographically, which target market you're aiming for.
00:23:54
Speaker
and yeah where your budget is as well. Some of this does require really careful planning and you it is getting beaten up every day.
00:24:09
Speaker
Weight plates are dropped, barbells are dropped. It's all just part and parcel of the usual wear and tear. But when done correctly, when done in a considered and thoughtful manner,
00:24:23
Speaker
there's still just so many more options now. So really, when I see completely minimal, low design spaces, that now has to be a conscious
Gyms as Health Optimization Hubs
00:24:32
Speaker
decision. It's not because of a lack of options for gym or wellness club interiors, because there are really so many things that can be done now with a space.
00:24:43
Speaker
And finally, you know, if i if I can offer one final thought on the future of gyms and wellness clubs in general. It's this idea of the, let's say the retail zone merging with F&B and the diagnostics piece. So what happens somewhere between your reception, the the drinks menu, if there is some kind of a cafe solution, you those lines are blurring.
00:25:17
Speaker
I think just as the pharmacy, medic clinic fitness facility lines are blurring. There's a shift towards the Wellness Club offering a more personalized health optimization solution for its members.
00:25:34
Speaker
And that can be based on anything from genetic profiles to microbiome analysis, real time like metabolic data. You know, we're in an era where you could have rental services available through the Wellness Club for like high priced health technology items that people only really need so once a month.
00:25:55
Speaker
They don't need to own those. products, they're happy to pay for them on a one off basis or repeat basis, leave the tech at the Wellness Club and come in once a month, use it, take down the data, do their tests, and then consign that piece of tech back to the Wellness Club, for example. So the gym and the club itself really becomes this entry point into Medicine 3.0.
00:26:21
Speaker
So when I'm planning out these floor plans, now that retail slash to be much more than just a meet and greet arrival and departure experience. It can also be somewhere that offers a number of additional services where the business itself can upsell products, but also that provides a an additional layer of health future-proofing
00:26:55
Speaker
for members themselves where they're actually able to do more than just check their body mass index, they're able to really understand what's happening to their body and what the future could look like in terms of their health span.
00:27:06
Speaker
And so using that platform of the Wellness Club, bringing in some of this new technology and the new services that are available to analyze and predict both how we feel today, our level of health as it stands and also future looking towards where our future future selves could be. So what's our wellness age, biological age, and what do we need to be worried about looking forward into the future? So all of that can come through this portal that is then the gym reception or the wellness club reception.
00:27:45
Speaker
And so really that's for me what the next five years look like in terms of innovation and integration of the latest technology in the world of fitness.
00:27:58
Speaker
Finally, it's about how gyms and wellness clubs can help to improve our health span. And while they've been doing it one way in the past through effectively exercise and some sense of community, I think there are just so many more options out there now, largely tech and AI enabled, and it either goes out to the pharmacies and and external health clinics or the wellness club can make a bit of a land grab and start to own that space for itself. And I certainly help hope that is where we are going.
00:28:33
Speaker
So there we are. Thanks for your time. Hope you found that useful relevant. And we'll see you in the next episode.