Month: November 2015

…F U T U R E  T R E N D S ! ? !

| jacqueline bundey


…With autumnal nights drawing in and Christmas on the horizon, 2016 isn’t far behind! The start of the year brings with it copious New Year resolutions to improve fitness and lead a more healthy lifestyle. According to research approximately 12 per cent of all gym members sign up in January, presumably to honour the resolutions they have set.  Worryingly though, the best laid intentions don’t always go to plan, evidence from the Fitness Industry Association believe that most of these people have quit or stopped regularly attending after just 24 weeks! This culminates in a massive £37million a year wasted on gym memberships, exercise and slimming classes (according to research by online accountants Crunch.co.uk).
Now I’m not saying that memberships are a waste of money, I’m a member of a well know gym chain and absolutely love it, utilising most of the facilities, the gym, swimming pool, fitness classes and the tennis courts to! (But then I would as I lead a very active lifestyle, having enough motivation to maintain my membership….most weeks anyway!!!!)  My point is that gyms can be great places to hit your fitness targets and smash your resolutions all year through, and if you need a little incentive to start or motivation to continue lets see what might be in store for 2016 with my round up of future fitness trends…

I don’t think there is any escaping from the use of mobile or wearable fitness devices and these will certainly play a major role in what’s to come in the year and years ahead!  The market for sports and fitness apps will exceed $400 million, with over 1 billion annual health-related app downloads by 2016, according to a report from ABI Research.  The advantages of this technological take-over are immense, allowing each and every one of us to continually monitor, track and evaluate our own progress, and will most definitely become an integral part of our workouts.  Adopting this metric style can be as simple as monitoring your heart rate or number of repetitions you achieve on a set exercise, but using an app will not only keep all your entries organised, but will offer a heap of analytical data to show your progress and help you set realistic and achievable goals, in turn increasing your motivation to continue.  Apple watches, heart rate monitors and other smart devices can and will become utilised in fitness classes so the instructor can establish your work intensity from week to week  and therefore track your tangible progress….to keep you attending!!!!

I believe a selection of the most popular trends from 2015 will no doubt continue and even increase in popularity, especially HIIT training, proving its staying power, being named by the American College of Sports Medicine as the No. 1 fitness trend worldwide back in 2014.  High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) uses the principle of mixing short bursts of activity followed by a short period of recovery, usually performed in less than 30 minutes.  With ever increasing demands of people’s time this results orientated,  less time consuming method of exercise is definitely here to stay.  Classes featuring military-style training, Circuit workouts and CrossFit training can all fall under the HIIT umbrella and with mobile apps, YouTube videos and other virtual/online resources (my personal favourite being Joe Wicks aka the Body Coach), it’s accessible and achievable by all!!

Another exercise style that is gaining momentum is Functional fitness, a regime designed to help improve how you carry out activities in your everyday life by combining specific strength training with movements and flexibility.  Rather than spending hours isolating one muscle group at a time, this method will combine multiple groups that mimic everyday activities, such as lunges and squats, with the theory being that if you are able to perform such exercises, the tasks you come across in your daily routine should and will be easier.  This type of exercise was predominately aimed at the older generation to help keep them ‘functional’ for their daily life, but is becoming more and more popular throughout the younger generations as we plan towards our future.

I have a feeling that event based classes will start to become more popular as a desperate attempt to keep people in gyms and paid group classes.  5k’s, half marathons, Colour Runs, Tough Mudders, Run to the Beat, London to Brighton Bike Ride….the list is practically endless, are all proving enormously popular, and the fitness industry is starting to realise that if they can offer some kind of preparation class in the lead up to such events, they have a guaranteed return client base.  Additionally, if they then offer a recovery class after the event, foam rollers or dynamic stretching sessions, they can continue to keep you actively involved in gym life. Obviously we know that exercising in a group environment is a fantastic motivator and having a professional PT or instructor at hand to push you along and help you achieve your set goals for each event AND subsequently recover quicker, means this is a win win trend that’s set to rise!!

Spin and Yoga are two activities that are here to stay, although minor tweaks from each are occurring.  As with Soul Cycle in the US, more British clubs are now updating their studios with more and more technology for an overall experience, rather than just being sat on a bike in a Spin class.  TV screens or TV walls, lighting and music all combine to offer a different ‘experience’ while cycling than just the cycling itself.  If you haven’t tried one yet I thorough recommend you do, but pick your themed class wisely as 45 minutes of strobe lighting and Ibiza anthems aren’t everybody’s cup of tea!!  Similarly with Yoga, the increasing buzz word seems to be Barre, a mixture of Pilates, Yoga and Ballet, with a host of celebrity fans aiming to achieve the long lean lines favoured by every Victoria Secret model across the globe!  This form of Yoga/Ballet/Pilates originated from Lotte Berk, a ballet dancer who’s concept was to tone the whole body while focusing on alignment, posture and core strength through the use of ballet style movements, while she recovered from a back injury.  These mainly weight-bearing classes (some have additional LIGHT free weights as well) ultimately aim to lengthen the muscles while strengthening them, as opposed to specific strength training which often bulks and shortens the muscles.  It is for this exact reason its proving to be so in demand.  I must admit this isn’t something that I have tried yet, but with its increasing popularity and Barre studios popping up in the most obscure of places, I’m sure it wont be long until I do!  (I will of course give you a review of my experience).

You may have heard the term Parkour mentioned over previous years, an urban jungle style activity, developed in Paris in the Eighties and mainly limited to teenagers?!  Well it appears this generational exclusivity may no longer be the case, the fitness elite have adopted this activity and classes in gyms (mainly Crossfit type classes) are being adapted to suit.  You might think running through town, up and down stairs and over obstacles lacks a certain appeal but this is a highly skilled art which combines strength, agility and gymnastic characteristics to provide a full body workout.  Its focus being on mobility and core strength in a dynamic and edgy setting!  Immensely popular, crowd pleasing shows like Susake from Japan, and Ninja Warrior (originating Stateside and now having a UK version) have done nothing but help increase this obstacle style activity’s esteem, so I believe if you hadn’t already, Parkour is a term and activity that you will be hearing a lot more about in 2016.

Finally something that’s nothing but fun to look forward to!  Imagine if you will, being free for an hour, escaping from the stresses and worries of life and being transported back to your carefree childhood.  Well that in its premise is the idea behind the trend Childs Play!  Literally playing like children, or how children used to play back in the good old days, before Ipads, PlayStations and Xbox’s.  The concept behind one such fitness class, Rabble, is to disguise interval training as traditional child like games, such as Tag, British Bulldog and Capture the Flag.  In doing so participants are so fixated on the competition and ultimately the fun that they don’t actually realise they are participating in a full blown cardiovascular workout.  In its first year alone, Rabble successfully recruited 900 members, offering sessions in London and Manchester.  I expect this, along with various other Child Like groups will continue to grow, sharing the retro fun with the masses.

I’m intending on trying as many new classes as I can squeeze in over the next few months, so will of course keep you updated and it would be great to hear your experiences of any of the classes I’ve mentioned above AND anything else you may have tried and tested….