Many fitness executives talk a good game about the importance of physical activity and healthy living. 

Cedric X. Bryant, PhD, FACSM, lives it.

Named president and CEO of the American Council on Exercise (ACE) last year, Bryant has held various leadership positions within the fitness education and certification provider since joining ACE in 2001. Before that, Bryant was an executive at StairMaster, and throughout his impressive academic career in the fields of physiology and exercise science, he’s authored more than 300 articles and co-authored or edited over 40 books

A fierce proponent of health equity and accessibility, Bryant sat down with Athletech News to discuss the link between exercise and chronic disease prevention, share how ACE is working to bring fitness and healthcare closer together, and give his thoughts on the rise of anti-obesity drugs like GLP-1s. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background in academia and the fitness industry, and what prompted you to join ACE back in 2001?

Cedric X. Bryant: My career has really been split into thirds. The first third was the traditional academic route where I got my PhD in physiology, and then I went the teaching and research route at Penn State, West Point and Arizona State. I focused much of my work on the role of exercise and chronic disease prevention and management, exploring how physical activity could impact conditions like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and looking at how we could use evidence-based approaches to improve overall health outcomes. I’ve always fashioned myself as a person who effectively bridges the gap between science and practice, who is able to take scientific information and present it in a manner where it’s very digestible to the professionals who are on the ground impacting lives.

The middle third I spent working in the for-profit world, heading up R&D for StairMaster, the exercise equipment company. That was a neat experience because it helped expose me to a different side of the industry. During that time, I became associated with ACE, serving on their scientific advisory board at the time, which evolved into me joining the organization back in 2001 as VP of science and education. That evolved into president and chief science officer, and I’m now president and CEO. I’ve been with ACE for almost 24 years now. 

ATN: How do you view ACE’s role within the fitness industry? 

CB: At a very high level, I see ACE as educating health and fitness professionals so they’re uniquely positioned to advance equity in physical activity and fitness by advocating for more accessible and science-based approaches. Being physically active offers so many important health benefits – and life benefits in general. I believe all people deserve to have those experiences made readily available to them. 

Because that’s such a large task, we’re big on collaboration and partnerships. No single entity can address the problems we’re trying to address as an industry in terms of physical inactivity and the associated issues with being obese and overweight. So we partner with our peer organizations, other health organizations, policymakers and communities to ensure that everyone, regardless of size, ability and background, has access to high-quality health and physical activity services. 

ATN: What have your early priorities been since taking over as ACE’s CEO?

CB: A lot of my early priorities have been an extension of what we’ve been doing as an organization. One is to expand our educational offerings, because I’m a big believer that life is about learning and growing. We want to make sure we’re always offering relevant content and topics so we can help professionals develop and grow throughout their careers. We’re looking at things like the anti-obesity medications and the role that exercise and fitness play with regard to individuals who might be using those to manage their weight. We’re looking at the smart utilization of AI to allow individuals to be more operationally efficient. We’re also looking at mental health and well-being from an educational perspective, and how can the health and fitness professional play an appropriate role while staying within the bounds of scope of practice.

In terms of the industry at large, I’m trying to make sure we play a thought leader role in helping to bridge the gap between fitness and healthcare. We want to strengthen the role that ACE plays, as well as the industry at large, in integrating health solutions and ensuring that exercise professionals are in a position to become viable members of what I call the optimal healthcare team. We also want to play a role in the whole public health sector in terms of increasing our presence in policy discussions around things like obesity, physical activity and health promotion. As an example of that, we’ve served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Roundtable on Obesity Solutions since 2014. 

ATN: What’s your take on the rise of anti-obesity drugs like GLP-1s? Will these medications be a positive or negative development for the fitness industry over the long term? 

CB: I think GLP-1s and (other) anti-obesity medications are going to play a positive role in helping individuals who have been impacted by obesity for quite some time but haven’t had success with traditional methods. 

However, I do think we need to be aware of and understand the fact that while those drugs can help people experience rapid weight loss, they’re not without some issues. It’s important that we as an industry understand what those are, and understand how we can play a role in helping to mitigate some of those issues, namely the impact of those medications on muscle mass, metabolism and exercise capacity. Even more importantly, a successful weight management intervention has to be sustainable. We know that unless individuals combine medications with the appropriate healthy lifestyle behavior changes, the results are likely not going to be sustainable. That’s where our industry can partner with healthcare to provide the appropriate supplemental exercise training.

ATN: So far, how would you assess the fitness industry’s collective response to the rise of GLP-1s?

CB: I’ll give you some positives and negatives. On the positive side, I’d say there’s a growing awareness, so more fitness professionals and organizations are recognizing the role of these anti-obesity meds in weight management. Because of that, there are new education efforts underway where some leading industry organizations are starting to offer training on how to support clients taking these medications. ACE has recently introduced continuing education courses along those lines. There are also some early positive signs of collaboration between fitness and medical professionals. 

On the downside, I think there needs to be a better understanding of these GLP-1 medications in terms of what they do and their potential side effects. I’d argue that because they’re relatively new, many fitness professionals lack sufficient knowledge of how these medications impact muscle mass, metabolism and exercise capacity. It’s (also) important that we avoid stigmatizing the folks who are taking these medications, because some fitness spaces still carry weight bias, if we’re honest.

But overall, I’m encouraged that there’s enough positive traction and movement. Better connecting fitness with healthcare is something the industry has been trying to do for decades. This just might be the gateway into that.

ATN: What’s one thing you’d most like to see change in the fitness industry?

CB: I’d say it’s (more) true collaboration. In my humble opinion, it’d be wise for all of us to recognize that we share a common foe: physical inactivity and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. It’s not each other, regardless of what our acronyms might be. We partner with our peer organizations like ACSM and we work with the Medical Fitness Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the National Council on Strength and Fitness, because we believe we can accomplish so many more meaningful things if we work together and look for those opportunities where we have a common interest and a common bond. It’s the old rising tide, if you will. 

The post CEO Corner: ACE’s Cedric X. Bryant on Fitness, Healthcare & GLP-1s appeared first on Athletech News.

Few executives have more high-level experience in the supplement industry than Thorne CEO Colin Watts, who has been involved in health and wellness for well over two decades now.

The former CEO of The Vitamin Shoppe, chief innovation officer at Walgreens and president of WeightWatchers Health Solutions, Watts joined Thorne shortly after the wellness and supplement company was acquired by L Catterton in a blockbuster $680 million deal back in October 2023.

That deal, which saw Thorne go private, signaled a new chapter for the company as it looks to make a bigger push into the direct-to-consumer supplement market by providing science-backed products and personalization tools including at-home diagnostic tests, online health quizzes and AI-powered recommendations. 

Watts sat down with Athletech News to discuss how Thorne is working to make supplementation easier and more effective for consumers through personalization, and share his thoughts on the evolution of the supplement industry over the past two-plus decades.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: You’ve led some of the biggest brands in health and wellness. Why did you decide to join Thorne as CEO in 2023? 

Colin Watts: I got a call from L Catterton when they acquired Thorne to see if I’d be interested in joining the leadership team and eventually coming in as CEO. It didn’t take much of a pitch, honestly. Thorne has a 40-year heritage in the professional channel – in order to service that market, one of the requirements is that your quality has to be pretty unassailable. We’re vertically integrated, so we make (almost) all of our own products in our amazing facility right outside of Charleston, South Carolina.

I also love the innovation profile of the company. What impressed me about Thorne was they weren’t doing the fly-by-night innovation. The supplement industry has a lot of interesting but somewhat superficial innovations that they make a big deal about. Thorne has always been very thorough in its innovation. We were very early into the healthy-aging space, for example. We continue to push in terms of where we’re going with innovation. 

And when I got a chance to meet our people, I saw that the culture is just unbelievable. This is the best company I’ve ever gotten a chance to work for – and I’m not just saying that. 

ATN: When you joined, Thorne, was fresh off a $680 million acquisition. What have your early priorities been as CEO?

CW: My first priority was to take a hard look at how the company was growing and determine where we could prioritize. For decades, Thorne had been a professional-focused company. About seven years ago, we started to pivot more direct-to-consumer, while still continuing in the professional space. As good as Thorne is right now and as big as we become, the reality is that our visibility and accessibility are still fairly low in the category. There’s a lot of headroom, even if you’re a premium supplement brand, to grow that awareness and make sure that more and more people hear the story of Thorne. 

Our second big priority is innovation. In 2025, you’re going to see one of the biggest years of innovation we’ve had in probably 20 years. One of the big areas we’re working on right now is personalization. I think we’re on the cusp of some breakthroughs in personalization, both at Thorne and as an industry.  

ATN: What’s Thorne planning on the personalization front? 

CW: This industry’s been plagued with people over-promising personalization; I’ve watched it for the last 15 years. At the end of the day, if I’m not making changes to my supplement regimen – or my lifestyle overall– then it’s not really personalized. 

At Thorne, we’re taking advantage of advances that are going on right now in AI, along with our participation in the diagnostic, at-home test kit area. We’re also taking advantage of the fact that we’re a leader in the science and professional side, but also master storytellers and very good marketers, to create an experience on the front end of personalization that hopefully will feel as good as the best conversation you could ever have with an expert in the area of supplementation and wellness. We’re going to create something that I believe isn’t going to feel like shopping anymore; it’s going to feel a lot more like asking for help. 

ATN: How has the supplement industry evolved over the last several years?

CW: Today’s consumer, at any age, is no longer thinking about supplements purely from a prevention standpoint. Prevention is really important, don’t get me wrong, but today’s consumer doesn’t want to wait 15 years to see the benefits of supplementation. Frankly, they shouldn’t wait that long.

Gen Zs and Millennials are actually spending more out of pocket for this market than Boomers are, so they’re setting the pace. What we’re seeing is they want to think about supplements – and they want to think about Thorne – as a performance brand. Similar to getting on a treadmill seeing and their (metrics) improving, that same generation is saying, “When I use whey protein, or when I use Catalyte, I want to understand, How is it going to help me perform? How is it going to help me today and tomorrow?”

ATN: The supplement industry is highly crowded, and there’s some consumer distrust. How is Thorne working to separate itself from the crowd?

CW: A long time ago in my career, I got a chance to work with (author and marketing expert) Faith Popcorn. She had this concept that she called a “lighthouse brand.” What she meant is that certain brands in certain industries break out from the pack. If you think about personal computing, Apple is a lighthouse brand. And whether you like Apple or you don’t like Apple, you can appreciate the fact that Apple changed the way that everybody did personal computing and now mobile phones as well. 

I think Thorne has a real opportunity to become a lighthouse brand in this market, because of the quality of our products, the science we put behind our products and our approach in bridging the professional and consumer markets. 

ATN: What’s your vision for the future of Thorne – and the supplement industry in general?

CW: I think we’re coming into a time when supplements will become part of the regular regimen. Consumers taking control of their health: people aren’t just waiting until they get sick, then going to the doctor and saying, “Please treat me.” They’re saying at an earlier age, “I want to perform at my best and I want to stay healthy for the longest I can.”

I’d like to believe Thorne has the opportunity to be a go-to brand. We’re not going to be here one day and gone tomorrow. That said, we also like to think of ourselves as a bit of the maverick of the industry that is constantly innovating and pushing. So if we were having this conversation five years from now, I’d like to be able to point to several points where we as a company have set a new paradigm for wellness and supplementation. 

The post CEO Corner: Thorne’s Colin Watts Talks State of the Supplement Industry  appeared first on Athletech News.

Fyzical Therapy & Balance Centers has emerged as one of the fastest-growing franchise brands across health, wellness and fitness, recently hitting 620 locations and earning a spot on Entrepreneur’s coveted “Franchise 500” list. 

Brian Belmont is responsible for much of that growth. Since joining Fyzical as its CEO in 2018, Belmont has helped the physical therapy franchise expand from around 170 locations to over 600 by prioritizing sound franchise economics and responsible yet aggressive growth. 

A former executive vice president at Quiznos and part of the C-suite leadership team that took Planet Fitness public in 2015, Belmont has taken his franchise learnings to Fyzical, which focuses on fall prevention and vestibular balance in addition to offering a full suite of traditional physical therapy and holistic wellness services. 

Belmont sat down with Athletech News to discuss what separates Fyzical from other physical therapy clinics across the United States, share his keys to franchising success and outline Fyzical’s plans for continued expansion. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to join Fyzical in 2018?

Brian Belmont: I started my career in the Marine Corps for 10 years. In my early 30s, I joined Quiznos, which at that time was one of the fastest-growing franchise concepts in the U.S. We grew Quiznos to over 5,000 stores, and I went from national director to executive vice president of development and operations. From there, I went to Camp Bow Wow as chief operating officer. After that, I moved to Planet Fitness as chief operating officer, helping the company go public in 2015. 

So I’ve been lucky to have been with growth brands. When it comes to franchising, I look to see whether there’s a niche – a place in the market that no one else is addressing. For Fyzical, that’s balance and vestibular wellness. On top of that, our founder (Jim Abrams) is an iconic figure in franchising. All of that attracted me to Fyzical. When I got here, we were at about 170 stores. We’re at 620 today, so it’s been a pretty rewarding process. 

ATN: What separates Fyzical from a typical physical therapy clinic?

BB: Our founder realized that no one in academia – or in the market at all – was addressing falls and fall prevention. So he brought on Brian Werner (currently Fyzical’s national director of balance center development, education and training). We adopted his diagnostics as well as his clinical protocol and pushed that throughout our whole system. The reason we’re able to open a clinic in a market that has many, many PTs already is because no one (else) is addressing vestibular imbalance. There’s a huge demand in the market, and all we have to do is capture it. That’s number one. 

Number two is that we have great physical therapists. There’s something I call the “puppy mill” of physical therapy – treating a bunch of people at the same time. We don’t do that. We do individual, episodic, one-on-one care. Over time that creates a lifetime partner. You might have busted your shoulder, but sooner or later, you’re going to have something else that happens to you. You’re going to think of Fyzical because you had such a good experience when you were there. 

ATN: What’s the age range of a typical Fyzical client?

BB: We definitely skew older because of the fall prevention. But it varies by state. I’ve got a 24-year-old daughter who was a dancer, so she’s had a lot of hip and back issues. She became a Fyzical client because she needed that care. If you come to Southwest Florida, however, where demographics skew much older, our average age is probably 58 to 60. So it’s across the board.

ATN: Fyzical has more than tripled in size since you took over in 2018. What’s been the key to scaling the brand? 

BB: At the forefront of everything in franchising is whether a franchisee can make money. At the end of the day, it’s the economic model that solves it all. We provide the systems that help us grow, like business intelligence data, which allows franchisees to know whether they’re making money that day, and track their visits and referrals. Your operating systems need to be adapted system-wide and they need to be uniform within a franchise system. 

ATN: As Fyzical continues to grow, what types of franchise owners are you targeting? 

BB: The best way to build wealth and create a strong brand in a franchise system is through multi-unit ownership, so over the last four or five years, we’ve come to prefer multi-unit operators. You get to a point with franchising where you have the luxury to super select.

We focus on folks who have either already been successful in a career as an executive or who’ve grown a couple of other brands and want another growth brand. We’ve got over 60 area reps who’ve bought anywhere from five to 10 units to grow over five to seven years. Most of our multi-unit owners partner with a physical therapist as a clinical lead.

ATN: What’s your pitch to franchisees about why they should choose Fyzical over other health, wellness and fitness concepts?

BB: Because no one else is doing what we do; there’s no one else in the market that can provide what we do for our patients. And If you want a growth brand, this is easily a brand that can reach a couple of thousand stores. We’re still under-penetrated: for instance, we have almost 80 stores in Florida, which has one of the lowest reimbursement rates in the U.S., and we’re successful there. There are markets like Seattle where we have just a handful of stores. So it’s pretty attractive.

ATN: What are your long-term expansion goals for Fyzical? Could international expansion ever be in the cards?

BB: Based on regression studies, we can get to at least 3,000 over time, so we’re very confident. But it’ll be thoughtful growth. You can’t just grow for the sake of growth, you need to consider, “What’s the impact on an existing clinic? What’s the right market penetration?” However, we do want to continue gaining market share because that’s what keeps everyone behind us, not ahead of us. 

Internationally, there’s a great opportunity to go to Canada. It’s a completely different medical system – they call it physiotherapy – but it’s almost 50% cash-based. We’re exploring that right now. I also believe England or Australia could be good markets because their healthcare systems are similar (to Canada).

The post CEO Corner: Fyzical’s Brian Belmont on the Art of Franchise Growth appeared first on Athletech News.

Sleep is becoming big business. From wearable tech to smart mattresses to luxury hotel offerings, companies of all sizes are entering the race to help people sleep better for longer, pushing the global sleep market to a projected $950 billion by 2032, per Emergen Research. 

The NBA is getting on board, too, choosing sleep wearable maker Somnee as part of its 2025 NBA Launchpad cohort, the basketball league’s “Shark Tank”-style program that puts a spotlight on emerging technologies. 

Founded by a team of neuroscientists including University of California, Berkeley, professor and social media personality Dr. Matt Walker, Somnee makes a sleep headband that uses EEG sensors to help people fall asleep faster, sleep longer and improve their sleep quality. 

In late 2023, the company hired former Fitbit chief marketing officer Tim Rosa as its CEO, counting on Rosa to build Somnee into the next big wearable brand. 

Rosa sat down with Athletech News to discuss Somnee’s new partnership with the NBA and how the brand is using wearable tech to revolutionize the way people around the world sleep.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to join Somnee in 2023? 

Tim Rosa: I started my career on the brand side and then got recruited over to Sega Sports and ESPN Video Games to run sports marketing. After we got acquired, I launched the 2K Sports brand. NBA 2K was my baby, and we grew it from under 7% market share to 100% market share in five years. From there, I ended up at Electronic Arts and EA Sports. I then joined a tiny startup called Fitbit. We grew Fitbit from the U.S. to 100 countries, selling around 140 million units during my 10 years there and doing the biggest IPO in history for a consumer electronics company. We ultimately sold to Google. 

I then took some time off, when I got a call from Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures and Dr Matt Walker – probably the most famous sleep scientist in the world – who’s the co-founder of Somnee. They called about a CEO opportunity. I actually struggled with adult insomnia – I was taking THC and CBD edibles to help me fall asleep, which I’ve since learned are bad. I said, “Look, I don’t know that much about (sleep science). But if this thing works, I’ll be open to it.” During my third Somnee session, I fell asleep with it on.

ATN: What have your early priorities been since taking over as Somnee’s CEO?

TR: I’m deeply passionate about consumer experiences. Our gen-one product is great, and the technology is amazing, but it looked like a bunch of engineers and scientists had assembled it for a “Star Trek” episode. It was scientists speaking to scientists. I said, let me relaunch the brand, because we have the opportunity to scale to general population consumers. We’ll be rolling out some new products this year. I can’t talk about it in too much detail yet, but it’ll be a game-changer for the category. 

ATN: At a high level, how does Somnee help people get better sleep?

TR: We’re like a sleep lab for the bedroom. We’re taking the technology that Dr. Matt Walker and our scientists use at UC Berkeley, and we’ve miniaturized it into a product that not only helps with sleep onset, but helps with sleep maintenance as well as overall quality. 

We use what we call EEG-plus, which essentially maps your brain, because every brain is different. What we’re trying to do is figure out each individual’s optimal state for sleep. That takes about 21 sessions because there are different stages: mapping, personalization and optimization (adaptive). By the end of that, we’re affecting your ability to fall asleep, your ability to stay asleep and your overall quality of sleep. So it’s a unique product, and pretty groundbreaking. 

ATN: What was it like to be selected as part of the NBA Launchpad program?

TR: I have an almost 20-year relationship with the NBA (dating back to Rosa’s time in video games). When I was at Fitbit, I brokered one of the very first jersey patch deals with the Minnesota Timberwolves. It was an awesome partnership and relationship. During that time, I met (NBA executive) Tom Ryan. He reached out to me a few months ago and said, “Hey, I love what you’re doing at Somnee. Would you be open to participating in this?”

But it wasn’t something they just gave us. We had to make a “Shark Tank”-like pitch in front of the chief medical officers and trainers for the NBA, G League and WNBA, along with executives and team representatives. It was really important to them that the science was there. Obviously, we have four of the most famous neuroscientists in the world who founded the company, so there’s a lot of respect that already comes with that. But (the NBA) looked at our clinical data and our product roadmap. They love the new products and how those are being positioned. We’ll now do a six-month pilot study with the NBA. Assuming all goes well – we’re confident the results will be good – Somnee will go to referees, coaches, training staff and players across the NBA, WNBA and G League.

ATN: What does partnering with the NBA mean for Somnee – and for the future of sleep science? 

TR: It’s a great validation for us. But the reality is that our mission goes beyond sports. We’re trying to affect sleep fitness at every level with everyone from athletes to shift workers to what we call performance-optimizers. So we’re going to go after much bigger population sizes than just elite athletes.

I also think it speaks to the importance and impact of sleep. Sleep is a superpower, as Matt says. It affects your mental health, general health and physical health. There’s a ton of research around sleep and athletic performance, so the league, agents and players are becoming wise to the importance of quality sleep.

There’s research showing that sleep can improve sprint times (by 4.3%) and shooting accuracy by almost 10%. Andre Iguodala during his championship season (in 2014-15) had a huge improvement – decreased turnovers, improved shooting accuracy and points per minute – when he went from sleeping less than seven hours a night to over eight hours a night.  A product like Somnee is great, especially for athletes in leagues like the NBA and MLB who travel between time zones, which throws off your circadian rhythm. 

ATN: Looking ahead, what’s your vision for the future of Somnee? 

TR: Rolling out the best products that the sleep category has ever seen – and consumers in general have ever seen – that actually help them achieve their goal of getting better sleep. I’m really excited about where we’re headed as a company; this is going to be the first of many products that we have in our roadmap. It kind of reminds me of when we started at Fitbit. Then, sitting was the new smoking. Now, not sleeping is the new smoking.

The post CEO Corner: Somnee’s Tim Rosa on Sleep Science, NBA Launchpad appeared first on Athletech News.

FightCamp is on a mission to make boxing accessible and fun for the masses. The at-home fitness brand is off to a strong start, raising millions in funding and receiving backing from fighting legends like Mike Tyson. 

Founded in 2014 by a team including CEO Khalil Zahar, FightCamp’s flagship product ($799) features a smart boxing bag that allows users to track their punches and kicks in real-time. The bag connects to TVs and smartphones, offering a library of coach-led, on-demand workouts that teach people the fundamentals of boxing and kickboxing.

In 2021, the at-home fitness brand raised $90 million in a funding round backed by venture capital firms and professional fighting icons like Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Georges St-Pierre, and Francis Ngannou.

Since then, FightCamp has revamped its tech, expanded internationally and released new products and features, including the ability to track kickboxing moves and a two-player mode that allows users to compete with friends and family members. 

Zahar sat down with Athletech News to discuss his journey from mechanical engineer to entrepreneur, the future of connected fitness and why FightCamp is poised to help bring boxing into the mainstream. 

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and how you got the idea to create an at-home boxing fitness brand?

Khalil Zahar: I moved to Toronto to complete a master’s in Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) at the University of Toronto. I ended up joining a boxing gym and I completely fell in love with everything about it, from the vibe to the coaches to how intense, engaging and effective the workout was. I found myself going to the gym four or five times a week, sparring a lot and getting in the best shape of my life, even though I had already had a strong athletic base as a breakdancer in Canada. I realized though, that boxers weren’t really measuring anything; even the most high-level boxers were just counting their punches with a clicker. 

I thought, “What if you could put a device on your wrist that did all of the tracking for you?” That idea resonated with the Canadian Olympic boxing coach, who agreed to lend me some funding for research and development. That led to the first version of the company, which was called Hykso. We started that in 2014, but the product was just for professional boxers. In 2018, we launched FightCamp for consumers. 

ATN: How did you evolve from Hykso, a product for professional boxers to FightCamp, a product for everyday fitness consumers? 

KZ: We wanted to think bigger. We’d converted a lot of professional athletes, but that was a very small market. We saw that boxing for fitness was trending and gym chains were popping up.  At the same time, at-home fitness also was becoming more and more popular. 

We knew to make a successful product, we had to make it interactive to help people stick with their workouts. So we took the tracking technology that we built for professional athletes and then we put it on top of engaging content and workout classes. That was the first version of FightCamp. 

ATN: FightCamp released a new and improved version of its flagship product a few months ago. What’s new with FightCamp gen-two?

KZ: The gen-two features completely redefined hardware, including a console. We still have trackers but instead of communicating directly to a phone, the console projects the full experience on-screen, which makes for a better user experience. 

We also added a couple of new features that are exclusively available on the console. The first one is partner workouts. We added more trackers so you can now work out together with a friend, partner or family member, and both people can see their profiles on-screen.

The second feature is kick tracking. We went from having two trackers on the wrist to four trackers – two on your wrist and two on your ankles. That allows users to do kickboxing as well as boxing movements. We have a lot of new things in the works as well.

ATN: Can professional boxers still use FightCamp or is the product mainly for amateurs?

KZ: Our typical customer demographic is 100% fitness-focused consumers, not professionals, although pros can still use us to keep up with their conditioning. 

For around 60% of people joining us, it’s their first time boxing or kickboxing. Our typical user is between 30 and 50 and is looking to do something other than traditional cardio or weightlifting options. They want an engaging workout and they’re intrigued by boxing, but they don’t know where to start. We have a lot of young parents among our customers. 

ATN: FightCamp’s $90 million funding round included names like Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Georges St-Pierre and Francis Ngannou. How important was it to get that type of buy-in from pro fighters? 

KZ: It really legitimized the effectiveness of our workout and our vision of keeping it authentic. One of the biggest criticisms of a lot of products in the boxing world is that they’re not authentic; you’re going to learn the gimmicks but not true boxing or kickboxing. We believe it’s our mission to bring true boxing culture and true boxing foundations to the masses, not just some bubble-gum, diluted version of it. A lot of our customers start with us, learn strong fundamentals and wind up joining a boxing gym. 

ATN: Many connected fitness brands have post-pandemic as people have returned to gyms. How do you assess the market for connected fitness in 2025 and the years ahead?

KZ: The pandemic made a lot of concepts viable while the pandemic was happening and then maybe not so much right after it ended, because you’re taking away the majority of gym-goers who were stuck without a gym. Some concepts that were already working before the pandemic, however, and I think they’ll continue to work. We started before the pandemic in 2018 and grew very healthy until 2020. And while Wall Street is mixed on Peloton right now, they have a very healthy user base. 

I think connected fitness will continue to do well because there’s a growing segment of people who don’t want to hit the gym anymore. At some point, it just doesn’t fit into people’s schedules to always go through the gym commute. 

ATN: Boxing as a form of fitness has become quite popular over the past few years, especially with women. What’s your vision for the future of FightCamp?

KZ: There’s no reason we can’t become as big as Peloton or even bigger. There are a couple of reasons why.  First, we think boxing is going to continue to be thought of as one of the best workouts you can do. Just look at the conditioning levels of fighters – these guys are literally going to war, and they’re extremely fit. At FightCamp, we’re making it engaging to learn and stick with boxing, which will make us a superior offering in the future. 

The second thing is that martial arts in general is a very worldwide phenomenon, as opposed to something like indoor cycling that’s a bit more Westernized. When you’re thinking about the market as the entire planet, we have a big potential for international expansion.

The post CEO Corner: FightCamp’s Khalil Zahar on the Boxing Fitness Boom appeared first on Athletech News.

Red light therapy is highly popular these days, but most people are using the modality all wrong – or at least sub-optimally.

That’s the hypothesis of Forrest Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Kineon, a brand that’s on a mission to bring the benefits of properly dosed red light therapy to the masses. Founded in 2019 and initially launched in 2021 on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, Kineon has established itself as one of the more intriguing young brands in the burgeoning wellness tech space. 

The brand’s Move+ Pro device uses LED and lasers to provide targeted red light therapy directly to the skin. This makes Kineon’s version of red light therapy superior to your typical red light bed, Smith says, since it provides a more optimal and consistent dosage of red light. 

According to the brand, Kineon’s portable, at-home device (currently on sale for $399) has been shown to reduce chronic joint pain, lower inflammation and increase blood flow. (editor’s note: there’s some promising research around the benefits of red light therapy, although some experts have stated that more research is needed to confirm the modality’s effectiveness). 

Athletech News sat down with Smith to discuss the birth of Kineon, the benefits of red light therapy and how the brand is working to build trust among skeptical consumers. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Kineon?

Forrest Smith: I moved to China when I was about 19 and started my first business there when I was 20. For almost 20 years, my background was in building, manufacturing, supply chain and hardware, and running factories that built cool technology in China.

I met my partner (Kineon co-founder Tom Sanderson), who also lived in China. We were both talking about building a mission-driven company – for us, that means increasing quality of life for the largest number of people we can in the most measurable way we can. That’s our North Star at Kineon, from technology selection to our go-to-market strategy to how we interact with our users. 

ATN: Out of all the products you could have created to change people’s lives, why did you choose red light therapy? 

FS: We wanted to find a technology that was well supported by robust medical literature. In clinical trials that were using red light and laser therapy, we saw that it was making an impact. When used with proper dosing, they could actually replace pharmaceuticals and even outdo pharmaceuticals on (reducing) pain and inflammation, with no side effects, or at least no negative side effects. But these were being done with $50,000 to $100,000 clinical-level devices. 

So we said, “All right, let’s go build something that’s sub-$500 instead of $50,000 and let’s get this into people’s homes to give them a real opportunity.” If we can replace pharmaceuticals like NSAIDs and opiates for people with chronic pain, that’s a huge impact on their quality of life.

ATN: What are some of the health benefits of properly dosed red light therapy?

FS: There are local, regional and systemic benefits. Locally, short-term benefits include a reduction in inflammation and pain. There’s also a soft-tissue remodeling that happens based on laser therapy, although that occurs on a monthly scale, so it requires you to continue using the device even once you’re out of pain. We’re seeing this outperform Advil and other NSAIDs. If you’re taking Advil for your aching knees, this is going to outperform that in the first couple of weeks, and it also puts you on a path to heal your tissue longer term.

On a regional scale, we see increased blood flow. There are a number of systemic benefits as well. Where inflammation is treating your body poorly, you can start to impact that by way of different blood treatments with lasers. One of the more interesting outcomes we’ve seen recently is treating around your neck with what’s called proximal priority therapy (PPT), which has improved a number of different things, including long COVID, When systemic inflammation is reduced, and scarring in the lungs is reduced as well. 

ATN: Red light beds have become popular in gyms and wellness centers around the world. What are the benefits of using Kineon, which applies red light directly to the skin, compared to red light beds? 

FS: Beds are typically LED, and they emit in a broader pattern. We think of panels and beds as a first version that introduces this technology to the market. But the dosing is superficial so you’re not going to penetrate through to the internal tissue. And it’s very difficult to dose (properly and accurately). The analogy we give is that beds are like receiving a bottle of pharmaceuticals, and instead of taking this prescribed amount, you just shake it in front of your face and whatever falls in your mouth is the dose you’re going to take today. That might help you, but it might not.

We don’t like to beat on other people’s products; it’s great that they got these to market. But I think the medical literature has shown that you want to have the dosing as dialed in as possible to have consistent and reliable positive outcomes. Over the next 18 months, we’re going to be developing sensors that can sense the responses from every individual’s body and then modulate the dosing based on that so it’s more personalized.

ATN: What types of consumers are buying Kineon products? 

FS: We have three main user groups. One is young people who are performance and recovery-focused, including professional athletes and aspiring professional athletes. They get after it hard and they use our device to stay healthy. The second group is middle-aged guys like me with a bunch of gray hairs, but who’d like to continue doing some kind of training. I’m still playing rugby, I’m still doing CrossFit, and I’d like to do that as long as I can. We’ve had a lot of success reaching both of those groups from a digital marketing standpoint on the direct-to-consumer side.

However, we’ve found that the people who get the best results from a medical standpoint are people 55 and over who have chronic joint pain and other chronic pain issues. But whenever we marketed them, they’d say, “Oh, this is snake oil.”

So about a year ago, we started testing with medical professionals, and now our fastest-growing segment of the business is working with chiropractors, orthopedic surgeons, PTs, physios, and wellness and longevity clinics. We have around 150 up and running now and we’ve been adopted by some nationwide chains. By the end of this year, we’ll be in around 5,000 different clinics, so professionals can provide their patients with a non-pharmaceutical solution to pain.

ATN: Speaking of the term “snake oil,” there are a lot of dubious wellness and recovery products on the market today. How does Kineon work to build consumer trust?

FS: We live in the medical literature and the science. We have collaborations with major labs that are doing research in this space. Our CTO is a PhD and our head of research is a PhD candidate. We also try to set expectations as reasonably and realistically as possible. For example, sciatica often triggers a lot of inflammation and discomfort. We can help with the inflammation and we can help with the soft tissue around it. What we’re not going to be able to do with this device is fix the mechanical underpinning for that. We try to be upfront and transparent with people as to what they can expect from us. 

ATN: Kineon recently released the Move+Pro, and you mentioned a sensor-integrated version of the product that’s coming soon. What’s y0ur vision for the future of the brand?

FS: It’s really to identify which technology we can build to move the needle for people in a measurable way for their quality of life. We see that as providing the world’s best tools, reducing friction points and reducing cost over time. 

The post CEO Corner: Kineon’s Forrest Smith on Democratizing Red Light Therapy appeared first on Athletech News.

Manning Sumner is changing the fitness scene in South Florida. Soon, he might be changing it across the United States. 

A former college football player turned personal trainer, Sumner has worked with top athletes including Kevin Durant and James Harden, among others. In 2008, he founded Legacy, a fitness brand that’s on a mission to redefine group fitness – and the traditional gym experience. 

Legacy’s calling card is Partner Interval Training (P.I.T.), a system that pairs individuals who work out together, motivating each other and performing strength training exercises and high-intensity cardio movements. P.I.T. operates as a private training session inside of a larger group fitness format – partners work out together as part of a class of 20 to 40 people, creating a fitness atmosphere that recreates the camaraderie of a college football weight room 

Legacy has seven locations in South Florida, including a new 12,000-square-foot flagship studio in Miami’s Little River neighborhood that includes not just group fitness but recovery amenities like saunas and cold plunges, a 1,000-square-foot physical therapy space, co-working stations and a video board that streams sporting events.

Legacy will look to replicate its Little River facility in other states. This year, the brand plans to open a Nashville gym, its first location outside of Florida, which could set the stage for further expansion. 

Sumner, who is also the founder of No Days Off Premium Water, sat down with Athletech News to discuss his approach to the business of fitness, the unique features of Partner Internal Training and Legacy’s plans for the future. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Legacy?

Manning Sumner: I played all sports growing up but leaned into football because that’s what my Dad played. I broke my back during my junior year of high school and was told I’d never walk again. Through a lot of perseverance and a lot of ignoring doctors, I was able to rehab myself and become the defensive player of the year in Alabama, earning a scholarship at Auburn. I broke my back again at Auburn, which was devastating, but I leaned into learning more about exercise science, health and kinesiology. I made a commitment to myself that I wanted to help other people not go through what I went through. 

After college, I became a strength and conditioning coach, when I got a random call from a friend who told me I could be a stunt double in Bad Boys II if I moved to Miami. I jumped at the opportunity and came down here. During that time, I started training my friends who were in the NFL and other professional athletes, building up a name for myself. I was then able to open up my own facility in November 2008 in Wynwood (Miami, Florida), which was the very first Legacy. 

ATN: What separates Legacy from a typical fitness studio or gym?

MS: Every single gym I walked into was exactly the same, it was that old-school model with offices on the right, a cardio section, a free weight section and a machine section. Then there was that aerobics room tucked off on the corner, which was where all the energy was coming from. I came from a college football weight room background with music blasting and chalk flying. I thought, “Man, fitness should be more like this.” 

I had a real vision in my head of doing something different, creating a category disruptor in the commercial fitness space where as soon as you walk in you’re in an environment that was meant for community and results. So I flipped the script and put the aerobics room in the middle of the gym. That’s our Partner Interval Training room, which is the energy of Legacy. I think we’ve hit that on the nail on the head. One of the first things people say about our gyms is energy and community. I know a lot of gyms say they have community, but for us, you can really tell the difference.

ATN: Legacy is known for its Partner Interval Training (P.I.T.) system. How does P.I.T. work and what are its benefits? 

MS: It’s a system I created while training professional athletes. It’s an antagonistic (strength training) approach – a push movement followed by a pull movement – mixed with high-intensity cardio. I’ll give an example: we might alternate six reps of the seated row for two minutes straight. Then we’d head to the chest press and do the same thing. Then, we go do a high-intensity cardio movement, like the fan bike, for 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off. We’ve also got heavy bags, sleds, ropes and hurdles, so it’s an intense workout. 

I believe we’re the only group fitness system that uses selectorized equipment (machines), which is the safest way possible for people to lift weights. And accountability is very important in fitness. Even though we have a coach in every class, you also have a partner who spots you, counts your reps, motivates you and pushes you in a little friendly competition. The partnering aspect is special, and we’ve seen it transform people’s idea of what working out is.

ATN: Do Legacy members typically work out with a partner they know, or do they meet new people in class?

MS: It’s probably around 50/50. We have husbands and wives, family members and best friends who come together. But there are a lot of people who just show up and we pair them. We’re increasing sociability and community in that way. We’re insistent that you have to introduce yourself and learn your partner’s name – you can’t just go through the workout and not talk to your partner.

ATN: What are the typical demographics of a Legacy member?

MS: We’re on the younger side because it’s an intense workout. I’d say 21 to 45 is probably our sweet spot. But we had an 82-year-old woman celebrate her birthday at one of our locations and we’ve had a seven-year-old come regularly to class. So it’s doable for everyone. 

ATN: What’s Legacy’s growth trajectory been like since you founded the brand in 2008?

MS: When I first started in 2008, it was a personal training-only gym. We then switched to more of a group exercise model, alongside me training professional athletes, which is when the brand really took off. We opened our second location in Coral Gables in 2017, our third in Doral in 2018, followed by Kendall in 2019, and then Pembroke Pines and Ft. Lauderdale in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.

During the pandemic, I realized I didn’t want to be a boutique fitness brand because I was seeing a heightened sense of awareness of wellness and community. People want more than just a great workout, they also want to do some personal training, do some weights on their own, hit the cold plunge or the sauna, hang out at the smoothie bar and get some work done in a co-working space. 

In 2021, we relocated our Wynwood location out of a warehouse into a beautiful, high-end retail space, and we opened Little River in 2024. Our Wynwood, Ft. Lauderdale and Little River locations now serve as our flagship locations and will be our signature models moving forward. We’re opening in Nashville in 2025 and we’re also opening in Aventura (Florida). I could honestly see a Legacy in every major city.

ATN: Nashville will be Legacy’s first location outside of Florida. What are your expansion goals in the years ahead? 

MS: I’m one of those people where all the boxes have to be checked. Do I have certain places I want to go? Yes. Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles, your typical major cities. But when I say all boxes have to be checked, I mean it. It’s got to be the right space, the right developer, the right landlord and the right price. 

After we make a splash in Nashville, I envision having someone come in from a corporate standpoint who can help us scale this thing and put one in every major city. That might be a Series A round.

The post CEO Corner: Legacy’s Manning Sumner on Redefining Group Fitness appeared first on Athletech News.

Celebrity and influencer-founded brands are a dime a dozen these days, but W is doing things a bit differently. 

Co-founded by social media star Jake Paul, along with entrepreneur Geoffrey Woo and consumer/retail industry vet Woodie Hillyard, W is out to disrupt the men’s personal care space with a line of “better-for-you” products including body wash, deodorant, bar soap and more. 

W’s products all retail for less than $10 and are free from parabens, sulfates, phthalates and artificial dyes, bringing young men into the era of natural wellness.

Leveraging Paul’s popularity on social media, W has quickly built an impressive brand: the company launched in June exclusively at Walmart and did over seven figures in sales in its first month, being touted as the best launch in the history of the retail giant’s “Emerging Brands” category. A month later, W announced that it had raised $14 million in funding to drive product and retail expansion.

Hillyard, who serves as W’s CEO, sat down with Athletech News to discuss W’s mission to disrupt the men’s personal care category, how the brand leverages its affiliation with Jake Paul to drive awareness, and what’s coming next for W as it plots a category takeover. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to join W? 

Woodie Hillyard: I’ve always loved consumer-facing businesses. I realized when I was in private equity and investment banking, I was more interested in the brands we were working with than the financial engineering aspect of it. Around 2015, I joined Casper, the direct-to-consumer mattress brand, when it was very much still a startup. I was there for almost five years, and I got to do a lot of different things including finance, marketing, a bit of product, and then my last role was running the e-commerce business. 

I moved to LA about four years ago when I got an opportunity to be on the founding team of Safely, which we started with Kris Jenner. I was a chief revenue officer there – we didn’t have a CEO in the business, so I got to play day-to-day CEO. We launched that brand in Walmart, which showed me the opportunity to build big brands at Walmart.

When the opportunity came along around two years ago to start working with Jake and Geoff on a new brand, I got really excited because Jake’s demographic is aligned with the American consumer. This brand has been a perfect opportunity for me to combine my unique skill sets and the career experiences I’ve had so far. 

ATN: Why did you choose men’s personal care for W?  

WH: When we looked at men’s care, we saw a lot of brands targeting and serving that older generation, but Jake’s demographic – 10 to 30-year-old males – wasn’t being focused on. There’s this massive gap in the market that Axe used to fill, but no one really fills it anymore. We just felt like there needed to be a different brand, with a unique mission, in this space. 

ATN: What does W do differently than other men’s care brands to appeal to the 10 to 30-year-old male demographic?

WH: We do a lot of things differently. First, there’s just a level of authenticity that we bring relative to other brands. I think everyone is trying to be “cool” as a brand. But the amazing thing about working with a creator like Jake is he is cool, and he knows what this generation thinks. That’s a huge differentiator for our brand.

It’s also our product. I’ve seen this firsthand with several brands – the majority of Americans aren’t ready for an all-natural product, but they’re open to better-for-you products. So when developing this product, we took out parabens, phthalates and sulfates, a lot of these negative chemicals that are included in a lot of personal care products that just don’t need to be in there to have an effective product. We also produce everything in America, which we think is important, and it also makes our supply chain more manageable. And then price-point: a lot of new brands in this category launch at a premium price. We wanted something a bit more approachable for the average consumer. 

ATN: What does W do on the marketing front to appeal to young male consumers? 

WH: We’re trying to have fun. I think because we’re a creator-led brand, we have permission to have a lot more fun and to be a bit more irreverent relative to a normal brand. If you look at our (social media) feed, we’re trying to entertain our consumers and bring our brand to life through entertainment. 

We’ve done that quite effectively since we launched. We have about 5x the number of organic, tagged social posts relative to every other men’s personal care brand in the space. We have over 100,000 followers on our Instagram account, and we’ve had several videos get over 100 million views. To me, this shows that our product is resonating with digitally native consumers in a way other brands aren’t.

ATN: Jake Paul is one of the world’s most popular influencers, with millions of social media followers. How much do you lean into Jake to market W versus letting the brand stand on its own? 

WH: Jake is obviously a very important part of the brand. He’s our co-founder, and his DNA is in this brand in a lot of ways. But we intentionally didn’t name the brand after Jake Paul, unlike a lot of celebrity brands. It’s W, which stands for “Win.” We’re meant to inspire men to do their best and get audacious wins every day.

We’re always going to leverage Jake for inspiration, for creativity – we talk to Jake every day. He’s a huge part of this brand, and ultimately, he’s a great channel for distribution and awareness. But if we’re successful, the people who are buying W 12 or 24 months from now hopefully won’t know it’s a Jake Paul brand. 

ATN: W launched in Walmart stores only. Why did you choose Walmart as your first distribution partner?

WH: We talked to a few retailers, and from the get-go, Walmart was excited about our vision for the brand – I think they understand the power of someone like Jake. We also did some data analysis prior to launching the brand to see where Jake’s followers lined up with the demographics of some of the different retailers in the U.S., and Walmart really made sense for Jake’s demographic. His fans are America, and 90% of America shops at Walmart. We were in over 4,000 Walmarts nationwide from the jump. It takes most brands years to build that scale and distribution. 

ATN: Besides partnering with Walmart, what’s been the key to W’s quick success in the men’s personal care category? 

WH: We did a great job of announcing to people that we were here in a big way. I’m biased, but out of all of the launches I’ve seen, I think we had the biggest launch of the year, especially in the consumer space. I also think Jake has done an amazing job. He really lives the brand. You always see him with a product in the background of his videos or wearing merch. A big part of our success is that people see the brand out in the world. 

ATN: Could W look to expand into other retail channels or are you exclusive with Walmart? 

WH: We don’t have exclusivity, but at launch, we just focused on Walmart because we wanted to make sure we executed well. Next year, we’re going to be expanding into nationwide grocery chains. Grocery is a very different channel than Walmart, so it’s going to be an exciting opportunity for us to win there. 

ATN: What does W’s product mix look like right now, and could you expand in the future?

WH: Our current lineup is the core categories within men’s personal care. We have our deodorant, body spray, body wash, bar soap and a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner – the basics of a shower routine. We also have three face-and-hair SKUs: a pomade, hair gel and face wash.

In 2025, we’re going to be bringing some new innovations. One of the products we’re excited about is a natural deodorant. The exact launch date is TBD, but I’ve been using it for the last few weeks, and it’s great. 

ATN: Looking ahead, what’s your vision for the future of W? 

WH: I want W to become the next multi-generational brand in men’s personal care. I think if we can keep building the brand around this idea of instilling confidence in men and trying to inspire people to get the W and just be a better version of themselves, there are a lot of cool category adjacencies we can go into as well. 

Ten years from now, I see W being a multi-billion dollar company that is playing in personal care and also playing in some of these adjacencies. We’ll be a fixture in the lives of most men in America, because they resonate with the message and they want to be associated with a brand that stands for being a better version of yourself. 

The post CEO Corner: Woodie Hillyard on W, Disrupting Men’s Care With Jake Paul appeared first on Athletech News.

Pickleball might be all the rage right now in the United States, but another racket sport could be coming for the crown. 

Padel, a sport invented in Mexico in 1969, has emerged as a potential competitor to pickleball’s hegemony inside gyms and health clubs across America. Essentially a cross between tennis and squash, padel is popular in countries including Spain (where it’s the second most popular sport after soccer), Italy, Argentina, Sweden and its homeland of Mexico, among others.

Santiago Gomez is betting that padel will make it big in America, too. 

A Mexico-born padel fan turned New York entrepreneur, Gomez founded Padel Haus in 2022 in Brooklyn as New York City’s first dedicated padel club. Since then, Padel Haus opened two additional clubs in Brooklyn, with new locations set for Denver, Nashville and Atlanta.

Gomez sat down with Athletech News to discuss the origins and growth padel, why the racket sport is poised for growth in the U.S. and his plans for the future of Padel Haus.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Padel Haus?

Santiago Gomez: I was born in Mexico and grew up between Mexico City and Acapulco, where padel was invented in 1969. I grew up with the sport in my blood – my family has been playing it for years. I started playing as a teenager and played until after I graduated college in Mexico. 

I moved to New York in 2010 to work in finance – at that time there were no courts here, so I stopped paying. In 2014, I left my finance job and opened a few restaurants, which I sold in 2020 when COVID came. During COVID, I moved back to Mexico for a bit and started playing padel again every day. I’d heard they opened a first club in Miami, Wynwood Padel Club, and that it was doing quite well. That’s when I got the idea of opening a club in New York City. I came back to New York and opened our first club (in Dumbo, Brooklyn) in the summer of 2022. 

ATN: How would you describe padel for people who aren’t familiar with the sport?

SG: Padel is like a mix between tennis and squash. You play on a smaller court than tennis and can use the walls, which is why it’s somewhat similar to squash. It’s doubles only, so four people on a court. 

Even though it was invented in Mexico, there are now 25 million people playing padel worldwide. In places like Spain and Sweden, padel has surpassed tennis as the largest racket sport. “Padel” searches on Google are up almost 100% year-on-year for the past three or four years. 

Brands are also starting to realize the value of the sport and the amount of players who are passionate about it. Brands like Adidas and Wilson, which used to be just tennis brands, now have their own padel lines. Some fashion brands like Prada and Zara have also launched their own padel lines. 

ATN: Padel hasn’t historically been popular in the United States, but that’s starting to change. How would you assess padel’s growth trajectory in America? 

SG: The U.S. was probably the last (large, Western) country where the sport wasn’t present, up until three or four years ago. Since then, it’s grown around 100% year-on-year in terms of players and clubs. The Pro Padel League (PPL) was just created, which I compare a lot with MLS. When soccer started in the U.S., it was kind of late to the game but everybody played it worldwide. Then MLS started growing by bringing in a lot of former top players or retired players. The PPL is somewhat doing the same.

Given its size and the amount of potential players, I think the U.S. is going to become the number one padel market in the years to come. Right now, there are about 400 courts but I think we can easily get to 5,000.

ATN: Is the rise of pickleball in America a good or bad thing for the future of padel? 

SG: Pickleball, padel, tennis, ping pong, squash – any racket sport – I think they all help each other out. The world has seen a rise in racket sports as a whole, and pickleball did a great thing by converting some tennis players to try pickleball for the first time. I see the same with pickleball players trying padel for the first time. The conversion in most cases is one way, meaning people try padel and they just want to play paddle; they don’t want to go back to tennis or pickleball. We have a 92% retention rate in terms of people who come to try this sport for a second time returning for a third time. 

Padel players tend to have a different profile than pickleball players. Padel players tend to be a bit younger and more athletic, whereas pickleball is mainly for people who wouldn’t play sports otherwise. Padel has more strategy involved because of the walls, and it’s a bit more (physically) challenging because you’re running more on a bigger court. 

ATN: Why did you decide to launch Padel Haus in New York City to start, and how has the brand grown since 2022? 

SG: New York is a fantastic market given how many expats and foreigners live here. In all of the facilities we’ve opened here, the club was full within one or two months. Initially, most of our players were international, but those people told their friends who came over and tried it for the first time. Now, the majority of our players are Americans. 

As we go to new markets like Nashville, Denver and Atlanta, one thing they all have in common is that they’re wellness-first markets. A lot of people who live in Denver are outdoorsy and they want to try sports. Nashville has also gone through a transition in terms of what people like to do for social activities. 

ATN: What’s the typical demographic profile(s) of a Padel Haus member?

SG: When we first opened in New York, 90% of our customers were male. Now we’re at around  65% men and 35% women. That probably has to do a lot with where we are in New York City. We don’t get a lot of stay-at-home moms but we’ll get that in other cities like Nashville and Denver. 

ATN: What are your expansion goals for Padel Haus over the next few years?

SG: We want to get to 40 facilities within the next five years. We’re looking at every tier-one and tier-two city right now. 

We want to be close to downtown in most of the cities that we go to, and we’re targeting cities that have at least 800,000 people and that have purchasing power to pay the rates that we ask for. I always say we have a premium facility and we have premium prices. Because of that, we stay closer to the city centers.

The post CEO Corner: Padel Haus’ Santiago Gomez on the Next Big Racket Sport appeared first on Athletech News.

Seed Health is on a mission to take the guesswork out of picking a probiotic, all while bringing more scientific rigor to a supplement industry often slammed for leading with marketing claims over solid research. 

Founded in 2015 by co-CEOs Ara Katz and Raja Dhir, Seed has become one of the best-selling probiotic products in the United States, powered by its flagship DS-01, a daily “symbiotic” that combines probiotics and prebiotics into one pill. 

Seed Health describes itself as a “microbiome science” company instead of a supplement maker, and its website contains reams of research pointing to the DS-01’s effectiveness over rival probiotics.

In 2021, the company secured $40 million in Series A financing to expand its product line and fund new clinical research. In 2024, Seed launched CODA, a computational biology platform for microbiome research, released a vaginal probiotic for women’s health and expanded into Target, its first retail partnership.

Katz sat down with Athletech News to share what makes the DS-01 different from other probiotic products on the market, explain why vaginal probiotics may be the future of women’s health, and detail what’s next for Seed over the coming years.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Seed?

Ara Katz: I have an eclectic background – I come from consumer tech and I also spent time in media, so the through line of my career has always been in storytelling and translating frontier tech into relevant consumer health innovations. You’ll notice I have no MD or PhD as a suffix to my name, though I run a science company. Outside of my professional life, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when I was 16, and I started reading scientific papers and learning about clinical trials. Ever since then, I’ve been a fascinated science enthusiast and somebody who’s spent a lot of time deeply understanding health biology, where science is heading and how that impacts the decisions that we make for our bodies and our health.

I felt from a very young age that there’s a real translation problem between how science is communicated and how we ultimately make decisions that impact our lives. So the microbiome was this perfect confluence for me of a frontier field of science that was ripe for translation into not just consumer health innovations that could impact health, but also the storytelling of the microbiome and how this new framework of biology could shape the future of health.

ATN: How does Seed approach storytelling around the microbiome?

AK: We work from this beautiful tenant that I can’t take credit for, but it certainly inspires me every day, which is the idea that science isn’t finished until it’s communicated. As it relates to our marketing, I think the microbiome as a framework really upends and certainly augments so much of what we understand today about human health, biology and pathology.

We’ve always led with science and education. We also want people to think of our brand as kind of the anti-marketing brand in some ways – we do very provocative things sometimes to try and get people to shift their perspectives in the same way the microbiome gets us to think differently about health. We’re always trying to find new and interesting ways to Trojan-horse science into the cultural zeitgeist.

ATN: Can you share any examples of Seed’s provocative marketing?

AK: We did a big Citizen Science campaign a few years ago, it was called the #GIVEASHIT campaign. Basically, we crowdsourced the largest image database of poop – human stool – in the world, and acquired an AI that can diagnose stool off of an image and Bristol Stool-type it, which is the diagnostic criteria for stool. It was a big educational and cultural zeitgeist moment that was covered by a lot of people. It was also a cool way of us saying, “Hey, stool is a really important biomarker of health.”

ATN: What separates Seed’s flagship product, the DS-01, from other probiotics on the market? 

AK: DS-01 is the most genomically diverse probiotic that exists in the market (in the U.S.) and internationally.  That’s very important because when something’s more genomically diverse, you have the capability of impacting a heterogeneous population regardless of their starting microbiome. It’s the equivalent of making a t-shirt that’s one size fits all. 

The second is just the strain selection itself. The quality of our clinical research is another major differentiator. DS-o1 just completed two clinical trials: we’re the first to demonstrate antibiotic maintenance of gut immune and gut barrier function, as well as enrichment of bifidobacteria in the gut alongside and after broad-spectrum antibiotics. And we just completed an IBS study at Harvard, also with positive results. 

ATN: Why did Seed decide to create the VS-01, a vaginal probiotic?

AK: Going back to our initial vision, we saw that the microbiome was far beyond the gut. We began our vaginal microbiome program very early in our journey of building Seed. There are so many unmet medical needs in women’s health that are a consequence of everything from overuse of antibiotics to a complete marginalization and underfunding of innovations in the field. 

The vaginal microbiome is probably one of the most critical discoveries in all of biology. We now know that it’s the foundation of gynecological, reproductive and neurogenital health. There’s really nothing that happens in the vagina where microbes and the microbiome aren’t involved. By the way, the gut and the vagina couldn’t be more opposite. In the gut, you want a huge amount of diversity, think about it as a rainforest. The vagina is like an apple orchard. 

ATN: What types of products could Seed look to create in the years ahead? 

AK: Many. I’ll just say we have programs in the skin microbiome, nutrition, gut-brain access and metabolic health.

ATN: How do you work against the negative perception many people have of the supplement industry?

AK: The skepticism of the supplement industry is incredibly well warranted. The FDA has important work to do and it doesn’t really have the bandwidth to enforce all of the bad actors. I think that puts a lot of onus on the consumer to determine if something has integrity and scientific credibility. At the same time, I also think people sometimes underestimate consumers. There are cues you can look at: for example, who are the scientists that are listed on the website? Are they credible? Do they have any scientific studies? Have you shared this with your doctor or another health practitioner that you trust?

I also think there’s a whole new wave of companies in this space that are trying to do the right thing and are trying to do good science. 

ATN: Should everyone be taking a probiotic? 

AK: We conceptualized DS-01 to answer the question, “Why would an otherwise healthy person take a probiotic every day?” You have to remember, “otherwise healthy” has a big asterisk. 80 million people in the United States have a GI event every single week and 15% of the United States has diagnosed IBS. So we’re talking about very large cohorts of people that experience some level of discomfort, and that’s before you really start to characterize what it means to be a human being walking around with a body that simply was not made for the built environment we live in. We’ve published papers about dishwasher rinse aids and laundry detergent just living in our built environment that assault our gut barrier and the epithelial barriers of our whole body. Most people have some opportunity to improve digestion or GI health. That’s just from statistics. 

But if you said to me, I can take DS-01 and I only have the money for that, or I can eat healthy and incorporate more plants into my diet, I’d tell you to focus on nutrition. But for $1.67 a day, and with over a million people who’ve said (Seed) literally has changed my life, I think we’ve created something that’s made a tremendous impact on people’s overall health. 

ATN: What’s your vision for the future of Seed?

AK: When people think about the microbiome, I want them to think about us both for education and understanding, as well as the leading innovations in the space. And that will be in more and more parts of your life, not just in capsules. We’re thinking about all the areas of your home and of your well-being where microbiome science and/or the power of microbes can nurture this ecology of your body that is so impactful to your overall health

The post CEO Corner: Seed Health’s Ara Katz on the Science of Probiotics appeared first on Athletech News.

Few gym brands are as hot as Vasa Fitness, which has quickly emerged as a serious competitor to low-price giants like Planet Fitness, Crunch Fitness and the like. 

The Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Vasa has taken the high-value, low-price (HVLP) gym world by storm since its founding in 2014, expanding to 61 locations in eight states across the Midwest and Mountain West, with ambitious plans for further expansion.  

The man behind much of that growth is Rich Nelsen, the CEO of Vasa Fitness who took that position in 2018 after stints at Starbucks and In-Shape Health Clubs (now In-Shape Family Fitness).

Under Nelsen, Vasa has been certified multiple times as a Great Place to Work, has added Studio, a new boutique fitness-style offering, and has built out its executive team with industry-leading talent. 

Nelsen sat down with Athletech News to discuss his first six years at the helm of Vasa, give his thoughts on the future of the HVLP gym industry and share some details on Vasa’s expansion strategy in the years ahead.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to join Vasa Fitness as its CEO in 2018?

Rich Nelsen: I left Starbucks in 2016 after a pretty good career there. I ran most of the middle part of the U.S. for a bit of a time, then I ran Europe and the Middle East for two and a half years, then Latin and South America for the balance of my time. I essentially learned Starbucks’ business from the ground up and then spread that knowledge and experience across many franchisees all over the world, in 54 countries.

I said I’d never leave Starbucks unless I could be the CEO of a fitness brand. And so it happened – I moved to California to become part of (In-Shape Health Clubs). I was lucky to have a lot of people surrounding me who knew the industry well, and I was able to bring the Starbucks experience to life through a fitness brand. 

Then I got connected with Vasa and Silver Oak (Services Partners), our current private equity partner, who asked me if I’d like to move back home to Denver, Colorado, to expand the brand. The rest is history. 

ATN: What did you bring to the fitness industry from your time at Starbucks?

RN: Understanding the customer. One of the things Starbucks is known for is really knowing customer behaviors. Running two international markets, I learned that while customers are all the same, they’re also very different in terms of how they consume the product, experience the product and experience customer service. 

The fitness industry was very slow to evolve. Other than the $9.99 (monthly membership) price point, not much was evolving six years or eight years ago. It’s evolving now as the consumer becomes more demanding and has higher expectations. We’re here to solve some of those problems. 

ATN: Take us back to 2018 when you started at Vasa. What were your early priorities for the brand?

RN: First of all, we’re a company founded in Utah and primarily based in Utah (Vasa’s HQ recently relocated to Colorado). We had aspirations to grow outside of Utah, and so we had to understand the consumer in Utah but also the consumer in other surrounding states that we wanted to do business in, and learn to professionalize the brand so that it would be approachable (there).

Number two was professionalizing the organization. We were a small company with 23 locations, growing one (gym) at a time – we wanted to grow eight to 10 at a time, so we had to professionalize everything from accounting to fitness to marketing. It was a combination of leveraging the strengths internally of the organization – people who had been there a long time – and bringing some new thought leaders into the organization to leverage their skills. 

ATN: Vasa has expanded quickly over the last few years, now counting 61 gyms. What separates Vasa from other HVLP gym brands?

RN:I think we built an employee culture that is second to none. It’s the third year that we’ve been certified by Great Place to Work, and if you talk to the people in the organization, we all believe we can be better than we even are today. That energy translates to our members, and it’s why we treat our members better than anyone else.  We believe we have the highest usage rates in the industry. In an industry where not everybody wants you to come to the gym, our brand lives off the energy of people actually visiting. We know our retention success is largely attributed to people actually using the gym. 

We also think our extra amenities have added a great deal of value. We created Studio almost seven years ago on the belief that we could do boutique fitness for HVLP inside of our gym. We have over 1,000 members per club (using) our Studio product currently. So we’ve sort of become the mall of fitness, if you will. We have your basic Gap store, we have your Abercrombie store, and then we have Tiffany – Tiffany is probably a stretch, because we’re $44, but you get my point. 

The third thing is we professionalize marketing, so we begin to talk to our consumers in a different way about how the brand could change their daily lives, as opposed to, “Hey, we’re here to sell $9.99 (memberships).” 

ATN: How has the gym floor evolved at Vasa over your six years as CEO, particularly since the pandemic? 

RN: We already talked about Studio, so I won’t keep beating that drum. You have a trend going on right now with strength (training) amongst men and women. You’ll see changes in our equipment, with more lower-body lifting equipment and more free weights as opposed to machines. Our new clubs average somewhere between eight and 10 Olympic platforms per club. We were the first to start that and now you see other people doing it. We studied where the trends were in college students seven years ago, and we started adding platforms back then. 

We (also) started taking out racquetball to (add) Studio. And cycling has slowed quite a bit via the pandemic – people bought cycles at home or bought bicycles to ride, so classes aren’t as popular as they once were.

ATN: How do you think HVLP gyms might continue to evolve over the next few years?

RN: I think it’s going to be more individual and more customized. We’re going to need to create spaces inside the gym where it feels like you’re a part of something even bigger. Studio is our way of currently articulating that – you can become part of Studio, you have your friends in the Studio community, you might go to (traditional) group fitness and be part of that community, and then you might be on the free-weight floor as a part of that community. 

ATN: Vasa is corporate-owned, which is a different model than most of your HVLP gym competitors who sell franchise licenses. What’s behind this decision? 

RN: I get this question all the time from people who want to franchise. I would just say, we’re in the journey of the brand where we want to control the outcome, and we’re building a brand not opening gyms. Right now, I don’t feel comfortable letting somebody else be in control of the execution behind that.

(Franchising) certainly could be a possibility when we feel like we’ve nailed the execution of the brand and have the ability to share that with others. Today, we’re not ready. 

ATN: Vasa has already expanded quite a bit across the Midwest and Mountain West, with gyms in eight states. What are your expansion goals over the next few years?

We could grow to as many as 100 units in five years. We have the current capacity to grow 20 units a year. I think you could look anywhere in the U.S. where a state doesn’t touch the ocean and you could see a Vasa there. We’re going to be primarily Mountain West to Midwest, getting closer to the East Coast. We have LOIs in several states from here to there. 

ATN: Why does Vasa prefer to stay away from the coasts right now?

RN: We do incredibly well in the Midwest states. Our brand is regenerating communities that have been left behind. We don’t want to change our pricing strategy to not be uniform. One day, we may. Also, I don’t want to get into politics, but it’s more complicated to do business in those states.

The post CEO Corner: How Rich Nelsen Turned Vasa Fitness Into a Gym Giant appeared first on Athletech News.

Tianna Strateman is a Pilates lifer. A former competitive dancer, Strateman fell in love with the modality at an early age while rehabbing from an injury and has been a practitioner ever since, later becoming a certified Pilates instructor. 

After earning a business degree from the University of Southern California and spending some time as an executive at another fitness and wellness company, Strateman joined Club Pilates in 2018 as the brand’s vice president of training and experience. 

Over the last six years, Club Pilates has grown from around 200 to more than 1,000 studios worldwide, becoming by far the biggest brand in the Pilates space and playing a critical role in the modality’s rise to fitness prominence. 

In April, Strateman was promoted to president of Club Pilates, tapped to lead the Xponential Fitness-owned brand as it eyes even more growth, especially internationally. 

Strateman sat down with Athletech News to discuss the rise of Club Pilates, her early priorities as president and why she believes Pilates is poised to continue dominating the boutique fitness market.  

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and what brought you to Club Pilates?

Tianna Strateman:  I was a competitive dancer when I was young, which is kind of the cliche – Pilates and dancers – that a lot of people used to think of historically. My dance teacher recommended Pilates because of its prehab and rehabilitative approach. At the time, I was doing Pilates at a physical therapy office because Pilates was generally only found in physical therapy offices or really small boutique studios. It was very different 25 years ago than it is today. I’ve been in love with the practice ever since. 

I think what brought me to Club Pilates was my background of having a business degree and my previous work experience, but also being a certified Pilates instructor, which I’ve been for more than 15 years now. That unique blend was perfect for Club Pilates. I joined in January 2018.

ATN: You’ve played a key role in Club Pilates’ impressive growth over the past six years. What’s allowed the brand to expand so quickly?

TS: When I started we had around 200 doors open. Today, we have over 1,000 in 12 countries and counting. It’s been a really amazing experience to be a part of that ride. 

While I can’t give away all our secret sauce, I would say the success of Club Pilates can be attributed to a number of factors, starting with our great franchisees. Their commitment and dedication to the brand and delivering an exceptional experience are truly pivotal to our success and growth. Second, the teams of instructors and staff at the studio level bring the experience to life every day to make Pilates accessible to “everyBODY,” as we like to say. Last would be the support provided by the Club Pilates team here at the corporate office, with the support of our parent company, Xponenential Fitness. Across the entirety of Club Pilates, the commitment we collectively have to deliver an incredible Pilates experience is something we don’t take for granted and continue to work toward every day. 

ATN: Pilates is hotter than ever, surpassing modalities like HIIT and indoor cycling and even threatening to top yoga. Why do you think Pilates has become so popular over the last few years?

TS: Timing is everything, although Pilates has been around for over 100 years since Joseph Pilates founded the practice. The growth and popularity are due to a lot of factors, but I think Club Pilates is a huge part of it since we have a presence in so many places. Our ethos and our belief is to make Pilates accessible to people who’ve never had the opportunity to try the modality for a variety of reasons, either because it was for private training and small boutique studios only, or offered every so often in a group setting in a big-box gym. 

I think once people try Pilates, whatever their individual goals are, the practice can be modified and adjusted to meet them where they’re at, whether they’re an athlete, recovering from injury or surgery, or just looking to be active and focus on longevity. I’ve been a practitioner for 25 years. Pilates has taken me from being a competitive athlete to recovering from injuries to being focused on just working out and being as healthy as I can be to pregnancy, postpartum, you name it. I can see it being a part of my life forever.

ATN: Pilates has historically been much more popular among women, but men are starting to become more interested in the practice. What’s the demographic breakdown of Club Pilates members? 

TS: I would say the majority of our members are still predominantly female, but we’ve seen that continue to shift over the years. We have people from all walks of life, which is part of our ethos of being an inclusive environment for people to try Pilates versus maybe the historical school where Pilates is for dancers or elite athletes only. 

We’re also seeing even younger people come and try Pilates now than we had before, so the demos are continuing to adjust. But generally, I would say 35 and above is typically what we see in our studios. 

ATN: In 2024, you took over as president of Club Pilates, which is the de facto CEO position. What are your key short and long-term goals for the brand?

TS: It’s been an honor to step into this role. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to lead this incredible brand and the amazing team here at the corporate office. Short term, my goal is to continue to support and develop our team to be the best they can be so that collectively we all can support our franchise partners, their staff and their instructors in delivering a great experience to all of our members in all of our studios. I’m always looking at how we can improve.

Our long-term mission is to continue to grow the brand into the household name around the world that we’re looking to become and to bring Pilates to more people, more communities and more markets that have never heard of Pilates or haven’t had the opportunity to try Pilates before.

ATN: Club Pilates is already such a big brand with over 1,000 studios in 12 countries. What are your expansion goals in the U.S. and abroad? 

TS: We stopped putting a number on it at this point, but we’re definitely not slowing down. There’s still room for growth in the U.S. – there’s such a strong demand for Club Pilates and the experience that we provide.

International expansion is definitely also a goal. We’re identifying and working with great master franchisees to bring that to life in various countries. There are some great areas in the works. I can’t speak to exactly where they are yet, but hopefully we can share more soon.

ATN: What fitness and wellness industry trends are you most excited about in 2024? Are there any trends that concern you?  

TS: I think what’s exciting is that people continue to prioritize their health and fitness and wellness, especially post-pandemic. People showing up at studios and wanting to have that in-person interaction – it’s exciting to see the communities that are built because of that. I also love that there’s a more holistic approach to fitness, health and wellness than ever before. Different companies doing a fantastic job and focusing on all the different pieces of that – nutrition, sleep, mental health, etc.

What concerns me is that there’s just so much information out there. We have more access to resources than ever, which is a good thing, but sometimes can be challenging to weave through all the information to hone in on one thing and not get overwhelmed by everything that’s out there. The little things – showing up every day and making a commitment to your fitness, your health and wellness, whatever that looks like for you – are most important to helping all of us live happier, healthier lives.

The post CEO Corner: Tianna Strateman on the Rise of Club Pilates  appeared first on Athletech News.

A few years ago, Anar Isman had an epiphany: he wanted to help people live past 100.  

In 2020, Isman left behind a successful but unfulfilling career in investment management to co-found AgelessRx, a telemedicine platform whose mission is to help people slow down the physical process of aging by prescribing doctor-approved drugs like Metformin, Rapamycin and GLP-1s, among others. 

Isman’s vision for AgelessRx extends beyond profit and loss: his goal is to help grow the field of longevity science into a mainstream force for good, helping change people’s lives – and lifespans – in the process. 

“To me, longevity and anti-aging, it’s not an industry, it’s not a sector. It’s a movement,” Isman says. 

Isman sat down with Athletech News to discuss his decision to create AgelessRx, his thoughts on the field of longevity and anti-aging, and why he believes we’re not too far off from a world where people live far past 100.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create AgelessRx?

Anar Isman: I spent 15 years in various prominent investment funds and then, sometime in my early 30s, I realized I wanted to build something that would change the world. Having done a lot of soul-searching, I couldn’t think of anything more important than slowing down aging and maybe eventually even reversing it. By aging, I mean the accumulation of age-related damage that comes with the passage of time. So we started thinking about how we could make the biggest impact on slowing down aging. The answer was a direct-to-consumer platform. 

AgelessRx is a telemedicine company focused on longevity. Generally, the goal is to give people access to products that can have a potentially positive impact on their lifespan and their health span, products that help them optimize their health, delay the onset of certain age-related conditions, and screen for certain things sooner, like cancer, for example. Right now, everything we deal with requires a prescription. 

ATN: It can be daunting for the average consumer to choose the right anti-aging drugs or supplements among a sea of options. How does AgelessRx help simplify this process?

AI: We put a lot of work into that, and we’ve come up with a very sophisticated assessment. It has around 50 questions and it gives you scores across multiple categories. It’s on our website, and once you do it, it will tell you based on your answers to questions on diet, lifestyle, exercise, family history, sleep patterns, etc., the things that could benefit you. 

We also offer blood tests – you can order a blood test (through the AgelessRx website) or you can upload your own bloodwork. 

ATN: How important is blood test data in prescribing personalized longevity products?

AI: Right now, generally, to be very precise with recommendations, you probably need some kind of blood work. But blood work comes with a lot of obstacles, which result in people not actually doing it. I envision a future where we can get a similar level of insight from the sensory data (in wearables), whether it’s your Apple Watch, Whoop or CGM sensor. That will allow us to personalize supplements or even interventions for you. That’s probably a few years away. 

ATN: “Longevity” has become a buzzword in the wellness community. Has the longevity movement reached a critical mass of Americans yet? 

AI: The longevity movement is definitely more prominent than it was five years ago, and people are much more open to telemedicine after the pandemic. But it’s still very niche. In terms of how many people are knowledgeable and interested in this, it’s still probably in the 2- 3% range across all American adults. So it’s moving in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go. 

ATN: What’s the key to getting more Americans on board with the longevity movement? 

AI: Several things, I think. Do you have a pet? I ask because whenever I talk to people about longevity and living longer, most of them say, “Oh, we shouldn’t be doing that, it’s unnatural,” or whatever other reasons they come up with. But when I say, “Would you like your dog to live longer?” Everyone says, “Yes, sign me up.” 

It’s actually much easier to prove that something is working to slow down aging in dogs – there was a first clinical trial approved specifically for longevity in dogs earlier this year. I’m really optimistic that over the next three to five years, we might have an intervention that you can just give to your dog to live longer without the dog having any disease. I’m hoping that once the 70 million American households that have dogs see that, they’ll say, “Oh, I can give a pill to my dog just to live longer? Why not to my Grandma? Why not to my parents?” I think that might function as an eye-opening event. 

Another accelerated model for aging is female fertility, the female reproductive window, where women’s ovaries and other organs technically age faster than the rest of their organs. If we’re able to slow down the aging of ovaries, for example, I think we can apply similar methods to slow down the aging of other organs.

One of the objections (to longevity science) is that people just don’t believe it’s possible to do anything to slow down aging. It feels kind of inevitable. So if we have something over the next five years that is effective, I think people will change their minds fairly quickly.

ATN: Right now, what does the typical AgelessRx customer look like?

AI: Our average age is probably around 50. But I define our persona differently than just age, it’s more people who want to be their own health advocates, people who come to realize that their primary care physician cares about them but really is very busy treating people who are sick. A lot of doctors don’t have time to figure out what’s the best thing they can do to help you stay healthy. 

Our audience is also made up of people who are very high performers in demanding jobs who are saying, “I need to stay on top of my game, I can’t afford to be crashing at 4 or 5pm.” Those people benefit from things like NAD or B12 injections to give them that additional boost of energy.

ATN: What role should drugs and supplements play in people’s overall quest to live longer and healthier? 

AI: Diet, sleep and exercise are the most important things you can do. Unfortunately, however, even if you have the most optimal of those three, that’s not going to get you to 120 years old or even 100. What we’re talking about is taking it to the next level, augmenting whatever you can get from a healthy lifestyle so you can benefit from a more radical lifespan and healthspan extension. 

I’m not a biologist, but talking to a lot of biologists and physicists, there isn’t really anything from the scientific perspective that says we have to die or become decrepit by age 90 or 100. If we’re able to slow down the accumulation of age-related damage, we could live well in our hundreds and maybe even even longer. 

ATN: What’s your vision for the future of AgelessRx? 

AI: Today, when I talk to people about slowing down aging, nine out of 10 are telling me, “I shouldn’t be doing it.” I envision a world in five to 10 years where that’s going to completely flip on its head, where nine out of 10 people are going to be saying, ‘You don’t want to slow down aging? What’s wrong with you?’ In that world, I’d love for AgelessRx to be the go-to, trusted partner on people’s longevity journey. 

The post CEO Corner: AgelessRx’s Anar Isman on the Future of Longevity Science appeared first on Athletech News.

You’d have trouble finding an executive who’s a better fit for their job than Scott DeRue, the new CEO of The Ironman Group. 

An ultramarathon runner and mountaineer before he joined Ironman, DuRue has a long-standing connection to endurance sports. He also served as the president of luxury fitness brand Equinox and was once dean of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, giving him a powerful combination of personal and professional qualifications. 

DeRue was named CEO of The Ironman Group in January, taking over the brand’s famous triathlon events along with its trail running, road running and cycling competitions across the globe.

In his first 9-plus months on the job, DeRue has dived head-first into all things Ironman, even competing in his first triathlon to get a deeper personal feel for the brand. On the business side, DeRue has helped build out Ironman’s digital presence and revamped its merchandising arm. 

The goal, according to DeRue, is to turn Ironman into a “lifestyle brand” that athletes and consumers can engage with year-round rather than just on race day. 

DeRue sat down with Athletech News to discuss his early days as Ironman CEO, his personal connection to endurance sports, and why he believes Ironman is well-positioned to become an even bigger part of the global sports and fitness landscape. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us a bit about your background in academia and fitness, and why you decided to join Ironman?

Scott DeRue: There’s a common purpose woven throughout my career – I want to create experiences that help people unlock their potential in life. Education changed my life and I wanted to create that same transformative experience for other people, so I spent 14 years as a professor and then dean of a business school (Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan). My time at Equinox was motivated by that same sense of purpose, leveraging health and fitness to help people maximize their potential in life. 

Endurance sports have also been a big part of my life, they’re purpose-filled and bring joy to communities around the world. The Ironman Group is the best in the world at curating amazing experiences around endurance sports that help people unlock their potential.

ATN: You took over as Ironman’s CEO in January. What have your early priorities been?

SD: My first and foremost priority has been to put the athlete first in everything we do. A big part of that was beginning to experience what we do as an athlete, so I’ve jumped into pretty much every event that we have, every brand that we have, and I’ve participated as an athlete because I wanted to experience it from that perspective.

I did the Ironman 70.3 in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was my first triathlon of any distance. It was an incredible experience that filled me with joy. I really got a personal feel for why the triathlon community is so engaged and so passionate. 

ATN: What does putting the athlete first look like on a practical level for Ironman?

SD: There’s been a few areas of focus. We made a really big investment this year in what I’ll call “swag” – T-shirts, bags, medals. Our athletes care deeply about the memories of the experiences they have, and often that comes through the swag that is part of an event. The feedback from our athletes has been off the charts. What may seem small means a lot, and the only way you know that is by putting yourself in the shoes of the athletes to understand what they value.

We also made some big investments this year in digital experiences for our athletes. We rolled out our Athlete Profile, which essentially is the digital centerpiece to everything Ironman, and it becomes the central hub for connecting not only to your races but also the brands we curate, the partners we have in our ecosystem, and different products and services.

For example, like me, many of our athletes are new to triathlon, so we’ve developed a partnership with TriDot, a digital coaching platform that personalizes the experience for our athletes.  

ATN: It seems like you’re working to make Ironman into a lifestyle brand that people can engage with all year long versus just on race day or race weekend?

SD: That’s exactly right. We’re the largest organizer of participation sporting events in the world, and I’d argue we’re the best in the world at putting on world-class events in participation sports, in particular endurance sports. 

The next evolution for us as a brand is to be part of the lives of our athletes in ways that add value throughout their journey. If you’re an Ironman athlete, maybe you do a couple of events a year on average, although some do more. But everyone is going on this journey throughout the year with training and nutrition. Across all of our different brands, we want to be part of that end-to-end journey for the athlete in a way that elevates their experience, race day, race weekend and every day in between.

ATN: The Ironman World Championships just wrapped up in Nice, France (women’s) and Kona, Hawaii (men’s). Did you learn anything from those events that will inform your plans for next year’s Championships?  

SD: We’ll take a big step back and do a debrief on what we learned from Nice and Kona to think about the opportunities for continuous improvement for next year. But we’re always looking for opportunities to uplevel the experience for our athletes. For example, this year in Kona, we brought a lot of the local culture into the week of the race through different immersive, experiential moments where our community from all over the world – 85 different countries – could really open their hearts and minds to embrace Hawaiian culture, from Hula to lei-making to art. 

This isn’t just about swim, bike and run. This is about being part of something bigger than yourself. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback, so I imagine we’ll do even more of that going forward. 

ATN: How would you assess the global demand for mass-participation sporting events like Ironman in 2024? 

SD: For participation sports broadly, I think there are a few important macro trends. One is the demand for experiences over things: people from all segments, young and old, different income levels, etc, are investing in experiences that have personal meaning more so than products or things.

There’s also a macro trend towards travel around sport that is growing exponentially right now. That’s true for spectator sports but it’s also true for participation.  The third trend is from a health and fitness perspective – the degree to which people are investing in their own health, fitness and wellness, broadly defined, is growing exponentially. 

If you put those three things together – a desire for experiences, a desire to travel for those experiences, and a deep commitment to health, fitness and wellness – participation sports benefits, so it’s no surprise that we’re seeing demand for participation sports grow globally.  We (also) benefit from a lot of those, so we’re seeing demand increase across all of our brands, at different rates. 

ATN: What’s your vision for the future of Ironman?

SD: Ironman is already a lifestyle for many people. We’re the most tattooed brand in the world. You don’t tattoo brands on your body unless it’s part of your identity. I was in Chamonix (France) a couple of months ago for our UTMB World Series Finals, which is our trail-running series, and the number of Ironman bags I saw in town there was really inspiring. 

If I look out five or 10 years from now, I think we have a real opportunity to not only be the best in the world at organizing participation sporting events and delivering these events at a world-class level, but having a collection of digital experiences that really tie together that experience. I think we have a real opportunity to elevate the Ironman brand and the sense of connection within the community to further strengthen Ironman as a lifestyle brand. 

The post CEO Corner: The Ironman Group’s Scott DeRue on Building a ‘Lifestyle Brand’ appeared first on Athletech News.

Todd Anderson is on a mission: make sleep a bigger part of the conversation around fitness, sports performance and general wellness. 

A former college football standout and NFL player turned sleep expert, Anderson co-founded Dream Performance & Recovery in 2023 to create products that help people improve their sleep and, by extension, their lives. 

The company makes sleep masks, pillowcases and mouth tape, and will soon be releasing nasal strips. Dream’s products are intentionally low-tech, designed to help users connect with their bodies and minimize distractions in the bedroom. 

It’s early days for the company, but Dream is off to a good start: its mouth tape is a hit on social media, drawing praise from influencers to stars like Emma Roberts. 

Dream has also been successful in bringing athletes into the sleep conversation: the brand has struck partnerships with top college sports teams including the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Michigan State Spartans (Anderson’s alma mater), along with the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers and Toronto Maple Leafs. 

Anderson sat down with Athletech News to discuss the power of proper sleep, how products like mouth tape can help people improve their health, and what’s in store for Dream over the coming years. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how your football career inspired you to co-found Dream Performance & Recovery?

Todd Anderson: I walked on in football (at Michigan State), which basically means I wasn’t good enough to get a scholarship and had to prove my way. That really sparked my obsession with human performance – I was more interested in the strength and conditioning aspect than even the playbook sometimes. I went right into strength and conditioning after playing. Then, I got to spend time with some incredible sleep doctors, and I quickly realized that strength and conditioning isn’t the fastest way to help someone impact their quality of life or well-being. Sleep is the fastest route. 

I became obsessed with sleep, and I started speaking about sleep to corporations and sports teams around six years ago. I got asked for recommendations all the time for products like sleep masks and mouth tape. Quality-wise, there was nothing I felt great about recommending. 

I met my partners, and they were going down a similar journey of seeing revolutionary change in their lives from using a sleep mask. We thought, “Let’s make them better.” 

ATN: What was the first product Dream created to help people improve their sleep? How has your product mix evolved over time?

TA: We started with sleep masks, which is a hard product because it’s been around for a long time. But what hadn’t been done is the messaging behind the why of a sleep mask and the science behind it. It’s not just about the light, it’s about the psychological side. We really try to harp on that. Sleep masks had been pinned into this beauty-luxury area, not as something for high-achievers, athletes and people who are into fitness and wellness. 

Then we got into mouth tape, which I’m most passionate about because of the impact it’s had on my life and the (low) quality of products that were out there. There are very loose standards when it comes to what’s actually on your face, adhesive-wise. We’re one of the only U.S.-made mouth tapes. 

Eventually, our goal is to come out with things like blue-light-blocking glasses and EMF blockers for your phone. Basically, any holistic, behavior-enhancing product to increase sleep quality, we can provide. We’ll always stay away from bringing more technology into the bedroom. 

ATN: That’s interesting because there are a lot of apps and other sleep-tech products on the market today. Can tech be counterproductive when you’re trying to sleep better?

TA: I think some technology is useful. I wear a Whoop, but I use it to look back. I think data can be useful to see outcomes, but I don’t think data should be incorporated in the actual bedtime routine. There’s a million metrics you can look at, but you’re just getting better at measuring your sleep, you’re not actually getting better at sleeping. 

We’re meant to be tired and want to fall asleep, and sleep should be something that’s very peaceful and restful. I think the more technology that’s integrated, the more stresses become part of the bedroom. 

ATN: Dream is best known for its mouth tape. What are the main benefits of mouth taping?

TA: What we’re really trying to do with mouth taping is (help people) utilize nasal breathing. We’re trying to give you something that’s a psychological reminder for you to breathe through your nose throughout the entire night. Mouth tape also shows your body how it’s supposed to breathe. It’s kind of like putting bumpers up when you’re bowling. 

Around 60 to 70% of the population now is breathing out of their mouth when they sleep, which is probably drastically higher than it was as we evolved. Breathing is like the steering wheel to your nervous system and nasal breathing can fully relax your nervous system. When you’re breathing relaxes, you’ll calm down, which results in the most restful sleep you can get.

We’re also learning that the impacts of nasal breathing are pretty extraordinary, from the quality of sleep you get to your oxygen levels to the microbiome in your mouth. Chronic inflammation is the birth of most diseases, and your mouth microbiome is the biggest cause of low-level chronic inflammation. Breathing with your nose is one way to make sure you’re creating a (healthier) microbiome in your mouth. 

ATN: How do you work against the perception some people have that practices like mouth taping are gimmicky or ineffective? 

TA: I think that comes on the education side. We really try to stick to the science and show people the why behind it. Anytime you hear me or anyone affiliated with our company talk, we’re not very product-focused, it’s more about showing people the power of nasal breathing and sleep, and helping them understand how impactful that can be.

I think once people feel the difference, they’ll never go back. Once you start improving the quality of your sleep, that’s the ultimate sales tool because it truly does change you as a person from the inside out. 

ATN: The total addressable market (TAM) for sleep products must be pretty large, since everyone sleeps. That said, who is Dream’s target consumer?  

TA: We have a huge spectrum of people, from high school athletes to people in their 70s who have combined our products with CPAP machines after talking to their doctors. But our average consumers are probably in their 30s. A lot of times in your 30s, you start to feel a little different, and people start thinking about longevity. 

I would also say that the female mouth-taping community has really blown up because of some studies talking about how it gives a more defined jawline and facial structure. That’s a relatively newer trend, in the last year or so, I’d say. That’s why we came out with our Mouth Tape Plus, which has a skincare formula integrated into the adhesive. 

ATN: Is Dream working on any upcoming product releases? 

TA: We have a nasal strip coming out at the beginning of next year. I’m excited about it because no one’s really innovated on the nasal strip in a long time. We’ve designed ours from top to bottom, and we’ve got patents on it. It took about a year of testing and design, and we’re finally ready to come to market with it. 

It’s going to help people sleep, for sure, but it’s also going to help people perform during the day. It’s a less-invasive way to encourage nasal breathing compared to mouth tape, which can look crazy to people on first reaction. Our nasal strip will also be much more aesthetically cool-looking than what’s out there now, and it’s smaller.

ATN: Looking ahead, what are your key short and long-term goals for Dream?

TA: In the short term, one of our goals is to have a majority of professional athletes wearing our nasal strips for games. 

When I think long-term, our macro goal is to help people increase their lifespan, especially their healthspan. I honestly think sleep is the biggest opportunity. So as we forge forward, and as technology and science evolve, we’ll create whatever products we feel are going to have the biggest impact on that mission. 

The post CEO Corner: Dream Recovery’s Todd Anderson on the Sleep Revolution appeared first on Athletech News.

In 2017, Vadim Fedotov got the idea to create a product that could help people not just understand what’s going on inside their bodies, but take actual steps to improve.  

After a couple of years of research and testing, in 2019 he launched Bioniq, which leverages blood testing and an AI-powered recommendation algorithm to create highly personalized supplement blends.

The brand currently offers two products: Bioniq Pro, which uses blood test data to inform supplement recommendations, and Bioniq Go, which recommends supplements based on a questionnaire and previous users’ blood biomarker data.

In July, the London-based Bioniq raised $15 million in a Series B round, earmarking those funds for product development and growth in the United States, Middle East, and Europe. Bioniq also plans to build a corporate platform for medical, wellness, and athletic institutions.

Fedotov sat down with Athletech News to discuss how he got inspired to become an entrepreneur, Bioniq’s brand evolution over the last five years, and why true personalization is the key to changing people’s perceptions of the supplement industry.  

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Bioniq?

Vadim Fedotov: I grew up in Germany playing every single team sport there was. I was quite tall – I’m now 6’9” – so basketball became my focus. By 16, I started joining professional teams, including playing for the German national team. During a game against the U.S. national team, I got recruited to play Division One college ball, joining the University of Buffalo Bulls. During my career, I had four torn ACLs, so I was exposed quite early to sports medicine, physical optimization, recovery, and innovation, which have stayed with me throughout my corporate career. I went into management consulting, and after that, I joined Groupon in 2011, before the IPO. I was one of the youngest CEOs in 48 countries. 

During my corporate journey, it hit me that even though I had a sports background and was interested in my health, I still felt sluggish and had brain fog–I felt like I was physically and cognitively not there. When I went to the doctor and told him about my symptoms, he conducted a blood test and said everything was fine. The phrase “everything was fine” caught me off guard because I had all of these symptoms. And he said, “What you’re looking for is optimization. Traditional medicine heals you when you’re ill, it’s not focused on optimization.”

That’s when I realized I wanted to create something that teaches people what goes on inside of their bodies but also gives them personalized solutions on how to optimize. That’s how Bioniq started.

ATN: There are a lot of ways to approach physical optimization. Why did you choose personalized supplements?

VF: When I started back in 2017, I looked at the market to try and figure out what to build. There was a big demand for DNA, but DNA will tell you what’s wrong with you on a chronic level, it won’t tell how you can improve over time. There was also a boom of so-called personalized supplements, which put pills in a bag, shipped them to you, and told you, these are the pills you need. I call that packaged, not personalized. At-home blood testing was super interesting to me, but when people received their blood results, they didn’t know what to do with them. There was no actionable follow-up. 

My thought process was, “What if I can combine educating you about what’s going on inside of your body, provide you with personalized products, and do so on a regular basis?”

In 2018, I ran a pilot on 40 random people in my network. One of those people was a head of performance for the UFC in Las Vegas. And after six months of Bioniq, he called me and asked me to come fly out to Vegas to meet with him and his boss. They told me, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.” 

I literally quit my day job, and two months later, I launched Bioniq in London. This was in January 2019 and ever since, we’ve been expanding. As of last month, we were selling in over 63 countries, although the majority of our consumers, over 80% now, are in the U.S.

ATN: Besides personalization, Bioniq is known for using granules instead of pills. What are the benefits of granules?

VF: The granules are a patented technology developed in Switzerland around 25 years ago. Current pills are made with starch or gelatin; every time you take a pill, you spike your insulin levels so you can absorb the supplements that are inside. The toxicity from the pill itself is sometimes worse than the benefits of the vitamins. 

Granules are prebiotics made out of guar, which is natural and good for your body. They absorb inside of themselves the micronutrients that you need and then slow-release them into your body over 12 hours. So instead of drinking pills, which is equal to drinking carbs, granules have a higher absorption level, don’t cause toxicity, and are proven to have additional positive effects like prebiotic digestion.

ATN: How has Bioniq’s product line evolved since you founded the brand in 2019?

VF: Our first consumers did 150 biomarkers, including stool, hair and urine. It was a six-month commitment, I think it was over $3.5K. It was a very white-glove, hands-on concierge service. Our medical director would drive to people’s homes during the blood test and explain to them what they should be doing. 

We knew we needed to be able to scale. We developed Bioniq Pro, which is a 50-biomarker blood test that you can upload if you already have your blood test results, or you can take a blood test with one of our partner clinics. 

Last year, we developed Bioniq Go, which is a questionnaire-based product that can predict your blood values based on our algorithm, which itself is based on blood tests we’ve done with over 100,000 users. Today, our questionnaire is 82% as accurate as a blood test, which is the highest on the market. We believe this figure can get higher, but achieving 82% is quite impressive.  

ATN: Many consumers today have the perception that supplements and multivitamins are ineffective or not worth the money. How does Bioniq work to fight against this perception?

VF: It’s very simple: we’re the only quantifiable supplement company on the market; we’re the only company where the consumer knows whether our product actually works. That’s because you do a blood test before you start Bioniq Pro, then you get the supplements, and then you redo the blood test. We’re not telling you it works. We’re telling you, “Look for yourself and see the difference, see the changes.” 92% of our customers see significant improvements after three months. 

On top of that, we only use Swiss-made products. In Switzerland, the regulations for supplements are the same as for pharmaceuticals. When you buy (supplements) in the U.S., you never know who produced them or what’s inside. There are a lot of companies right now receiving backlash because they’re putting something on their label but they’re not showing the dosage. 

ATN: In July, Bioniq raised $15 million in a Series B funding round. What are your goals for the future?

VF: Whenever you fundraise, you’re trying to do two things: improve the customer experience and add additional features so your consumers are even more satisfied with the product. We’re fully focused on improving our Bioniq Go and Bioniq Pro products and giving consumers the best experience when using them.

As we try to educate the market on why personalization is key, we have a clear focus on the North American/U.S. market, since we’ve seen incredible demand there. We’ll also focus on the European and Middle Eastern markets. We want to get Bioniq Go and Bioniq Pro into as many hands as possible worldwide. We’re in 63 countries. Hopefully, we can expand beyond that very soon.

The post CEO Corner: Bioniq’s Vadim Fedotov on a New Era of Personalized Supplements appeared first on Athletech News.

Groundbreaking products in the fitness industry are rare, but every once and a while, one comes along that truly challenges the status quo. 

Kabata is in the process of doing just that. 

Founded by Kareem Aly and Brian Lovera in 2021, Kabata has created the world’s first AI-powered dumbbells. The smart dumbbells are adjustable from 5 to 60 lbs and use artificial intelligence to count reps, analyze form and change weight in real time. 

Essentially, Kabata is aiming to transform the way people work out, turning one of the world’s oldest and most widely-used pieces of gym equipment into a high-tech product.  

The brand is off to a promising start. In May. Kabata raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Menlo Ventures and has nabbed former NBA player Zaza Pachulia and Miami Dolphins linebacker Bradley Chubb as investors.

Kabata dumbbells are now in pre-sale, expected to start shipping by the end of the year.

Ahead of the long-awaited launch. Aly spoke with Athletech News about his inspiration for creating Kabata, the challenges in building a first-of-its-kind product, and the enormous potential of AI-powered dumbbells.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you took on the challenge of creating the world’s first AI-powered dumbbells?

Kareem Aly: I’ve always loved fitness, sports, health, and wellness – my father was a two-time national champion in field hockey and rowing, so he got us into that very early on. I’ve been strength training for the last 18 years, and I love it. I’m also a NASM-certified personal trainer, so I understand the scientifically proven benefits of strength training. But even though I love and enjoy it, I realize most people don’t. 

COVID was really the catalyst (for Kabata). I couldn’t go to the gym anymore and I didn’t want a bike, a rower, or a mirror – I just wanted strength training. I was looking at the market saw and these “dumb” adjustable dumbbells on one side –  everyone’s used those, but there’s no tech, app, analytics or coaching. On the other end of the spectrum, you have brands like Tonal, which are good products but are prohibitively expensive for most people. 

Dumbbells are the largest TAM of any fitness modality. They’re arguably the most popular, most familiar, and most iconic piece of equipment in fitness today and historically. I thought, “What if we could make them better?”

ATN: What’s behind the Kabata name?

KA: It came about randomly – I was reading Shoe Dog, the autobiography of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. He mentioned how Nike came to him in a dream and he basically surmised that using letters like As, Ns Bs, and Xs, in two-to-three-syllable words, was often most recognizable for companies. He referenced companies like Clorox, Kleenex, FedEx, and Nike. I was looking at Japanese words and (Kabata) came up. The K and B in Kabata are pretty recognizable, and it’s three syllables.  

Kabata also has a lot of definitions and meanings across family trust, growth, community, etc. One of its more prominent meanings is “childhood friend” in Tagalog, the Filipino language. I met my co-founder and CTO, Brian, in elementary school here in Los Angeles when we were about nine years old. We grew up together, played sports together, and took all the same classes. We definitely didn’t think we’d start a company over two decades later, but in retrospect, maybe it makes sense.

ATN: What’s the process been like in bringing AI-powered dumbbells from idea to reality? 

KA:  It’s been drastically harder than we expected, but that’s probably what any entrepreneur would say. The weight-adjustment mechanisms, over-molding the steel to allow for smooth placement and insertion and removal of the dumbbells, getting the software to be able to perfectly rep count actual workout moves without miscounts or false positives, creating workout content and thinking about how we’re going to produce analytics in an engaging manner, all of that’s been difficult. It’s taken three and a half years, but we’re there. 

We have a strong team, which I think is one of the biggest formulas. Our team members come from Apple, Nike, Whoop, Tonal, Amazon, Meta, Postmates, Stanford, UCLA, etc. We’ve been working hard and everybody’s bought in. We think we’re onto something pretty big here. 

ATN: Why should people choose Kabata dumbbells over other AI-powered strength training products on the market? 

KA: Most of our features are unprecedented, and they’re great for beginners and experienced athletes across the spectrum. For beginners, we offer features such as form correction, symmetry detection and range-of-motion detection. A lot of people are intimidated by strength training – they know the benefits and want to get into it – but they don’t know where to start. We adjust the weight for you and tell you exactly when to increase.

If you’re advanced, and you want the best of the best in strength training equipment, that’s exactly what Kabata is building. We have a ton of features that you won’t find in any other dumbbell, including velocity-based training, which is very bleeding-edge, primarily used by pro sports athletes. 

Kabata will help prevent injury as well. Our unique and unprecedented velocity-based training mechanism will understand if your rep speed is slowing down below your typical range, and we’ll alert you that you’re fatiguing and are at a high risk of injury. 

ATN: Kabata is a direct-to-consumer product, but smart dumbbells could also be appealing to gyms, sports teams, and other organizations. Are you pursuing any B2B opportunities?

KA: Obviously we want to go after the home consumer – we’d love to get Kabata in every home across America and globally. But we think the B2B side is going to be pretty big for us as well. We’re getting a lot of interest from big-box gyms, boutique gyms, hotels, apartment buildings, PT clinics, trainers, pro sports teams, universities, etc. 

ATN: Earlier this year, Kabata raised $5 million in seed funding. Why was this an important milestone for the company? 

KA: It’s really incredible that we have Shawn Carolan at Menlo Ventures leading the round. He’s one of the best consumer investors in Silicon Valley, bar none, having been an early investor in companies like Uber, Roku, Chime, and Siri. It’s great to have someone of his caliber believe in us. 

It’s also just good to get validation from the market that people believe in what you’re building. As a founder, you’ve got to make sure there’s external validation. 

ATN: Where are you in the manufacturing process? When do you hope to start shipping the dumbbells?

KA: We’re gearing up for mass production. We’ve done manufacturing runs so we’re getting pretty close. We’re expecting to ship by the end of the year.

The post CEO Corner: Kabata’s Kareem Aly on the World’s Smartest Dumbbells appeared first on Athletech News.

Matteo Franceschetti co-founded Eight Sleep in 2014 to improve sleep through heating and cooling technology. Since the Eight Sleep Pod was released in 2019, the brand has become a pioneer in thermoregulation and biometric tracking to improve sleep quality. 

“I was an athlete when I was a teenager, playing sports such as tennis, skiing, and car racing in Italy, where I was born and raised,” Franceschetti, who serves as Eight Sleep’s CEO, tells Athletech News. “I came up with the idea of Eight Sleep when I realized that although I spent a third of my life sleeping, there had been no recent innovation to actually help people sleep better. Technology wasn’t being leveraged to its full potential.”

With the high temperatures at the Olympics raising concerns about athletes’ performance, thermoregulation has never been more widely discussed. Everyone requires proper body temperature regulation during sleep, not just athletes. Eight Sleep tailors its thermoregulation to each sleeper depending on their individual needs. 

“Powering every key function of the Pod is Autopilot: a collection of proprietary algorithms developed by Eight Sleep to create an individual blueprint of each sleeper to create the environment you need for your best sleep,” Franceschetti explains.

“These algorithms require complex processing to correlate multiple variables into one dynamic picture of who you are as a sleeper and what you need to get the best rest possible,” he adds. “A few factors Autopilot considers include age, biological sex, current sleep stage, how much deep and REM sleep you got the night before, and changes to your environmental temperature.” 

The Pod 4, the company’s latest release, now includes snoring mitigation, twice as much cooling power and silent performance compared to previous models. The Pod 4 has been clinically tested to improve sleep and energy. Studies show that users have up to 34% deeper sleep and fall asleep 44% faster with the Pod. 

“The most premium model of the Pod 4, Pod 4 Ultra, includes an adjustable Base that syncs with the Pod’s proprietary sleep and health tracking technology for additional groundbreaking features and benefits: snoring detection and mitigation, and custom body positioning before and during sleep,” Franceschetti notes. 

Eight Sleep’s approach goes beyond merely improving comfort or increasing sleep hours.

“There are endless benefits to optimizing your sleep with our Pod,” Franceschetti says. “We believe that helping to optimize your sleep is not just about getting people to sleep comfortably or sleep more; it’s about improving sleep quality so that the hours of sleep you get are maximized. As a result, the overall human experience and performance during waking hours can be enhanced.”

Not only is Eight Sleep driving value on a case-by-case basis, it’s also collecting sleep data from its users.

“The intention behind the design of any Eight Sleep product is to create the gold standard in sleep technology that can tackle all of sleep’s biggest problems,” Franceschetti explains. “We now have over 400 million hours of sleep data, making us one of the biggest sleep specialists in the world.” 

This extensive data collection and years of clinical research inform every iteration of the Pod, including the recently released Pod 4.

“We are always working to improve our product, no matter how small or large the change might be,” he adds.

Eight Sleep is committed to advancing sleep technology, recently appointing three world-renowned scientists to its Scientific Advisory Board: Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Matthew Walker, and Dr. Peter Attia.

“This further showcases Eight Sleep’s commitment to leading the sleep technology market, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate closely with them to help push innovation forward,” Franceschetti says. 

The company was notably concerned about the warm conditions in which Olympians were sleeping during the 2024 Games.

“We also remain committed to seeing through our mission to fuel human potential through optimal sleep, even on the global stage,” Franceschetti notes. “I recently penned an open letter to the president of the IOC, demanding better sleep conditions for the Olympic athletes and offering to send a Pod to the first ten Olympians who (reached) out to us.”

The Eight Sleep CEO also hinted at more product announcements soon.

“Our R&D and hardware teams have been focused on new and innovative products that – together with the Pod – continue to optimize sleep & recovery,” Franceschetti says. “You should expect to hear new announcements from us by the end of the year.”

The post CEO Corner: Eight Sleep’s Matteo Franceschetti on Thermoregulation appeared first on Athletech News.

For Karl Sanft, leading 24 Hour Fitness is the job of a lifetime. 

Sanft first became a 24 Hour Fitness member in 1993, long before he’d one day take over as the gym brand’s chief executive. 

After a 20-year stint at Best Buy where he rose up the ranks to become senior vice president of U.S. retail operations, Sanft joined 24 Hour Fitness in 2019 as its chief operating officer. In December 2021, he took over as interim CEO. In June 2022, Sanft was formally introduced as the company’s newest president and CEO.

Sanft has been tasked with steering the big-box gym chain back to solid ground following a bankruptcy filing in 2020 that saw it close around 100 locations. Today, 24 Hour Fitness counts nearly 300 gyms in 11 states, and still stands as one of the fitness industry’s most iconic brands. 

Under Sanft’s leadership, 24 Hour Fitness has sought stability, opting to invest in modernizing its existing locations rather than race to open up new ones. 

Sanft sat down with Athletech News to discuss his first couple years on the job, outline his vision for the future of 24 Hour Fitness and share his perspective on how the fitness industry compares to other sectors.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: You took over at a pivotal and trying time for 24 Hour Fitness. What have your early priorities been as president and CEO, and how have things gone relative to your expectations? 

Karl Sanft: You hear a lot about the CEO job before you go into it, but some of it you have to experience. It’s different than you’d expect it to be. 

The real challenge was stabilizing the organization. We were just coming out of bankruptcy and restructuring the brand. I love the brand, but you’ve got to be objective as well. The brand was overpriced, so we had to reconcile our pricing. And the brand needed to be refreshed. 

We’ve been working diligently and spending money, as our financial health has allowed, to refresh and revitalize the member experience. That’s been our focus for the last couple of years, and will continue to be over the next couple of years. 

ATN: How far along is 24 Hour Fitness on the pricing and brand refresh plan that you’ve implemented? 

KS: Pricing is easy to adjust. For the amenities we offer, I think our pricing is right on par. If you look at some of the lower-priced competitors, they don’t have our amenity set when it comes to access to fitness professionals and wet areas like pools, spas, steam rooms and saunas, etc. So I’m happy with where we are from a pricing standpoint.

We’re at the beginning of our refresh. We’re touching a lot of clubs, buying equipment, and refreshing graphics, paint, lighting and floors. But we’re still at the beginning of that process.

ATN: Would you characterize 24 Hour Fitness a high-value, low-price (HVLP) gym brand, or does it play in a slightly higher pricing tier? 

KS: I try not to go with a label. Here’s what I would say: our pricing is probably just a bit higher than HVLP (gyms), but our amenity set justifies that price, and our gym floor is as good as anybody’s. That’s where we’ve invested, and that’s where members show their appreciation for us.

ATN: How has the gym floor evolved over your five years at 24 Hour Fitness, particularly post-pandemic?

KS: COVID had a real impact. I think people (now) enjoy hybrid fitness more than ever. For some aspects of their fitness, they enjoy being outside. What I see in the clubs is more of a focus on strength. An example of that is Olympic lifting and half racks. It’s not that people don’t do cardio, but they find other ways of getting their cardio done. Women and men alike are focusing on strength like I’ve never seen before, and it’s exciting.

ATN: What’s the biggest challenge in running a big-box gym brand with around 300 locations?

KS: It’s really all about consistency of experience. We like touting how many clubs we have but the members don’t really care. It’s just, “Is my gym excellent? Is my gym inspiring? Are the people in my gym good to me? Is the gym clean? Do the machines work?”

There’s also this interesting mix: How do you take advantage of scale, but then how do you embrace local? Do you know the community you serve? Do you know what’s different about it? Are you set up in a way that matters? If you put the same equipment in all gyms and don’t have the right equipment for (a specific) gym, that’s something you have to watch out for. It’s about really understanding what it is that your members want locally.

ATN: What are your goals for 24 Hour Fitness over the next few years? Do you have any expansion plans? 

KS: I’ve been focused on getting the company healthy from the inside out. What that means is that you can’t just build 10, 20 clubs a year and not invest in the clubs you have. The headline of new clubs is always exciting, but when you invest in refreshes and remodels, it’s amazing what it does. 

We’ve got a club in Texas right now that’s all torn up, the restrooms are being redone, the floors are being redone, the tiles are being redone, but the member surveys are going up. Why are people excited about the experience when it’s a hot mess? The answer is that they just love seeing you invest in their gym. 

As a secondary focus, we’ll reposition and we’ll fill in appropriately. We built a couple of clubs last year, and we’ll build a few clubs in the next couple of years. We won’t be opening new markets in the next couple of years, but we’ll be bolstering our position in our existing markets. 

ATN: We’ve talked about the rise of strength training. Do you have any predictions about what may be coming next?

KS: Mobility is something to really think about. I don’t do Pilates, but I’m excited by it and I can see the benefits. 

I’ve been a (24 Hour Fitness) member for 31 years. I started in my 20s, now I’m in my 50s. My workout has entirely changed over that period of time. People get injured as they get older because they just don’t have the stability, mobility and flexibility. I think that’s where the industry is going to go – “fit for life” versus “fit for the gym.” 

ATN: As someone with a lot of high-level experience in another industry, how do you view the fitness industry? 

KS: It’s a small industry, and people stick together. I know many of the CEOs in the industry. We help one another, we talk about ways the industry can be more prepared, God forbid, if something were to ever happen again like what we experienced with COVID. I’ve been humbled by the way far-more-tenured industry leaders have been willing to let me be a part of the dialog and the conversation. 

There’s some legacy stuff – I don’t know how long it takes for it to go away – where people say, “These are the bad things about health clubs, you can’t quit them, you can’t do this, etc.” I don’t see any of that, but I do think the industry still has a hangover, experientially, about some of the things it used to do and the way it used to sell.

ATN: Is there anything you’d like to see the fitness industry change or improve upon? 

KS: I think we just need to do a better job of sharing our voice and helping our members gain leverage. The industry wasn’t considered essential (during COVID), which is pretty amazing, and we take that as a challenge for ourselves.

I’m a part of a community (Health & Fitness Association, formerly IHRSA) that focuses on the PHIT Act. So I think the industry is focusing on coming together, coalescing around a few things and using our collective power for good.

The post CEO Corner: Karl Sanft’s Plan To Rebuild 24 Hour Fitness appeared first on Athletech News.

Despite the best efforts of many, few people are truly able to put their professional talents to work in a way that changes the lives of others. 

Markus Falk, the CEO of Lifesum, has done just that, running a platform that’s helped millions of people worldwide change their relationship with food. 

Under Falk’s watch, Lifesum has grown its user base to over 65 million. It’s also worked with brands like Amazon, Nike and GE on the corporate wellness side and has struck partnerships with tech companies like Oura to push the boundaries of nutrition and sleep. 

Earlier this summer, Lifesum acquired German biomarker testing company Lykon, signaling its entry into the world of highly personalized nutrition. 

Falk sat down with Athletech News to discuss his beginnings at Lifesum, the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and why the Lykon acquisition is the beginning of a new era for the popular platform. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Athletech News: Can you tell us a bit about your background and why you decided to join Lifesum as CEO?

Markus Falk: I studied industrial engineering, specializing in energy systems at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and had a plan to get into renewable energy. That was driven by a desire to change a broken system but, at the time, I found it hard to find a context for my efforts. 

I spent time working in various tech startups; first at eBay-owned Tradera and then at Spotify, where I ended up writing a thesis on digital purchasing behaviors and how to convert free users into paying subscribers. 

I was then introduced to the founders of Lifesum. I remember sitting down in a cafe with co-founder Marcus Gners discussing how broken the healthcare system was, and a strategy to fix it. I was hooked.

ATN: What were your biggest early priorities as CEO, and how has Lifesum’s platform evolved since you came on board? 

MF: We had two main priorities: achieve profitable growth and set a clear strategy to increase the value we deliver to our users by transforming Lifesum from a single service to a platform for advanced wellness. 

We’ve made good progress. We’re now a profitable company and recently made our first big move to transform the platform by acquiring biomarker company Lykon. By combining blood tests with world-class software design, we’ll achieve a level of personalization that’s just insane. 

ATN: Can you share any info on Lifesum’s user demographics, including gender, age and nationality? 

MF: We have a huge number of users with a variety of backgrounds, demographics and health journeys ahead of them. They all turn to Lifesum with a shared goal: transforming their lives through better food choices. However, most of our users are Gen Z and Millennial women, with a large presence in the U.S. and across Europe. 

We’re also working with a growing number of companies and organizations who trust Lifesum to help their employees reap the benefits of healthier eating, including Amazon, Nike and General Electric.   

ATN: In 2024, what types of nutrition guidance are Lifesum users most interested in?

MF: Food and nutrition are deeply personal, shaped by our preferences, our body’s responses, our culture and our individual journeys. At Lifesum, this principle has always been central, guiding us to create personalized experiences for millions of people simultaneously. Weight management is important to a lot of our users but there’s always a bigger story. It’s not about the number on the scale, it’s about achieving a better life. 

In 2024, we’ll ship our first experiences connecting blood tests to our programs, following the Lykon acquisition. We also see a rising demand for food connected to vitality and longevity, an area we’ll continue to explore. 

ATN: How do you view the rising popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs? Are GLP-1s positive or negative for Lifesum?

MF: The rise of GLP-1s is the biggest and most impactful development for the wellness and food industry in recent years. It’s huge and will change a lot of things. 

As for Lifesum’s role in this – what you eat is key for your wellbeing, whether you’re starting GLP-1s, on them, changing doses or getting off them. Lifesum has a clear position as a companion service to these drugs, and this is the path we are on. 

ATN: Lifesum already has over 65 million registered users. How big can the platform become? 

MF: We’ve done a lot of things and helped a lot of people but, to me, this is day one. The opportunities that lie ahead in a market exploding with the evolution of technology, science and healthcare are limitless. We will continue to develop the platform, incorporating new service layers to create more value for consumers and companies. 

With the recent acquisition of Lykon and our new capabilities, I’m confident we’ll get to multiple times our size quickly. 

ATN: Could Lifesum ever look to expand beyond nutrition and into other areas such as exercise, mental health or general wellness?

MF: For us, nutrition is at the core – this is what Lifesum is all about. What you put in your body has a profound impact on your exercise, sleep and mental health. We connect to these areas from the lens of nutrition, using our partnerships with the likes of Oura and Nike to create great experiences for users. 

As we develop Lifesum’s advanced wellness platform, we’ll continue to partner with the best in the industry and add new layers to the experience through acquisitions and partnerships. 

The post CEO Corner: Markus Falk on the Rise of Lifesum appeared first on Athletech News.