An industry as rapidly developing and innovative as the fitness sector thrives on trends. But with so many training concepts, services and products emerging and fading, it's easy to lose track.
This is why the Employers' Association of German Fitness and Health Facilities (DSSV) provides an annual assessment for the coming year of which trends could become established in the fitness industry in the long term.
In 2016, these are the following:
1. DIN-certified fitness facilities
Professionalization is and will remain the predominant trend in the fitness industry. The DIN 33961 standard was recently created to give customers the opportunity to assess the quality of the constantly growing number of fitness studios. This allows customers to make objective and independent comparisons in the following areas, among others: Employee qualifications, customer contract, safety standards, support systems and equipment.
DSSV forecast
In 2016, a large number of fitness studios will be certified in accordance with DIN 33961 in order to prove their quality to customers from a neutral body.
2 Certified prevention courses
As part of the new Prevention Act, the health insurance funds' spending guidelines in the area of prevention have more than doubled. To this end, the current expenditure benchmark of EUR 3.09 will be raised to EUR 7.00 per person, meaning that the health insurance funds will have to invest at least around EUR 490 million per year in health promotion and prevention services in future. One health service that will benefit from this in 2016 is prevention courses certified by the Central Prevention Testing Center (ZPP). Health insurance companies will cover up to 80% of the costs for customers.
Forecast DSSV
The doubling of health insurance funds for prevention services means that prevention courses will experience a boom in 2016, which will support the courses' main goal of encouraging participants to regularly engage in health-promoting physical activity.
3. wearables / fitness trackers
Self-tracking technologies have long since made the leap from niche product to mass market. 90 million wearables such as activity trackers and smart watches were sold last year alone. And that's not all: according to market research institutes, this figure is set to rise to around 485 million units worldwide by the end of 2018. Wearable, intelligent watches and wristbands are therefore no longer just reserved for technology nerds, but are also of interest to the average gym member.
Forecast DSSV
There is no question that wearables - especially in the fitness sector - will experience a further boom in 2016 at the latest and penetrate the mass market even further. The intelligent trackers are able to measure general activities as well as training with electronic fitness equipment in the gym.
4. company health management (BGM)
One in three employers already offers its employees fitness or sports programs at discounted rates - and the trend in 2015 is rising sharply. However, occupational health management (OHM) goes one step further by starting directly in the company: The goals of occupational health management range from supporting employees with regard to practising health-promoting behaviors and designing health-promoting working conditions to demographic and absence management.
Forecast DSSV
Occupational health management has already developed a certain momentum in recent years. There is much to suggest that the number of companies using occupational health management will increase dramatically. In the next five years, a quarter of fitness studios' revenue could come from this area.
5. exercise classes for children
According to the DAK study, the most common good resolution among Germans is to reduce stress. Our children are also increasingly affected by this, which can manifest itself in attention disorders, poor concentration, reading, writing and arithmetic difficulties as well as learning and behavioral problems. Certified exercise classes for children aged 8-14, which are covered up to 100% by health insurance, are designed to counteract this development - through targeted crossover exercises to train coordination, movement tasks, psychomotor game elements, perception and coordination training and much more.
Forecast DSSV
Due to the increasing inactivity of children and ever decreasing school sports, certified exercise classes for the youngest have a good chance of establishing themselves on the German fitness market in 2016.
Ongoing trends from previous years:
In addition to the five trends listed above, there are other forms of training that are in high demand and were identified as trends by the DSSV last year:
- Functional training
Functional training was already one of the biggest trends in the fitness industry from 2013 to 2015. The trend will not die down in 2016 and a large number of fitness and health facilities will continue to expand their portfolio in the direction of holistic fitness training. In functional training, holistic means that the focus of training moves away from isolated muscle groups and towards training entire muscle groups. The exercises, which are close to everyday life, are usually carried out using your own body weight or small aids.
- High intensity training (HIT)
High intensity training (HIT) is based on a training concept that greatly reduces the amount of training compared to conventional training, while increasing the training intensity accordingly. The motto here is: Hard, short and infrequent.
- Personal training and small group training
Individual support from qualified personnel will continue to be the trend among exercisers in 2016, which will result in a further upswing in personal training, i.e. 1:1 support, and small group training.
- Relaxation training
In contrast to hard and short training, such as HIT, there has long been strong demand for a counter-current: relaxation training. This ranges from classic yoga to Pilates and stress management.
Source: www.dssv.de
Published on: 11 January 2016