This weeks blog post should be on sleeping patterns and the effect they have on your training. But I had an interesting conversation the other day that I wanted to share and get you guys talking about.
The subject was the future of fitness and how the health of the world might be looking in the years to come. Obviously, this is a massive subject and there are so, so many factors that could dictate our future and make the need for this conversation obsolete. That being said it’s always fun to think about what may come.
Now the fitness industry has a trend and that is continual growth. From globo-gyms and at home dvds, to boot camps and personal trainers all the way through to boutique gyms and functional fitness specialists the availability of training options has grown year on year. So too has the number of people getting involved in exercise.
That being said we have also seen a dramatic rise in the number of deaths linked to obesity, heart disease and many other lifestyle related complications. More people die each year because of what they eat and their choice to not exercise than for any other reason.
So, we have two different camps that I think will get further and further apart in the future. The people keen on exercise and a healthy diet and the people who aren’t. We will see the former get fitter and the latter get sicker, unless they change their paths.
Now in terms of what fitness will look like in the future it’s hard to tell. Tech and scientific progress seem to be rapid at the moment and what we know about exercise has changed massively in recent years. However human behaviour does not always go along with science and it is hard to predict what the fitness basics of the future will be. The rise of CrossFit, F45 and boot camp type classes has definitely steered the fitness world towards functional and usable fitness with people are slowly (very slowly) starting to focus more on what their body can do than what it looks like.
Our way of measuring fitness is also changing with many gym-goers wearing technology designed to record their steps, heart-rate and calories burned (for those who care I refuse to believe a wrist strap worn relatively loosely over the top of my wrist can measure anything accurately and you shouldn’t get too caught up in what it says you are doing). We also have apps, facebook groups and other social media platforms where we can upload, display and record our fitness antics for all to see (some to gloat and others to keep themselves accountable).
So, what might we have in the future? Functional classes where our watch uploads our activity to an online forum where we can track our progress, compare it to others and maybe even have algorithm-based predictions for our future fitness?
Or will we see a complete rejection of the trends and a rejection of tech and classes and people going after their fitness solo?
Will virtual reality allow us to train in a group with people around the floor from the comfort of our own homes or will fancy new machines make elite fitness an easier goal to achieve?
I hope we see a combination. I firmly believe that group training is the jam and that people work harder, have more fun and get much more out of training in a group. I also believe the functional fitness trend is here to stay as it is effective, usable and interesting. I do however hope to see less focus on spreadsheets and numbers and more of a focus on how your body and mind feels. I like to think I am more capable of knowing how much I should eat in a day than a wrist watch from Amazon.
I also hope we keep the human side to training going. Engaging with people, socialising and suffering together is one of the best benefits of fitness as far as I am concerned!
So, Brexit, global warming and alien invasions aside I think we will see much of the same in the future. The fit will get fitter and the unfit will get more so. There will be less people in the middle ground and the world will keep on spinning.
(Next week we will get back to recovery and sleep I promise!)