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Home workouts such as those led by Fiit app trainer Chessie King (on television) are part of a burgeoning digital fitness industry. Photo: Alamy

Will home workouts and HIIT replace gyms? How digital fitness is booming and the apps leading the way

  • Online services such as Fiit, Peloton and Hydrow are part of a burgeoning digital fitness sector out for a bigger slice of the fitness industry
  • Users like the structured workouts, convenience and – particularly for women – not having to deal with problems that can arise at gyms
Wellness

Chessie King whoops, flipping her ponytail out of her face. Her partner, Mathew Lewis-Carter, grunts with exertion, sweat pouring from his brow. Five cameras pick up every move as they lunge and thrust in front of a pulsating LED screen at an East London studio, where they are filming a high-intensity workout class for at-home fitness pioneers Fiit.

The footage will be broadcast via the Fiit app as a live class. Users will be able to join from the comfort of their own homes. If they choose to use the app’s heart-rate monitor – a small device provided when signing up for premium membership – they can compete with other users on a live leader board. There are also classes available on demand, for the less competitive.

Fiit and the other players in the burgeoning “digital fitness” sector are all out for a piece of Britain’s £4.9 billion (US$5.9 billion) fitness industry, which the market-research group Mintel predicts will grow to £5.3 billion by 2023. Their aim? To bring the gym to you, in some cases with hi-tech wearables or equipment, or through guided workouts on your phone.

The Fiit app has been downloaded by 150,000 users since its launch in April last year, who have taken a combined 500,000 classes like this one.

Chessie King conducting a Fiit exercise class. Image: Fiit

Although the class is only half an hour long, it takes twice as long to record, meaning King and Lewis-Carter – fitness influencers and personal trainers with 633,000 Instagram followers between them – look knackered. But to get at-home users through the gruelling routine, the trainers have to project the positivity typically associated with children’s-TV presenters.

“Maintain that energy even though you’re tired,” cheers King, legs pumping furiously. “We’re with you!”

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Later, at home, I try Fiit for myself. I log in via the app, put on the heart-rate monitor, connect the device via Bluetooth to my TV, and move the coffee table into my kitchen – as in many urban homes, space is tight.

On the screen, a timer counts down to the 8pm class, led by personal trainers Adrienne Herbert and Alex Crockford. It shows there are 14 other members online. Seeing them congregating in the “digital lobby”, I feel unaccountably nervous. But there’s no time for that: after a warm-up, we launch straight into a high-intensity class.

Beyond Fiit, virtual cycling services Peloton and Zwift lead users through classes on connected stationary bikes at home. Hydrow does the same with rowing machines. A US start-up, Mirror, beams classes into your home via an LCD mirror worth US$1,500. In the audio space, Aaptiv puts personal trainers in your headphones, while the popular smartphone app Sweat: Kayla Itsines Fitness bills itself as “the world’s largest digital gym ”, with 35 million workouts completed since 2015.

Fiit trainer Adrienne Herbert during a class. Image: YouTube/Fiit

One Sweat fan is Rebecca Allen, a 21-year-old professional dog-sitter. On the morning we speak, Allen has completed a half-hour workout dressed only in a sports bra and shorts – kit she would never have felt comfortable wearing at her former gym, where she witnessed men taking photos of women squatting without their knowledge. (Allen says she complained to the management, who did nothing.)

“I feel a lot better using this app than using the gym,” Allen says. “When I went to the gym, I didn’t have a routine, so I wasn’t sure what I was doing. But, with the app, you go up in stages, so you can feel a difference.”

The Sweat app’s structured, goal-focused workouts help her stick with it; when you complete a goal, confetti cascades down the screen.

“Having goals and targets, and being rewarded for successfully achieving them, is a key component of building habits,” says Sweat’s chief executive, Tobi Pearce.

Have group classes with people all exercising in the same room had their day? Photo: Alamy

It is possible to exercise as effectively on your own at home as you would in a gym under supervision, depending on your own motivation – but there are risks. Most digital fitness programmes include warm-ups and cool-downs, but it’s possible to overdo it – and Sweat’s focus on fat loss (users are encouraged to post photos documenting their progress towards “ bikini-body confidence”) may be triggering for people with eating disorders or obsessive exercise habits.

“I was too regimented and hard core about it,” says 27-year-old New Yorker Elizabeth Megrabyan, who works in advertising. Megrabyan bought the Kayla Itsines PDF guide (a forerunner to the Sweat app) in 2016. She would amend the programme to cram in more high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

“I was trying to achieve results faster. I think I became too obsessed with the programme – they show people’s progress pictures and I thought: ‘I want that.’”

Megrabyan ended up in hospital with rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening illness sometimes caused by extreme muscle strain.

Do I think [digital fitness] will replace gyms? No. I think the face-to-face interaction and camaraderie of working out in gyms is more powerful than working out at home
John Porcari, professor of exercise and sport science, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Physiotherapist Adam Meakins advises people in general to avoid high-intensity workouts if they are new to exercise.

“The risk with a novice going in and doing HIIT exercises is that you can end up pulling something in your muscular-skeletal system a lot more easily than you would if you were an experienced exerciser whose body has adapted resilience to explosive forces,” he says.

That said, Meakins welcomes anything that will get people moving.

“There are always risks associated with any exercise … the biggest risk factor is not doing any exercise at all.”

A photo of Fiit trainers Chessie King and Mathew Lewis-Carter on Instagram. The pair have 633,000 Instagram followers between them. Photo: Instagram

It is a rare person who is driven enough to work out at home indefinitely, without a trainer shouting at them or classmates encouraging them on. And there will always be people who require gym equipment.

“There’s a certain subset of the population who are going to be motivated enough to use this stuff at home,” says John Porcari, a professor of exercise and sport science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in the US. “But do I think it will replace gyms? No. I think the face-to-face interaction and camaraderie of working out in gyms is more powerful than working out at home.”

Back in my living room, I crash about, mid-Fiit workout, as my boyfriend watches quizzically. “Get out of here!” I shriek, banishing him to our bedroom. Partway through a set of squat jumps, I silently apologise to my downstairs neighbours. Throwing myself to the floor for burpees, I am covered in crumbs. “I must vacuum more,” I think, lying prone on the rug. Above me, Herbert’s six-pack gleams godlike under the studio lights. “Come on, team!” she exhorts. I haul myself up.

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Considering I am working out a mere split-lunge away from my sofa, Fiit’s leader board helps me stay surprisingly motivated – even if I do end up languishing in 10th place, despite my best efforts to overtake “Sharron T” (next time!). I clock out with a heart rate of 176bpm, feeling euphoric.

Provided you have the space and the motivation, the future of digital fitness looks promising. Of course, there’s another way to work out at home that doesn’t cost anything: housework. Now, to vacuum that rug.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Take the workout home with youdo try this at home can the new wave of high-intensity home workouts replace the gym?
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