A little sport must be

Start-ups from the digital fitness industry are among the few beneficiaries of the Corona crisis. Is this just a short flight of fancy or can they even make gyms superfluous in the long term?

The Munich students Mehmet Yilmaz, Andrej Matijczak and Joshua Cornelius wanted to do everything differently in 2013 - like so many founders. They missed the long-term support of customers in the fitness industry and founded Freeletics as a great counter design. In the beginning, they sold PDF workout plans, but today Freeletics is one of the most successful fitness startups in Europe. The founders managed to exit in 2018, with US investors taking over their shares for a high double-digit million amount.

Freeletics was already a success story in 2018. Now, in the age of Corona, the startup could take the next leap in growth. Ten million users joined the Munich-based company last year alone, and now Freeletics says it has 50 million users worldwide.

The fitness market is currently flooded with apps and offers. "The trend into digital in the fitness industry is actually not new, it's just getting a boost now," says sports scientist Stephan Geisler. According to a study by the University of Giessen, in the pandemic, one in six people did fitness, strength training or yoga at home - also with the help of apps.

This development is also seen by Pascal Klein, co-founder of the yoga and fitness app Asana Rebel: "The process has accelerated a lot because the appeal of such offers has grown." The topics of health and fitness are becoming increasingly important, he said. "We've felt that a lot in demand, or seen it in the number of workouts done per week per person, for example," he says. Asana Rebel doesn't talk about exact numbers; competition is fierce and knowledge is known to be power.

The workouts at Freeletics design an algorithm

But why do exercise with digital tools at all? Because it offers a key advantage, says Freeletics' Hermann Aulinger: "We want our users to work out the way they can and want to, regardless of when, where, and how. Because we believe that the biggest hurdle is doing sports at all."

To beat the inner badass, Freeletics has come up with a few things. Since last spring, there are filters that are supposed to catch the individual situation: "Train quietly", for example, takes out all dynamic movements, so there is no jumping during the workout and the neighbor has his peace. The workout plan is designed by an artificial intelligence that can adjust more precisely to the needs with each workout for which it receives feedback from the customer. "We're actually a software company," Aulinger says. The exercises and workout design would be designed by sports scientists, but when the customer should do which exercise is decided by the algorithm.

Especially for beginners in fitness sports, the biggest challenge is to perform exercises correctly. This is made possible, for example, the Straffr band - it measures the strength, speed and number of repetitions of the units, via an app there is a direct feedback. The three founders of Straffr have developed everything from design to technology themselves since 2018. It's still more of a promise for the future: after the first 100 customers tested the band in 2019, 1,000 people were able to train with the bands last year.

Vaha is pursuing a different concept: The startup makes a mirror through which exercises are demonstrated and corrected in real time by an artificial intelligence. Athletes can also book a real trainer, who trains along via the mirror as in the livestream in the living room. "The offer is mainly used by people with families. We, including me for example, have little time, desire and opportunities to use the range of good fitness offers. And apps are cumbersome for me," says CEO Valerie Bures. The service has only been around since March 2020, and thousands of members have joined since then. And Bures is confident: "I think eventually everyone will have a Vaha just like they have an Ipad in their living room."

Gyms unlikely to disappear

The Cologne-based start-up Vation, on the other hand, focuses on individual support from a personal trainer who digitally trains with customers at the desired time. This is a gap in the market, says Sven Wiszniewski of Vation: "Most competitors often focus only on the activity itself, but do not solve the main problem. We don't just get our customers to run, we get them to put on their running shoes in the first place." The startup only went online with its app in 2020 and expects to raise a successful seed funding round this year to optimize the product.

So Freeletcis can create a workout plan with goals and filters, Vation moves personal trainer to digital right away, and Straffr combines equipment with exercise. So has the pandemic proven that gyms are obsolete? Geisler says no: "Studios are here to stay. One doesn't eat up the other, but they complement each other. Fitness app users are also gym users." Proving that, Gym X, the app that seemingly came at just the right time for gyms, brings your gym home.

With the app, gyms get a template where they can add logo, exercises, workouts, images, text and news, similar to what Wordpress does for website design. The idea came to founders Nico Gumlich and Dennis Weber in 2019, and when the first shutdown hit in March 2020, they weren't actually ready for the launch: "I had a hard time launching the app like that, that's where my perfectionism comes through. But we also knew that if we didn't do it now, the competition wouldn't sleep either, and we wanted to make our multi-faceted product available immediately," Gumlich says. The studio can first test the app for free with a finished design and to use all service areas, the subscription costs per month from 59.90 euros upwards. "The studios are all in a difficult situation financially, we wanted to show solidarity there. Only when they are convinced will they sign the contract." So far, a five-figure number of users from the studios are joining in, while a low three-figure number of studios are offering the app.According to the start-up, 90 percent of those who test the app remain loyal afterwards.