How digitalization is changing the fitness industry: "Fitness plans on paper are absolutely obsolete"

Digital change has also affected the fitness business. The Swiss fitness trainer Pierre Ammann therefore believes that no trainer or fitness studio can refuse the trend any more.

"Digitalization is also becoming increasingly important in the fitness industry," said Ammann at the Health & Fitness Forum in Hall A6, where he presented his interval training program P. I. I. T.. "In the near future, it will no longer be possible to ignore the digital."

Ammann, who is the managing director of 30 fitness studios in Switzerland and has designed the fitness programme, went on to say:"Fitness plans on paper are absolutely outdated.

The target audience of the studios he manages in Switzerland is between 40 and 60 years old. "Of course, they're a little harder on themselves to do it on their cell phones." The older generation, however, is learning from the younger generation and is gradually discovering access to digitally supported fitness training.

In the Health & Fitness Forum there was also a half-hour demonstration of the "Professional Intensive Interval Training" (P. I. I. I. T.) designed by Ammann. It consists of pre-defined exercises, each of which takes 30 seconds, followed by a 15-second break.

The exercises sometimes look easy going, said Ammann. The program, however, increases fitness in the maximum exercise area. "But I'd advise anyone who thinks it's easy to do so: stick to it so you can train your body properly."

The possible exercises can all be carried out by simple means. For the first time the participants imitate downhill skiing without any gimmick. Sometimes it takes a stepper, sometimes tubes to tense the muscles optimally.

In principle, everyone can do the training at home. "The exercises are also available in different levels of difficulty: simple, medium and difficult," explained Ammann.

However, Ammann does not see everything that digitisation brings with it as positive. Particularly with regard to physical fitness, caution is recommended on the Internet. On Instagram, for example, you sometimes see exercises set up by people who have no professional trainer education and sometimes even say so - openly.

He warned against falling into a "mere mania for figures". Of course, such offers are also interesting from an economic point of view. "But unfortunately, it's more likely for physiotherapists to repair the damage done to the body."