BioAge tracks wellness across four pillars: strength, cardio, flexibility and metabolism, giving immediate feedback and driving engagement
As a leading technology provider, EGYM solves one of the fitness industry’s longest-running challenges — demonstrating to members that they’re making progress in the gym regardless of their weight on the scale.
EGYM’s BioAge offers a holistic, measurable approach to fitness and wellness. Different from a person’s chronological age, BioAge indicates a member’s level of wellness across four pillars: strength, cardio, flexibility, and metabolism.
A user can alter their BioAge in each category with their health-related choices. The solution helps users focus on specific areas of improvement and catalogs progress over time, giving users visual feedback and something to strive for.
A Comprehensive View of Wellness
By presenting users with four different areas of health to improve upon, BioAge essentially gives its users four targets to shoot at rather than one.
“Let’s say my strength goal was to bench press 250 pounds. Once I hit that goal, then what? My motivation starts to wane because I’ve reached the goal that I set,” explained Dana Milkie, EGYM’s General Manager for North America. “But if I have goals across three other measurements, then I constantly have something to work on. Maybe I change my goal to better cardio health or I include more flexibility improvement in my workouts.”
Dana Milkie (credit: EGYM)
More goals and better, simpler tracking leads to more engagement, and of course, a healthier lifestyle in the long run. Without BioAge, gym-goers often concentrate on one fitness element and forget the others, skewing their view on wellness and restricting their potential.
“If you’re only looking at your weight, that’s telling you a very small percentage of your overall health,” Milkie said. “For instance, I can be ‘skinny’ if I only look at my weight. But if I’m looking at strength, cardio, flexibility, and my metabolic composition, now I have a full picture. BioAge gives you that and helps drive the motivation to continue your fitness journey.”
Members See Results Fast
BioAge presents findings almost immediately to its users, which also plays a large role in keeping them engaged.
With hundreds of millions of data points, and growing, in its system, EGYM is able to make precise calculations in determining one’s BioAge. This detailed view allows BioAge to detect progress faster than a scale and then relay it back to users. Doing so gives users some satisfaction and consequential motivation in the early stages of their fitness journey, which is oftentimes when it’s needed most.
“Unfortunately in our industry, usually it’s all about what a member sees on the scale,” Milkie said. “It can be a little demotivating, particularly in the first three or four weeks when you’re starting to exercise trying to change your body and you don’t see anything on the scale. From a BioAge perspective, you begin to see changes very quickly as whatever biological age you started at begins to go down.”
credit: EGYM
BioAge is visible on EGYM’s Fitness Hub, its trainer app (TAX) and branded member app (BMA). This makes it accessible anywhere for individuals who work out at a variety of facility types.
“You can see your BioAge daily if you want,” Milkie added. “It’s an individual motivational component and it’s very personal. That is what is so engaging about it!”
A Powerful Tool for Operators & Trainers
BioAge’s ability to show results makes it popular amongst fitness operators and personal trainers as well. It presents them with additional factors they can point to that illustrate a client’s development. That goes a long way in convincing those doubting their progress to stay the course.
“I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with operators where they report their clients saying, ‘Three weeks in and I’ve only lost 2 or 3 pounds.’ The frustration over that one measurement, it changes so much when you involve strength, cardio and flexibility,” Milkie said. “It allows a very different conversation for a trainer to have other than saying, ‘Be patient, the weight will come off.’”
credit: EGYM
BioAge is appealing to multiple generations as well, giving gyms and studios a way to appeal to multiple member types within their fitness population.
“If someone’s older, you can go up to them and say, ‘Your chronological age won’t change, but I can have a major impact on your BioAge. I can track it, we can build plans around it and you can assess it.’ Additionally, they can have conversations with younger demographics around their flexibility age to make sure that is not overlooked. To have those discussions across their broad membership base is incredibly powerful for operators,” Milkie said.
Milkie says that during his recent conversations with operators, BioAge has been top-of-mind
“This is a member measurement that you can leverage to make an impact and it’s easy to explain,” he said. “You can’t change the day and year you were born, but you can change how you feel right now.”
BioAge’s Future
EGYM created BioAge in 2014, but the program is far from its final form. Over time, the BioAge of the member has, and will continue to become, more accurate as more data points are added via new users. Although there are no current plans at EGYM to add new elements to BioAge beyond strength, flexibility, metabolism and weight, the fit tech company does aim to deepen those pillars by continually leveraging data to refine the accuracy for the member.
However, Milkie didn’t rule out adding another BioAge factor to the program down the line given the company’s comprehensive commitment to wellness.
“EGYM understands that we need to continue to think more holistically about fitness and performance,” he said. “Our job as the innovation leader in fitness is to constantly push the envelope.”
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