Top Fitness Startup Trends of 2024

As consumers' desire to share health progress (like tracked steps) conflicts with feeling like there's less time to exercise, the under-the-desk elliptical has risen in popularity. A leading brand in the category - Cubii - is, in fact, delivering on this so well that they've found a staggering 89% of customers report using the product at least three times per week.

As the boundaries between work and leisure time blur and staying active is increasingly seen as aspirational, products and activities that would once have been seen only at the gym are now more and more acceptable in the office.

Cubii makes it easy to work out while sitting in front of a laptop or watching TV — and at a far more affordable price than buying a full-size elliptical. Its convenience also means people are actually using it: The company has sold 250,000 units to date. Its compact size, meanwhile, means that even city dwellers can store it in their apartments (a barrier for other popular fitness equipment such as Peloton bikes).

The growth of fitness trackers like Fitbit and the Apple Watch also means more people are counting steps, and Cubii allows users to track strides, helping them reach their goals even when they don't have time to walk around all day.

Gym equipment was one of the earliest product categories to face shortage issues due to the pandemic. Many consumers consequently found themselves relying on bodyweight exercises, causing a surge in demand for virtual coaches who could walk through these new maneuvers.

At the center of this surge is TrueCoach, a video conferencing software for fitness training. It also serves as a content management system and as a CRM for managing client relationships.

While many gyms themselves are using TrueCoach, many personal trainers who previously worked at gyms are also using it. Technically, it doesn't fully compete with traditional gyms because a major customer segment for gyms is folks who don't go to the gym but pay the membership fee anyway, thinking they'll go some day. The way TrueCoach is competing with traditional gyms though, is on one of gyms' biggest sources of high-margin revenue: those who do go to the gym and get personal training sessions as an extra. In fact, many gyms credit offering virtual individualized training programs as a key reason for high client retention since closing their doors.

Truecoach also has resources to help remote coaches attract new clients, beyond the saturated acquisition channel for this demographic that is Instagram. The site saw 1.7M site visits last month, double the traffic it saw earlier this year, and, in total, over 17,000 independent coaches and gym owners use the platform.

Gyms that have moved to remote training platforms say many customers are fans of the convenience and want to continue even after they reopen.

For consumers who held to their workout schedules, the pandemic has resulted in two groups: those who weren't able to buy gym equipment and switched to body workouts, and those who were able to buy equipment and now have much of what they need at home.

Unlike other kinds of pandemic-panic shopping, gym equipment is a high-ticket purchase that takes up space (constant reminder to use it) that can lead to a permanent lifestyle change. As airlines worry about Zoom and hoteliers worry about staycations, Gyms may look at their January 2020 revenue as the peak that ushered in a long decline.