Fitness is Changing (and becoming more like Sports)
Exploring HYROX and the trend of fitness being rewritten across gyms, boutique studios, competitions, longevity, hospitality, community, and sports.
Something really interesting is happening in fitness right now.
On one side, some of the biggest names from the last fitness boom have struggled:
F45 voluntarily delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its share price fell below $1.
Honors Holdings, once the largest Orangetheory franchisee in the world with 143 studios, entered bankruptcy proceedings.
At the same time...
A relatively new fitness competition called HYROX has exploded to roughly 1.5 million participants during its current season.
Equinox is selling a $40,000/year longevity program.
Run clubs and adult sport leagues are exploding in growth.
Fitness competitions are becoming mass participation sports.
And gyms are increasingly becoming places where people train for something rather than simply places where people “work out.”
Put all of these together, and I think we’re watching a pretty significant shift in the fitness industry.
I’ve been eyeing these trends for some time and am finally ready to tackle it head-on.
Let’s Dive In👇
The Last Fitness Boom
The last big wave in fitness was built around boutique studios.
Instead of paying $15/month for access to equipment, people started paying significantly more for a specific experience.
Some examples:
F45
Barry’s
SoulCycle
CrossFit
Pure Barre
Club Pilates
Orangetheory
The model was to take a relatively small footprint, build a strong brand around a specific workout, create community around the classes, and charge a premium.
For a while, it worked extremely well, but there was a weakness hiding underneath the model:
The economics were tied to real estate, as every new location required:
Staff
Buildout
Utilities
Equipment
Local customer acquisition
Whether 10 or 100 people signed up, many of those costs remained fixed.
That becomes painful when growth slows, and that’s where we’ve seen struggles with companies like F45 and Orangetheory.
To me, this shows that opening more physical locations isn’t necessarily the best way to build the next massive fitness company.
And that’s where things get interesting.
HYROX Flipped the Model (and helps the rest of the ecosystem)
HYROX is the most fascinating company in the space right now, and they started with a pretty simple idea.
Create a fitness competition that almost anyone who trains regularly can prepare for.
Every HYROX race follows essentially the same format:
That standardization is the most important part.
Because they’ve suddenly turned a CrossFit-like workout into a sport (can train for it, compete, go to events, improve, and be a world champion).
In 2018, the first HYROX event took place in Hamburg, Germany, with ~650 competitors.
By the end of 2026, roughly 1.5 million people are expected to have participated across 130 global events.
Look at this chart of their 2025 financials (it’s pretty fascinating):