Tomorrow Health

3% to 5% of clinical trials currently use wearable devices, on Jörn Watzke's count. Garmin Health's global sales lead on who pays for prevention.Everyone in health says prevention is cheaper than treatment. Most health systems still pay for treatment. Jörn Watzke, Senior Director Garmin Health Global Sales, sees where the business case for wearable data gets made: with employers, insurers, researchers, healthcare providers and gyms. Recorded at the Garmin Health Summit in Bangkok. In this conversation:* How Garmin Health works with collaborators, and what they build* Which customer segment is biggest, and which is growing fastest* Why the employer business case changes between Europe and the US* What separates a programme that scales from a pilot that stalls* The one decision a health or fitness executive can make this quarter This season of Tomorrow Health is made in collaboration with Garmin Health.Chapters:00:00 The five-minute stairs test00:24 Garmin Health and three things to listen for01:19 Why every industry now sells a longer, healthier life03:17 Which customer segments are growing fastest07:09 Why gyms need to see the member outside the club09:38 How Garmin Health makes money11:59 Who pays for preventionLinks: * Jörn Watzke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joernwatzke/* Garmin Health: https://garmin.com/health* Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/* Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com* Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe* Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/Garmin wearables are consumer wellness devices and are not medical devices intended to diagnose, treat, prevent or monitor medical conditions. Any medical or clinical functionality described is provided by a third-party solution, based solely on the third party's interpretation of any data collected by its applications through the Garmin Health Connected Ecosystem or third-party sources.

Kids slipped in at 5:59 pm to beat peak pricing. Felipe Apablaza, CEO of Grupo Wellness, turned that into a gym with no membership.Felipe Apablaza runs DMOOV, a membership club chain in Chile, and Neo, a gym with no membership at all: you pay per visit and the price moves with demand. His co-founder came from airline revenue management. He says 40% of Neo's users were not going to any gym before, which raises the question of who the monthly contract leaves out.In this conversation:Why kids walking in at 5:59 pushed DMOOV towards peak-hour pricHow a 90-person cap and a twelve-visit ceiling shape what members payWho comes to a gym that has no membership, and what it costs to bring them inWhy a free app, not the gym, is Neo's acquisition channelHow he plans to take pay-per-visit into other operators' clubsSeason 2 of Tomorrow Health is sponsored by Zing Coach - every gym member, personally coached.Chapters:00:00 Why the monthly contract is wearing out00:10 Grupo Wellness, Neo and three things to listen for01:12 Six companies and a sports city02:25 DMOOV: one price, every training space03:43 Ten million in revenue, seven from DMOOV03:57 Why build a second gym brand04:42 Kids at 5:59 and an airline revenue manager05:58 What Gen Z does on a gym floor06:19 Three things Gen Z wants06:38 Strength, mirrors and DJ nights07:36 Pay per visit, 90 people at a time08:41 From 12 to 55 dollars a month09:03 A 3.50 average check-in, benchmarked on Smart Fit09:28 13,000 visitors and 40% new to gyms10:36 Who the 40% are, and what they cost to acquire11:25 The free app as acquisition channel12:28 Nine gyms in Chile, then Peru, Colombia and Argentina12:59 Why the gym itself is a commodity13:40 How dynamic pricing flattened the peaks14:53 What changes in Europe and the US16:05 Building a technology company out of a gym17:28 Plugging into the CRMs gyms already use18:17 Why Latin America is a year behind19:06 Price points decide Latin America19:57 What the industry gets wrong about technology20:26 One decision: four visits a month, not twelveLinks:* Felipe Apablaza on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipeapablaza/* Neo Plex: https://www.neoplex.cl* Zing Coach, season sponsor: https://zing.coach/* Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/* Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com* Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe* Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

192 clubs, 500,000 members, 19.90 euros a month. FitActive founder Eduardo Montefusco on why the next margin comes from software, not square metres.A FitActive club costs around a million euros to build today, roughly double what it cost ten years ago, and the membership price has not moved. Montefusco runs 192 clubs across seven countries and owns all or most of every one of them, having stopped signing franchise partners altogether on 1 January 2025.In this conversation:Why the word franchise was never the right one for what he builtWhat 51 per cent lets him do in eight days that a franchise agreement does notWhy his banks wanted him to stop taking partnersWhy 19.90 stays fixed while everything around it gets more expensiveWhat he expects AI to do to a retention rate that has already moved from 32 to 38Season 2 of Tomorrow Health is sponsored by Zing Coach - every gym member, personally coached.Chapters:00:00 Why he does not need franchisees01:09 192 clubs, seven countries, 500,000 members01:53 Why this is not a franchise, and the eight-day clause03:59 Why partners open a second club05:27 What a single club costs to build06:31 Stopping franchising, and what the banks wanted07:24 Breakeven at 2.1 members per square metre08:44 Retention at 38 per cent and the AI bet10:53 Costs doubled, revenue did not11:53 Selling more to the same member12:33 What travels to Spain and Brazil13:50 Where the company goes in five years14:26 Two tax regimes and a distorted market15:56 The one decision he would make this quarterLinks:Eduardo Montefusco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-montefusco-53155521/FitActive: https://www.fitactive.it/Zing Coach, season sponsor: https://zing.coach/Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.comGet episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribeApply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

A gym is a database. Elaine Jobson, CEO of BeWell Brands and Jetts Fitness, on why Gen Z is rewriting the budget-gym model.Elaine Jobson led the management buyout of Jetts Fitness in 2022, then built BeWell Brands on top of it: a franchise house that runs the same franchise engine across gym, recovery and group-exercise brands.On her count, Jetts runs 130 gyms in Australia and about 200 overall, with clubs in the UK, the Netherlands and now India. She puts the group at well over 100 million dollars in revenue, and says it is not even halfway.Her argument is that Gen Z, now the majority of new members on her numbers, wants a gym worth filming from every angle and will pay a bit more for it. The big budget chains, she says, can only change at the pace of their refurbishment cycles.She also explains why Jetts runs no contracts at all, why she will not put water into a gym nobody staffs overnight, and which market she is looking at for the first time.🧠 What you will hear:Why the membership system holds almost all the IP of a gymHow Jetts changes around 30% of its concept from Delhi to LondonWhat never changes, and how she takes the word love to a boardroomWhy she says contracts only help the business, and what she does insteadWhat makes the US interesting for the first timeWhy the budget chains will struggle to keep up with Gen ZWhat the industry gets wrong about unit numbers⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 A gym is effectively a database00:11 Jetts, BeWell and three things to listen for01:09 More products on the same shelf02:16 Jetts, O-Studio and Fitesque by the numbers03:22 Why franchise03:33 Over 100 million and not halfway03:49 Where the franchisee's dollar goes04:26 The tech stack behind a 24-hour gym05:09 Why every CEO loses sleep over security06:01 HYROX: a trend more than an innovation06:32 Why Jetts is not bleeding edge07:11 No water in a gym nobody staffs08:26 What changes between Delhi, London and Australia10:04 The 70% that never changes10:22 How to measure love in a boardroom11:15 A Net Promoter Score that never dips11:59 Contracts only help the business13:19 Members who leave and come back14:21 The Middle East, and the US for the first time14:48 Gen Z is the majority of new members15:48 Accessible premium versus the budget chains16:50 Filmability in a design brief17:45 Why HVLP is not going anywhere18:25 Social strength19:23 Why budget chains can't move fast enough20:00 The obsession with unit numbers20:51 One decision: how much to invest in AI 🌐 Links:Elaine Jobson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-jobson-72a8a33BeWell Brands: https://www.bewellbrands.com.au/Jetts Fitness: https://www.jetts.com.au/Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.comGet episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribeApply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/This episode is sponsored by Zing.Coach: Every member, personally coached. Learn more: https://zing.coach/

Juan del Río ran VivaGym for nine years. He joined in 2016, when it had fifteen gyms in Spain. By the time he handed over, on his own count, it was around three hundred clubs across Spain and Portugal.In this episode he sets out a framework he calls moments of truth: the specific points in a member's life where intervention decides whether they stay. The first visit. The month usage drops. The anniversary nobody notices. The member still paying who stopped coming two weeks ago.I put it to him that this sounds like a people problem rather than a technology one. He disagrees, and his answer is the clearest case I have heard for why a gym floor needs software.He also puts a number on what makes a club work, warns that his own segment has taken quantum leaps in pricing, and names the growth he wishes he had not slowed down.What you will hear:- What a low-cost club needs before it works, and why 400 members is a dead room- How he clusters moments of truth so a club of 250 addresses only the fifteen who need it- Why he refuses to choose between quality and quantity- Opening versus acquiring, and why he would not trade one for the other- What broke first between fifteen clubs and three hundred- Why he replaced the membership system, the CRM and the apps during the pandemic- The most costly mistake of his tenure00:00 Speed is the only real competitor00:24 Nine years, fifteen gyms to three hundred01:32 What caught his attention in fitness02:10 What changed in how he runs the business02:57 Moments of truth, defined04:12 What you actually do with them04:44 People problem or technology problem06:45 Why speed beat every competitor07:32 The ladder: 100, 300, a million members, a thousand gyms09:41 Franchise or own the clubs10:34 What one club needs before it works11:47 Cost structure and inflation12:42 Build or buy13:16 What breaks first at scale14:16 Quantum leaps in pricing15:07 Why Spaniards use their gyms more15:37 Who walks in now16:22 Health beyond the gym floor16:59 The mistake he would undo17:19 What everyone gets wrong17:34 One piece of advice to an operator18:18 The back-to-school quarterLinks:- VivaGym: https://vivagym.es- Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/- Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com- Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe- Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

120,000 members and a 70% use rate. NYSC CEO Bill McMenamy on what it costs when members actually turn up.Most club economics quietly depend on members who never come. Bill McMenamy built the opposite: a majority of his members check in more than 16 times a month, his use rate is above 70%, and he is candid that it costs him more in repairs, maintenance and capital than a half-empty gym would. He took over New York Sports Club in 2022, straight out of Chapter 11, with a fifty-year-old name and, in his words, no website, no app, no CRM and no equipment worth having. He came from Gap and from pharma, not from fitness. Today he runs 32 clubs across four cities, ten public partnerships, the boutique brand Fhitting Room, and 120,000 members.In this conversation:Why a full gym is more expensive to run than an empty one, and why he wants it anywayWhat the club everyone told him not to invest in now returnsWhy he refuses to measure ten partnerships on ROI, and what he looks at insteadWhat a human coach is for once software writes the training planWhy he is about to stop charging members for something they pay for todayThis season of Tomorrow Health is brought to you by Zing Coach.Chapters:00:00 Cold open00:16 Intro01:16 Fitness is immature in its use of data02:51 Three kinds of member, one building04:26 The club nobody wanted05:27 Rebuilding a brand that had nothing left06:55 From three visits a month to sixteen07:40 Why he refuses to measure partnerships on ROI08:29 Selling units is not selling solutions09:27 What a coach is for once software writes the plan12:48 Why he is about to stop charging for the app13:56 Which health markers are worth optimising14:40 Insurance will write the exercise prescription15:41 Subscription rules are about to change the model16:48 Why a boutique does not work inside a big box18:41 Invest in your people this quarterLinks:Bill McMenamy on LinkedInNew York Sports ClubNatalia Karbasova on LinkedInTomorrow HealthGet episode alertsApply to join FitTech Club

One in 75 Latin Americans passes through Smart Fit's platform. Founder Edgard Corona on why he built his own aggregator.Every large gym chain watched corporate benefit platforms take a share of their members and negotiated over the terms. Edgard Corona built his own instead, lost money on it for years, and now holds more than a third of that market in Brazil. He founded Smart Fit in 1996 and built it into the largest fitness operator in Latin America, more than 2,000 clubs across 16 countries, and moved to chairman in March when his son took over as chief executive.The season was brought to you by Zing Coach.In this conversation:Why the cost of money in Latin America, not strategy, decides how many clubs he ownsWhat a low-cost operator has to change before it can open in MoroccoWhy a gym group is buying its own NVIDIA hardware instead of renting computeWhat he thinks every large chain got wrong about aggregators, and what it cost themWhere the model behind all of this actually came from, and it is not fitnessWhat has to be true before a gym chain can call itself a health companyChapters:00:00 One in 75 Latin Americans is on the platform00:27 Who he is and what he is building01:23 What Smart Fit actually is, and where it goes next02:38 Why he owns eight in ten clubs instead of franchising03:24 What travels into a new market and what does not04:15 Where new concepts get tested before they reach a budget club04:59 The part of the experience nobody is building yet05:21 Why a gym chain built its own aggregator07:09 What it takes to put a rival gym on your platform08:19 Build or buy, and the cost of capital behind it09:35 The mistake he thinks the industry made10:11 The members who had never trained anywhere11:13 What stops a gym chain becoming a health company11:52 What he took from Life Time, and the wearable plan13:55 From fingerprints to face recognition at the door14:37 Ten years out15:03 One decisionLinks:Edgard Corona on LinkedInNatalia Karbasova on LinkedInTomorrow Health websiteApply to join FitTech ClubZing Coach

Season 2 opener, brought to you by Zing Coach. Only 22 percent of people ever try a personal trainer, says Zing Coach CEO Anton Marchanka.Personal training is the most effective retention tool a club has, and almost nobody buys it. Anton Marchanka puts the lifetime trial rate at around 22 percent, and says the reason is structural: there are not enough trainers to meet the demand, and the ones who exist cost more than the membership. He runs Zing Coach, which built a consumer AI coaching app and now licenses the model into clubs including New York Sports Clubs, and he ran Daily Burn before that, so he has operated both sides of that line.In this conversation:Why he charges operators per active member rather than per location, and why the price per member falls as usage risesWhat Zing Coach had to unlearn from the consumer business before the first club deployment workedWhy high-value-low-price clubs and boutiques buy the same product for opposite reasonsWho the product does not work for, in his own wordsWhat integration actually costs an operator, in a number he gives on the recordChapters:00:00 The 22 percent who ever try a personal trainer00:52 Why Daily Burn pushed him off the mobile-only path02:43 What 850,000 paying users showed about retention03:50 Not enough trainers, and too expensive05:18 What selling into gyms forced him to unlearn06:59 Who this does not work for07:18 Charging per active member, not per location09:03 Why budget clubs and boutiques buy this for opposite reasons12:04 The consumer app as a testing ground13:02 Strength training, AI adoption and community15:27 What integration actually costs15:58 What operators get wrong on day one18:08 The gym floor as a guided experienceLinks:Anton Marchanka on LinkedInNatalia Karbasova on LinkedInTomorrow Health websiteApply to join FitTech Club

A prescribed health app in Germany sells for 200 euros. Adham Kassab, COO of haelsi, on where 120 of it goes.Germany lets public health insurers pay for a prescribed app. That sounds like the easiest distribution deal in consumer health until you price the entry: an information security certification, an audit, a randomised controlled trial, ongoing reporting, and a further charge every time you change the product. And once you are listed, the person using the app is not the person paying for it.Adham Kassab ran Selfapy, one of Germany's best known prescribed digital therapy companies for mental health, through its sale to MEDICE. He is now Chief Operations Officer at haelsi in Vienna, a network of health centres that sells corporate memberships, rents capacity to doctors and builds its own digital services on top. He has run the software side and the physical side of the same market.In this conversation:- Why prescribed health apps in Germany cluster around the same price, and what is actually left per order- Why "customer" is the wrong word in healthcare, and which of the three stakeholders blocks the deal- Why most digital health products have not reached profitable unit economics- Why doctors stopped being persuaded by downloads, retention and engagement- What the fitness industry has to prove before an insurer will pay for strength training, and the one step a gym operator can take this weekRecorded in early 2026.Chapters:00:00 Three people in a restaurant: who is the customer00:12 Unit economics and how fitness gets paid, in brief01:26 What Selfapy is, in plain terms03:12 Three tiers of health app, and only one gets reimbursed04:40 One orders, one eats, one pays, and what listing costs06:10 200 euros per prescription, 80 euros of margin07:18 haelsi: centres, corporate memberships and doctor rentals09:39 GLP-1, muscle loss and why there are no fitness partners11:05 Why doctors do not prescribe strength training11:31 What fitness has to prove, and one step to take this week14:29 What a clinic chain and a therapy app share15:40 Outcome-based reimbursement changes the top metric16:53 Big tech in health: more potential, not more effectiveness17:26 Consumerization is not reversible18:15 Pulse check: seven questions, seven answersLinks:Adham Kassab on LinkedInHaelsi Natalia Karbasova on LinkedInTomorrow HealthApply to join FitTech Club

Life Time has 17.2 million square feet under roof and 1.5 million members. Jeff Zwiefel on converting both into a longevity business.Recorded in 2025.Most operators talk about adding a medical offer. Life Time built one inside the clubs it already owns, and Jeff Zwiefel puts numbers on it: what a single location produces, what margin it carries, and how much of an existing membership base he expects to convert.Zwiefel was president and chief operating officer of Life Time, which he joined when it had seven clubs in Minnesota and left at 180. In his final years there he was building MIORA Longevity and Performance, the company's longevity business, and separately a new vertical, Life Time Health.In this conversation:- Why Life Time treats longevity as a conversion problem rather than an acquisition problem- What one longevity location produces per month, and the margin band he underwrites- The share of an existing membership base he expects to buy, and why he thinks it is not higher- Why the hardest of his three build problems was hiring practitioners, not clinical design- The research that changed his mind on GLP-1s, and what he thinks the category is worth to health clubsChapters:00:00 Cold open00:29 Introduction01:39 Seven clubs to a lifestyle company03:15 The two projects he is scaling05:31 The longevity gold rush06:32 Inside the metabolic code08:28 Hub and spoke, not club by club09:37 What one location can produce11:15 How much of the base converts11:56 Three things that nearly broke it13:23 Whether this travels outside the US14:48 Clinic KPIs against club KPIs16:18 GLP-1s and the health club industry18:42 Where the next growth comes from20:15 What he is watching nextLinks:Jeff Zwiefel on LinkedInLife TimeNatalia Karbasova on LinkedInTomorrow HealthApply to join FitTech Club