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2023 Fitness Trends Recap - The Apeiron Life Perspective



What it is:

The beginning of the year always marks a period of frenzy to construct New Year's resolutions toward healthier lifestyles. While we're all eager to look forward, it's also a good idea to glance at the past and see if there's anything we might learn and improve. This includes our fitness and health behavior.


Below, we're exploring four big wellness companies and their 2023 yearly reports on what trends gained traction among their members and how fitness and health behavior changed during the past year.


The companies:

Tonal is an all-in-one wall-mounted smart home gym with magnetic weights and an adapted cable machine to offer hundreds of different strength training exercises and resistance up to 200 pounds. You can choose to buy a monthly membership that gives you access to Tonal's live and on-demand classes, programs, data measuring, and progress tracking, among other perks. Without the membership, Tonal tracks your reps and workout time. Tonal has around 175,000 subscribers globally.


Oura Ring started as a sleep tracker but has evolved into a device that tracks a number of health metrics beyond sleep, such as heart rate variability, body temperature, blood oxygen level, daily movement, and even menstrual cycle prediction. You need a monthly membership to get the most out of your ring's data. Oura has over 600 partnerships with other health companies and over a million Oura Ring users worldwide.


Strava is called "the social network for athletes." People can track and record physical activity data such as exercise time, intensity (HR and power), distance, and location via its platform and share it with others. The Strava community has over 100 million athletes residing in 195 countries, making it the biggest sports community in the world.


Garmin is the biggest sport-specific watch manufacturer and the second most popular smartwatch, only behind Apple. 85% of runners and triathletes use a Garmin watch, and when it comes to cycling tech, Garmin products dominate the market.



What the data says:

Since the depth of the pandemic, running has been reigning supreme as the most uploaded activity in Strava as well as across Garmin watches, but people are now venturing off the paved path more often than ever. Besides trail running, gravel riding was one of the fastest-growing activities both globally and in the U.S. According to Garmin, gravel riding saw a 45% increase from a year before, and most interestingly, e-bike riding, both road bike and MTB saw an amazing 69% and 49% increase, respectively. When you compare cycling vs running in the U.S., younger generations are 2.4 times more likely to opt for running vs cycling, whereas Boomers are the opposite. It might be something to do with those aching joints of old age! The three other sports occupying the top five within Garmin users were walking, strength training, and indoor cardio.


Tonal's State of Strength report shows that lifting weights has become an activity for everyone, regardless of age and gender. Adults in their 50s and older have been lifting heavy and reaping the benefits. Tonal members over 55 averaged a 25 % increase in peak power in their deadlifts over a year. Promisingly, women are trending toward heavier weights, increasing their overall strength by 57% on average in their first year with Tonal. Garmin users support this trend with strength training seeing a 30% growth from 2022, and users seemed to have amped up their workout routines as HIIT workouts saw a whopping 112% rise! Although everyone seems to be doing burpees right now, gentle exercises like yoga and Pilates aren't going extinct any time soon. Garmin users tracked 48% more Pilates and 23% more yoga sessions globally in the past year.


One unsurprising trend evident in both Strava and Tonal data is that the older generations' goals for working out differ from the younger generations. Where Gen Z is most likely to exercise in pursuit of athletic or aesthetic glory, according to Strava, 37% of respondents over 50 in a Tonal survey said that "living a longer and healthier life is their number one reason to work out."


Favorite strength training exercise? According to Tonal, it's still the mighty bench press. In fact, 52% of the users said the lower body workouts are their least favorite workout session. The top reasons for skipping leg day are:

  1. Already engaging in lower-body-based cardio exercises.

  2. Wanting to avoid lower-body soreness.

  3. Having an injury in the lower body.

It is good to remember that Tonal members only represent a small percentage of people doing weightlifting, and lower-body exercises like squats and deadlifts are not traditionally done on a cable machine because it's less comfortable and efficient. However, according to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, men generally prefer upper-body workouts over lower-body workouts. One of the reasons is that lower-body workouts cause more metabolic stress. Men are also upper-body dominant, whereas women are the opposite. "People like doing what they're good at and what feels better for them", confirms Eitan Gelber, Director of Assessment and Training at Apeiron Life.


Consistency is the key to success, which is evident in the data. When Tonal compared members with the highest and lowest overall strength scores, the duration per workout didn't differ much, but adding one or two workout days per week greatly impacted overall strength. Finding a time of the day that works best for you and sticking with it is crucial to consistency. According to Tonal, members who worked out before 10 am were the most likely to exercise 5 or more days a week, and those who didn't have a consistent time to work out were the least likely. Globally, the biggest motivator (57%) among Strava users was knowing that if they don't do it now, they won't fit it in later, but in the U.S., 64% said goals are what drives them out the door. Not surprisingly, 70% of Americans say lack of time due to work is their most significant obstacle to exercise. Influencers and celebrities seem to gather a lot of followers on social media, but when it comes to exercise, 64% of Americans, even in Gen Z and Millennial generations, look to family and friends as motivators. It is also uplifting to find out that 87% of athletes in Strava say they feel less lonely when they exercise, even when they're going solo. Yay for the positive mental boost from exercise!


On the other hand, Oura Ring revealed some interesting data on sleeping habits. New Zealand, Finland, and Sweden were the countries with the top 'Average Sleep Scores'. Unfortunately, the review doesn't reveal what the United States score is, but the Apple Heart and Movement study conducted in 2022 with over 40,000 Apple Watch users in the U.S. revealed that only 31% of participants got the minimum 7 hours of sleep per night. The average time asleep in the U.S. was a deplorable 6 hours and 27 minutes.


Seasons seem to have a predictable effect on sleep since Oura data confirms that people are the most active and sleep less during June. In contrast, the opposite is true during the dark winter days, and the best average sleep scores were measured in February. However, holidays disrupt everyone's sleep, with December garnering the worst sleep scores overall. When comparing female and male sleepers, Oura data revealed that women get more sleep than men, but not much, 8 hours vs 7.7 hours. Women's sleep scores were also higher, 78.8 on average vs 73.9 for men. According to Oura, 25% of their users are "Early Risers," those who wake up in the morning sunlight. Most sources state that intermediates, those who don't count themselves either as an early riser or a night owl, account for 80% of the population, and night owls and early birds account for 10% each. This would indicate that there are many more early birds among Oura users than in the general public, an interesting statistic in itself.



Our take:

The Strava data shows that goal setting is among the most important motivators for people to keep exercising and living healthy. The other equally important item is consistency. Even if you only have a little bit of time, it's better to get up and get moving instead of waiting for the perfect moment to arise. The current research shows that even small amounts of exercise, called "exercise snacks," are good for your health and keep you relatively fit. Life happens, and we're all busy, so we should fit movement into our lifestyle any way we can.



Will this benefit you?

Comparing yourself to others isn't often healthy, let alone helpful. We're all individuals with different backgrounds and objectives, and we're best off when we stay on track with our personal goals. However, looking at data with the proper perspective can often reveal good information about our habits and raise essential questions. Is my lifestyle good enough to keep me healthy for the long term? You're doing well if you move regularly, do both cardio and resistance training, have strategies to manage stress, and sleep enough to feel rested and refreshed in the morning. Keep it up!



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