MIND THE GAPS

After 30 years in fitness, Emma Barry knows genuine change when she sees it. She tells WellNation why fitness is entering an “augmented age” – and why its biggest opportunities lie in the gaps between technology, people, services and changing consumer behaviour

Emma Barry has never been much good at standing still. Across three decades in fi tness, her career has spanned group exercise, personal training, boutique fi tness, major operators and brands, with personal development running through it all. Her momentum has been literal, too: working across the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and beyond has given her a wide-angle view of an industry being reshaped from several directions at once. From that viewpoint, her assessment of the current state of industry is clear. “There’s never been so much change,” she says. “Technology, generations, AI, pharma, health, wellness, recovery, biohacking, behavioural change. All of it, all at once. And now the sectors are colliding.”

Much of that thinking sits under Trouble Global, through which Barry works with businesses ready to challenge established models. A significant part of her year involves “evangelising events”: keynoting, moderating and facilitating conversations that turn ideas into action. These range from the Connected Health & Wellness Summit (CHW) in LA and Evolve in London to Beyond Activ and the Fitness Technology Summit, alongside brand events for World Gym and Anytime Fitness. The aim is to build communities, challenge thinking and accelerate meaningful change.

She also advises a deliberately select group of companies on innovation, international expansion and category creation. “I work with groups that need to move fast,” she says. “That might mean innovating, scaling into the US or taking a US brand into the UK. Some are digital products, like CoverMe Fitness, CoverMe PT, Zing Coach and Rolla; others are service-based. I adore brands with a healthy disregard for the status quo.” There are projects Barry would love to discuss but cannot yet name. One takes fitness racing beyond conventional event arenas and into mountains, beaches and destinations, blending competition with travel and wellness tourism. Suffice to say, she has found fresh trouble to get into. “The chaos is where I spend a lot of time,” she says.

Increasingly, though, she believes the opportunity lies less in inventing another category than in fixing the gaps between what we already have.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE GAP

Barry uses two familiar areas – group fitness and personal training – to illustrate the problem. An instructor wanting to return to teaching must find clubs offering their programme, identify vacancies, renew qualifications, approach operators individually and navigate a patchwork of emails, messaging groups and spreadsheets to arrange cover.

“There’s nothing wrong with the training, the instructor or the market,” she says. “The infrastructure just doesn’t join up. There’s far too much work between wanting to help and actually helping.”

Barry adds that members face similar friction: “Someone asks for personal training. The club finds an available trainer. Diaries are compared. The trainer’s specialism may not match the member’s needs. A week passes before the first appointment.”

“The motivation was there at the first enquiry. The service wasn’t.”

Why, Barry asks, can’t fitness offer the immediate matching consumers expect elsewhere? Search for trainers available now, filter by specialism and connect. It may feel more transactional, but it meets the moment. Think “the Uber of personal training”.

“If we’re near a club in LA and want to train at 3pm today, why can’t we see the four trainers who would be available?”, she asks. “If we’re preparing for HYROX, let us choose the one from those four who can get us race-ready.”

PEOPLE

Traditional trainer-client relationships have another vulnerability: what happens when they end. If the relationship stops working, switching trainers can feel so awkward that members abandon PT – or the club – altogether. If a valued trainer leaves, the client may follow. Neither outcome serves the community or builds a robust business.

These are the gaps Barry means: onboarding, staffing, matching, support and communication built in isolation rather than around one coherent member journey. Technology should connect them. That does not mean putting more technology in front of the member.

For Barry, wearables offer another example: “Consumers already arrive with Apple Watches, Garmin devices, WHOOP, Oura, Ultrahuman and other technologies generating reams of information.” The opportunity, however, is not necessarily another dashboard.

“Bring the information together,” Barry says. “Some people love data and want to go deeper. Others don’t want their lives narrated by beeps and buzzes. They want quiet monitoring: tell me when something needs my attention, and I’ll tell you when I have a goal to work on.”

We’ve got to bring back the humanness. What should technology quietly take care of, and where do we need a human to show up?

She predicts that the ideal technology may become increasingly invisible, interpreting existing information and offering a useful nudge without requiring members to become their own data scientists. Systems could recognise when someone usually trains, when their energy dips or when another intervention might help.

“If you were being nudged towards your perfect day, what would that look like?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure no two people would have an identical one.”

For operators, the challenge is to automate friction while protecting what makes fitness powerful. “Community. Accountability. Belonging. Recognition. Human interaction,” Barry says. “We’ve got to bring back the humanness. What should technology quietly take care of, and where do we need a human to show up?”

WELCOME TO THE AUGMENTED AGE The fitness customer is changing, too. GLP medications are perhaps the clearest example. For decades, weight loss was central to fitness marketing. Pharmacology has dramatically changed that proposition, particularly in the US.

“We always joked that if there was a pill for it, we wouldn’t own the weight-loss market,” Barry says. “Well, look what happened. We don’t.”

She sees a new role for the sector: supporting people before, during and after medically supported weight loss. That means introducing movement, building strength and routines, supporting nutrient-dense, protein-rich food choices and long-term behaviour and providing the social connections that help healthier lifestyles stick.

There is also an “opportunity within an opportunity”: some of these customers may arrive with almost no exercise history.

“This might be someone who never imagined going to a gym and has never picked up a weight,” she says. “It’s a new floor, as well as a new ceiling.”

GLPs are one part of a wider shift. Other peptides, wearables, blood panels, supplementation, personalised health information and increasingly sophisticated diagnostics are entering what Barry calls the “augmented age”.

“We have a lot more tools at our fingertips now,” she says and adds that some will prove useful. Others, she readily acknowledges, will prove nonsense. But she expects the direction of travel to continue as technologies once reserved for wealthy consumers and elite performers become more accessible.

“Fitness cannot afford to operate in isolation,” Barry says. “Healthcare, wellness, technology, recovery, diagnostics and exercise are converging. The opportunity belongs to those who can connect the pieces and make life simpler for the consumer.

“People already have too many tabs open in their heads. Clearer behavioural nudges and better environmental cues should help close a few.”

PURPOSE CHANGES THE PROPOSITION Another shift is happening at the simpler end of the spectrum. Running requires little infrastructure; walking requires even less. Yet running clubs, walking communities and fitness racing offer something the industry has struggled to create consistently: purpose.

Barry points to HYROX. “Hats off to them,” she says. “They’ve been particularly skilful at wrapping a purpose around what they do.”

The success of such concepts, according to Barry, is the way participants have an event, an identity, a target and an achievement to chase. Exercise becomes preparation for something, rather than something they vaguely know they should do.

“Fitness racing layers community on top,” she says. “Friends train together. Families turn up. People collect medals and share experiences.”

Running clubs do something similar while lowering the threshold further.

“Take away the pressure to run fast and you can have walking groups,” she says. “Lower the barrier. Just turn up.”

They are also becoming places to find relationships – the new Tinder, if you like. For Barry, these models address one of fitness’s biggest unresolved challenges: moving people from needing exercise to wanting it. She describes this as her current obsession.

“How do we shorten the gap between ‘I need to’ and ‘I want to’?” she asks. “The hardest part of behaviour change is getting to the point where exercise becomes its own reward.”

The goal echoes Les Mills Sr.’s call to help people “fall in love with fitness”. When someone is unfit, tired, intimidated or short on confidence, training demands effort and willpower. Environmental cues and accountability matter. But finding an activity, community or experience they love changes the dynamic.

PEOPLE

“There’s a magnetism,” Barry says. “Until you find something that pulls you in, something you actually enjoy, it’s hard work.”

THE MARKET HAS MOVED

Operators are already realising that tomorrow’s customers may discover brands very differently. Corporate authority carries less weight. Big advertising budgets do not automatically buy trust, and scale does not guarantee influence.

Here, Barry sees Gen Z as particularly significant. “They really don’t care about corporate,” she says.

“They’re likely to approach you with suspicion. You may be the last voice they listen to. Trust is being built among friends, in online communities, on Discord and through micro-influencers closer to the consumer. That gives thoughtful challenger brands an opening.”

Across sectors, Barry sees businesses building engaged communities without following the corporate brand-building rulebook. “Sometimes 50 years of history isn’t to your advantage,” she says. “Sometimes it’s a blank sheet, a clear view of what’s missing and the tools to build it today.”

That may unsettle established operators. But Barry is not suggesting the industry abandon its foundations. Strength, movement, coaching, community, accountability and human connection remain powerful.

We have gaps in our infrastructure and gaps in how we support people The question is simple: how do we close them?

What is changing is the infrastructure around them – and the culture into which they are delivered.

Thirty years into her career, she is less interested in predicting the next all-conquering trend than in examining the spaces between things.

“Between data and useful action,” she explains, describing those spaces. “Between wanting a trainer and meeting one. Between weight loss and lasting behaviour.

“Between knowing exercise is good for you and fi nding something you love. Between sophisticated technology and simple human connection.”

Fitness and wellbeing already have many of the ingredients. The next opportunity is making them work together.

“We have gaps in our infrastructure and gaps in how we support people,” Barry says. “The question is simple: how do we close them?”