Helping You Fulfill Your New Year’s Resolutions: The Smart Home Gym

For many, the start of 2021 means a brand new set of New Year’s resolutions. At the top of the list of most popular New Year’s resolutions is, as you’d expect, getting more exercise. According to a study conducted by Statistica in late 2020, a staggering 44% of participants in the study were planning to start 2021 with this resolution. But with many gyms closed due to the global pandemic (or due to the anxiety caused by going to a gym in a global pandemic), sticking to this popular resolution may be more difficult than in past years.

Enter: the smart home gym. Most people have heard of home gyms and many probably own one or more of them, whether in the form of a treadmill, exercise bike or otherwise. In recent years, though, the options for home gyms have expanded greatly. You can now find a home gym that offers just about any workout you can imagine — running, biking, weight lifting, kickboxing, etc. Home gyms have also become significantly more advanced and technologically innovative in recent years, some even with Artificial Intelligence.

Here are just a few examples of the many smart home gyms now on the market:

1.    The Tempo Studio. The Tempo Studio is an AI-powered home gym with a 42" HD screen that offers hundreds of live and on-demand classes. The gym also includes a weight set and has 3D sensors to capture your workout and provide instant feedback to ensure continuous improvement.

2.    The Tonal. The Tonal is a sleek, wall-mounted home gym with resistance arm extensions. The Tonal boasts itself as the “smartest home gym” with interactive technology that learns from your workout and suggests weights and dynamic training modes.

3.    The Mirror. The Mirror is exactly what it sounds like — a mirror — with a twist: it can transform into an interactive smart gym with virtual workout classes in 50+ genres. The gym delivers real-time feedback based on the user’s goals and preferences.

4.    Echelon. Echelon offers bikes, “Reflects,” and rowing machines, many with HD touchscreens for playing the thousands of live and on-demand fitness classes. 

5.    Peloton. Peloton offers high-quality bikes and treadmills with HD touchscreens for playing thousands of live and on-demand strength, yoga, cycling, running and other classes. Peloton’s technology allows you to compete with other live Peloton users and to track your performance metrics and progress over time.

As you’d expect, the demand for smart home gyms has exploded in 2020. Take public company Peloton, for example. In Q3 of 2020, Peloton reported revenues of $758 million, an increase of 232% from the same period in the prior year. Another example is Tonal, whose CEO reported a 700% year-over-year growth in sales in November. This increase in demand is also reflected in delivery times — the websites for many of these companies warn of longer than normal delivery times. I ordered myself a Tempo Studio a few weeks ago and don’t expect to receive it for another 8-10 weeks.

Although the increase in demand for smart home gyms in 2020 was due in large part to the global pandemic, smart home gyms are expected to change the fitness industry long term and in a big way. If your New Year’s resolutions include getting more exercise, I encourage you to explore the many options for smart home gyms on the market.