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Thread: F45

  1. #1
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    F45

    I'm not much for fitness trends (obviously - I do Kung Fu ) but I read this and then saw my first F45 studio right after.

    Move Over CrossFit, Here Comes F45
    The Australian fitness trend has made its way to the States.


    AJ_Watt

    By: Dana Angelo White, M.S., R.D., A.T.C.

    Looking for new workout program where you can feel challenged, yet carefully guided by fitness experts? The Australian-born F45 program has been gaining major popularity overseas, and is now making its way to the U.S. We spoke with Rachel Darden, owner of F45 in Fairfield, Connecticut to learn more about this hot fitness trend.

    What does F45 stand for?

    F45 stands for Functional 45-minutes. Our workouts focus on functional movements, movements that mimic how we move in our daily lives. We squat, we lunge, we hinge, we rotate, we push, we pull and we walk. All of our workout programs, with the exception of “Hollywood” are 45 minutes of circuit based, high-intensity interval training.

    What is functional training? Who is the perfect person for a F45 workout?

    Functional training is a style of training which utilizes those 7 basic movement patterns [mentioned above]. The idea behind functional training is that you should train the way you move in everyday life.

    The best thing about interval training is that it allows for every fitness level to succeed. Nothing is rep based. You push yourself as hard as you can in a given time period. And everything we do can be scaled to suit the individual. I tell my clients all the time, you never have to jump with me if it isn't your thing. My goal is to find a means to keep you moving.

    There are 27 different workouts featured at F45. Some are strength-focused and others are more cardio-based. What's your favorite and why?

    T10 is my favorite! It is a hybrid workout that combines both cardio and strength. I love it because I can push myself to breathlessness on the cardio stations and know I can slow down and regroup at the strength stations. It is interval training at its best! If you are wearing a heart rate monitor in T10, you see a whole lot of peaks and valleys at the end, and that is the way it should be!

    What classes would you recommend for beginners, and for someone more advanced? Can accommodations be made for folks with existing injuries or orthopedic issues?

    Anyone who is looking to burn fat and sculpt lean muscle in a short, focused training session should come on in! Because of the circuits and unique timing of our programs, the sessions fly by. There is no wandering about the gym wondering what you should be doing. It's all taken care of for you.

    Because each workout is interval based, people can come to any session and succeed. There is no beginner or expert. We all train together, listen to our bodies and do what we can in the interval. If you are new to fitness, you might just take things slower, take out some of the plyometrics, or work with your own body weight until you are ready (and able) to progress. If you are someone who is working out 5 times a week, you are likely going to focus on different things, like tempo or a greater range of motion, to turn up your effort.

    We can and do work around injuries and orthopedic issues. It's so important for clients to remember, your coaches aren't mind readers! You have to let us know what is going on so we can put our education to use, and keep you safe and moving in a way that works for your body.
    Thread: Crossfit
    Thread: F45
    Gene Ching
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  2. #2
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    100 by 2020

    Feb 16, 2018 02:58 PM IST | Source: PTI
    Fitness training brand F45 to open 100 studios by 2020
    Australian fitness training brand Functional 45 (F45) today said it will open over 100 studios in India by end of 2020.
    PTI



    Australian fitness training brand Functional 45 (F45) today said it will open over 100 studios in India by end of 2020.

    At present, F45, which forayed into Indian market in February, has about 25 studios in cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, and Raipur, the company said in a statement.

    Recently, it opened a studio in Gurugram with an investment of Rs 80 lakh.

    "In the last few years we have seen that Indians in general are getting conscious for their fitness, health and wellness," F45 Training, Golf Course road owner, Divya Garlapati said. She further said that all the studios are heading towards their return on investment within first one and a half year.
    CrossFit is past 13K affiliates now.
    Gene Ching
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  3. #3
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    We've heard of F45...

    F45 is the most popular workout you’ve never heard of
    This fast-growing HIIT franchise is poised to have more studios than Pure Barre and SoulCycle combined.
    By Patrick Sisson Feb 14, 2019, 7:00am EST


    F45

    From the first time you encounter trainer Cory George in the gym, it’s immediately evident why he’s the one demoing the workouts. A 6-foot-3 former football and volleyball player from Grass Valley, California, the muscular 27-year-old looks like a personal trainer created by an algorithm (his unerring form during ab exercises and cardio-heavy warmups betrayed no hint of effort or exhaustion).

    His form, in fact, is copied by hundreds of thousands every day, across the globe, most of whom he’s never met. George has become the body behind F45, a rapidly expanding Australian workout class that claims to be the globe’s fastest-growing fitness franchise, boasting 300,000 active members worldwide.

    Every gym — from the first location, which opened in 2012 in Sydney, to the Venice, California, location where George teaches — plasters the walls with flat-screen TVs showing recordings of the trainer demonstrating that day’s routine, one of roughly 30 different sets offered by F45. George knows exactly how varied the constantly evolving routines can get; in 2017, he filmed every one of the then-3,800 exercises in F45’s repertoire over a 2.5-month period in an LA warehouse.

    A 45-minute, high-speed series of punishing, “functional” exercises that engage multiple muscle groups — hence F45 — the Down Under export currently has 1,300-plus outlets across the globe, with 570 gyms active or planning to open in the US. For comparison, Pure Barre has roughly 460 US locations, and SoulCycle has 88 studios. I’ve attended F45 classes in the Venice studio and saw George’s face and form onscreen, modeling perfect burpees, effortless squats, and nonchalant hammer swings, before I met him in person.

    The program feels a bit like a workout designed by a computer. Everything is optimized, from the ever-changing routines — which involve circuit training across a series of stations stocked with barbells, ropes, rowing machines, and more — to the curated hip-hop playlists that shake the room (Saturday classes feature a live DJ). During classes, the screens that catch George in an endless loop count down each and every second of each and every exercise. The constantly changing workout, George believes, motivates members, many of whom socialize over the latest F45 fitness challenge or via meetups outside the gym that George and other instructors organize.

    “Nowadays, people lift in big-box gyms to look good,” George says. “It defeats the purpose. You should exercise to feel better.”

    Taking advantage of a titanic shift in the fitness world

    F45, as founder Rob Deutsch says via email from Sydney, succeeds by offering effective, and in many ways mindless, workout routines. Members are challenged as they exercise together in a team training scenario, but one of the big attractions for the mostly 21- to 35-year-olds who shell out $200 to $250 per month for classes are the preset routines, guidance from trainers, and ruthless efficiency.

    “Everyone is time-poor these days, so the efficient nature of a 45-minute workout, where a member can just enter their studio and start, is a real time-saver,” he says.

    “EVERYONE IS TIME-POOR THESE DAYS”
    Many workouts and fitness programs have, to varying degrees, tried to incorporate the personalization, tech, and community aspect of social media into a space long dominated by big-box gyms and crash-and-burn trends. As F45 expands to new cities this year, including Austin and Nashville, as well opening locations within colleges and universities, it’s seeking to be the more friendly, accessible, and tech-accentuated routine for the Fitbit generation. It’s also the latest concept, from CrossFit to SoulCycle, seeking to capitalize on an industry navigating a changing business and cultural landscape.

    “Fitness is going through a titanic shift,” says Bryan O’Rourke, an industry veteran and president of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. “The idea of fitness just being brick-and-mortar locations that charge people for [gym] membership isn’t going to be the definition of the market anymore.”

    “Think of what’s happening to music; consumers get what they want when they want it,” O’Rourke explains. “More and more, it’s about personalization, community, and convenience: F45 has done a good job of bringing together all these trends.”

    The rise of HIIT

    If F45 sounds like CrossFit, that’s because both are based on similar research and science, and can be categorized as the same style of workout: high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. As the name and acronym suggest, HIIT consists of a rapid-fire sequence of different exercises, which rotate through different muscle group and shock the body into shape.

    CrossFit, which started in 2000, branded itself as a more extreme, exclusive version of HIIT training, offering classes in black, industrial-style gyms nicknamed boxes — critics complained of a cult-like atmosphere and strenuous and injury-prone workouts. F45 tries to sell itself as a more accessible style of communal exercise than CrossFit; not a lifestyle in itself, just an easier way to optimize the one you already have. As Deutsch says, the workouts are about “training smarter, not harder.”


    F45

    Ryan Roth, the lead industry analyst for IBISWorld, a market research firm, predicts that the personal training segment of the fitness industry, which includes HIIT classes, will expand, due in part to the decreasing time Americans spend at the gym. Despite rising awareness and spending on a fitter lifestyle — one study suggests millennials spend more on fitness than on college tuition — the overall time Americans spend on leisure and sports declined over the past five years by 0.2 percent. It’s a small drop, but one that Roth says is indicative of the need for speed in such a time-sensitive culture.

    Americas aren’t just becoming busier; they’re also trying to find connection within fraying social networks. The entire fitness world is trying to instill some feeling of community within their offerings, says Pam Kufahl, editor-in-chief of the fitness industry magazine Club Industry. CrossFit popularized the concept of fostering tight-knit groups that would cheer each other on. Now, boutique studios have tried to match that blend of intensity and teamwork — witness Peloton turning exercise bikes in living rooms into a link to a larger community — while lowering costs.

    “CrossFit showed a way to do it cheaply,” says Kufahl. “That’s why you’re seeing these new studios pop up so much: They take less square footage, the rent is cheaper, and you don’t have as many employees. It’s a more efficient use of your money. There may be fewer members, but they’re all paying more money.”
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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  4. #4
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    Continued from previous post

    “IF THE INSTRUCTOR DOESN’T KNOW MY NAME WHEN I WALK IN, I’M NOT GOING TO COME BACK”
    “If I’m spending money at a studio or gym, I want to make sure I’m seeing my results and can track my workout, but if the instructor doesn’t know my name when I walk in, I’m not going to come back,” she says.

    The company is also ruthless about efficiency (Deutsch was an equities trader before launching F45). Scripted-to-the-second workouts, with names such as Brooklyn, Abacus, and Wingman, aim to provide a sense of community to more members with more video guidance, just a handful of trainers per class, and lower expenses (labor is the industry’s biggest recurring expenses, per IBIS). No-frills locations without locker rooms make turnover quick, and the gear is relatively inexpensive, largely consisting of ropes, weights, and mats. The most expensive items are basic stationary bikes and rowing machines. The company’s recurring eight-week group fitness challenges, which combine workouts with diet recommendations, highlights this approach; F45 leverages community without adding much in the way of overhead.

    My experience with the Venice location, at a modest 1,200 square feet, suggested it works; despite crowded classes (and a low ceiling) that forced you to be very aware of whoever was swinging a hammer next to you, every class covered a lot of ground and always left me exhausted.

    Tech and the efficiency scale

    Deutsch believes F45 combines elements of Apple and Amazon: the elevated look and style, merchandise offerings, and engaging interaction and experience of Apple, as well as the tech and efficiency focus of Amazon.

    F45’s embrace of technology isn’t new for the fitness industry. In 2013, Anytime Fitness created Anytime Health, which enables users to track their fitness progress and compare with other community members. Orangetheory, another HIIT franchise with roughly 1,000 US locations, also uses video screens to remind users of routines and exercises.

    What F45 does well is create a seamless experience, says O’Rourke. The best franchises and facilities are the ones that have simplified their technology in a way that makes it very efficient for the user. A club with 2,000 members that offers everything from classes and weights to cardio has a hard time with technological integration.


    F45

    “While there’s nothing new with F45, it’s a great user experience,” he says. “One of the advantages of being a focused offering is that you can incorporate the technology in a meaningful way.”

    Last year, F45 offered nearly 700 new exercises, as well as four new pieces of equipment, all sent to 1,300 studios around the world. O’Rourke says this year, they plan to add stretch-based sessions, as well as a similar number of new moves. He also hinted at a new form of gamification within F45 workouts but wouldn’t provide more details.

    Franchises riding economic trends

    Analysts believe F45 and its franchise model have room to grow, in terms of both expanding the workout routines and community engagement and making a bigger impact on the fitness landscape. IBISWorld’s Roth says there’s growing demand for franchise fitness locations, which allow a local owner to invest and open a business, as opposed to starting from scratch, capitalizing on industry growth and low interest rates.

    It’s no accident the Aussie chain, which has recently made big inroads in Canada and the UK, chose red, white, and blue for its logo and gym decor (“We actually made it look Americanized because we always wanted to take it to the US,” Deutsch said in an interview). The company, and franchises, seeks to grab a larger portion of the US gym market. Gyms, fitness clubs, and fitness franchises comprise a $37.1 billion chunk of the United States health and wellness industry, according to IBISWorld research, with nearly 61 million Americans paying for membership.

    McCall compares the growth of these franchises to Howard Schultz’s strategy with Starbucks; spend on new locations, instead of advertising, and explosive growth becomes the story.

    He sees reasons to be hesitant, with recent signals of a wider economic downturn hinting at a recession. But McCall has no doubt that F45, and studios and programs like it, will increasingly shape the fitness landscape.

    “HIIT is going to be here for a while,” says McCall. “It’s effective, and there’s explosive growth. Adam Smith and Charles Darwin would have liked the fitness industry. It really does favor survival of the fittest.”
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    Gene Ching
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  5. #5
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    There should be a challenge match!

    Meet F45 Training, The Global Fitness Craze That Could Be The Next Orangtheory
    It's got 1,300 studios and counting....
    BY KRISTINE THOMASON
    NOV 14, 2019



    Australia has brought a lot of good into this world: incredible coffee, Hugh Jackman, and now, F45 Fitness. If that last one sounds vaguely familiar, it's probably because you've seen one of these studios pop up in your city—there are currently 1,300 studios globally, and counting.

    But what exactly is F45 training? Let me break it down.

    What is F45?

    "F45 is a global fitness community that leverages technology and functional training to create high-intensity group workouts that are efficient, fun, and results-driven," says Cory George, the Athletics Director of F45.

    The "F" in F45 stands for "functional" and consists of a mix of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), circuit training, and functional exercises. And "45" refers to the length of each fitness class, which is "focused on delivering rapid, impactful results in an approachable and encouraging environment," says George.

    What kind of workout can you expect?

    As mentioned, F45 includes a mix of cardio and strength training. Before getting started, the trainer will walk you through each exercise of the workout, and then you kick things off with a warmup.

    During each class, "members rotate through different stations and perform specific exercises under the guidance of F45’s expert trainers," says George. "We design our workouts from a substantial bank of functional training movements, which allows us to vary workout programs by exercise type, number of exercise stations, as well as the work time and rest time, ensuring that our members never do the same routine twice."

    So yeah, you'll definitely never get bored with the routines. The workout focus changes daily: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are for cardio; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays emphasize resistance training; and Saturdays are a hybrid of both cardio and resistance training. Oh and you can expect some pretty fun workout names (similar to a CrossFit WOD), like Angry Bird and Miami Nights.

    How is F45 different from CrossFit, Orangetheory, or other gyms?

    While CrossFit, Orangetheory, and F45 all focus on functional training methods and high-intensity intervals, CrossFit is a bit more preoccupied with building maximum strength, while F45 and Orangetheory are a more even mix of resistance and cardio workouts.

    As far as how F45 stands out in general, George notes: "Our trainers work hard to foster a positive environment, and our studios are deliberately free of mirrors and microphones, which mitigates any appearance-related pressures and trainer intimidation." Plus, the trainers offer a lot of guidance, from form corrections to exercise modifications.

    What do you need to know for your first class?

    You certainly don't need to be an experienced athlete to try F45: "Classes can be scaled for any age or fitness level," says George. "Take a look at any of our classes and you’ll see members from all walks of life and at all stages of their personal fitness journeys."

    Even if you've never done a squat in your life, don't be intimidated by F45. Each class is led by expert trainers who walk you through every exercise, and correct your form as needed during the workout.

    "In addition, all of our studios are outfitted with F45’s proprietary F45TV technology, which guides members through the workout, previews each exercise, and counts down the remaining time in each station," says George.

    Oh, and as far as what to wear, George recommends sticking to athletic clothes that are comfortable, but don't get in the way of dynamic movement. "Leggings, a form-fitting shirt, and sneakers are always a safe bet."

    Here's a few ideas to get you started:



    How much does F45 cost?

    Prices range from studio to studio, so check in with your local studio for pricing. But, F45 operates on a membership model, so on average, you can expect to pay $50 per week or $200 per month.

    Does F45 lead to results?

    As far as their efficacy, George emphasizes that "this combination of interval, cardiovascular, and strength training has been proven to be the most effective workout method for burning fat and building lean muscle."

    Like all HIIT style workouts, it's designed to keep your heart rate up and build strength and endurance. The benefits of HIIT include a bigger afterburn effects (i.e. you'll burn more calories for up to 48 hours after a workout) and a boosted metabolic rate, which happens as you convert body fat to lean muscle mass through consistent exercise.

    Of course, it's important to remember that results vary for every body. But if F45 sounds like your kind of fitness, go forth and try the Aussie-born training studio.

    KRISTINE THOMASON Fitness & Wellness Editor
    Kristine Thomason is the fitness & wellness editor at Women's Health, where she edits, writes, and helps oversee the food and fitness sections of the website and magazine.
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