Doug Gremmen - From 600 to 1.8 Million Participants: Inside Hyrox's Rocket Ship Growth

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to futurofitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. One theme keeps coming up: the right technology can make or break your business. That's why I'm thrilled to introduce our new presenting sponsor, Perfect Gym. Perfect Gym isn't just another gym management system. They are part of the Sport Alliance Group, Europe's leading fitness software company that has officially entered the US market. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs. No disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking, no problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They've invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. Doug Roman. Welcome to the future of fitness, my friend. Thank you. Great in LA, Beverly Hills. Talk. Yeah, this is awesome, man. And I don't get to do these very much in person, but it's always much better just to be all be in the same room with someone, you know, um, shake your hand, do a fist bump every once in a while. Yeah, because nice. Good one. That was a good one. So we're at the Connected Health and Fitness Summit here in Los Angeles, and it's uh you guys just set up a really cool I have to go see it because I know they're still working on it. But when I saw the unfinished product of your little training experience that you guys have going on there. But as the chief growth officer at High Rocks, uh people are in and around this industry, one of the hottest topics we have, right? You guys, it's it's a rocket ship, what you guys are doing. So we're just talking let me lay this out for people. So in 2008, you had 600 finishers. 2018, sorry, 2018. That's why it's good that you're here. Um in 2025, 779,000. And now you're expected in 2026 1.8 million finishers.

Yeah, I get goosebumps, but yeah.

That's for revenue. I don't know, I have 140 million. I know you guys are a private company, so you don't have to show that if you want, but it's it's high.

Simple maths.

Yeah, it's great. You're crushing it. Um and now gym affiliates, which is something we're gonna dive into here because I want to talk about the commercial opportunities, not just for high rocks, but for people who are in your ecosystem. 14,000 gym affiliates globally. So as a chief growth officer, you're doing something right. Um, I have to say.

Even if you just got in the right place at the right time, you're executing on I think right place, right time. Massive momentum behind the brand, massive momentum post-COVID, of people wanting to get together. Obviously, being able to build a global brand on the back of the events business and the general fitness industry being quite fragmented, fragmented nationally, but also fragmented internationally and globally. There's very few global players we're able to tie all the dots together. But I think most importantly, we came from a mindset of knocking on every gym door, trying to find people to participate in our events. We've done it the hard way. There wasn't a pile of cash running around saying, oh, let's go and spend some money and build events. It was literally from the ground up, and I think that's really put us in a good mindset of trying to build the most efficient, lean organization that services not only the end consumer, the athlete, but also how do we support the ecosystem of 200,000, 300,000, 400,000 commercial gyms in the world and what are they looking forward to? Retain members or acquire new members, right? So I think it's a beautiful, full ecosystem where we're touching many, many players. We're not competitive really to anybody in this space. We're not competing with a gym, we're not competing with a marathon, it's a really nice space to be in because we think we can add value to a lot of people. So I think it's been the perfect storm at the right time. Uh it's been super fun.

Yeah. You know, I I um I got to interview Christian, the founder, I think it was like five years ago. And we're in the middle of a pandemic. You know, uh, I don't think anyone wants to revisit people who listen to this want to revisit that. But it was it was a little bit of a daunting time. And I know um, you know, it was because it was booming in Europe, right? And then the pandemic obviously had a certain amount of effects on what you could do in person. Um, but to see you guys come out of it with so much heat, right, and just exploding, especially into the U.S. market. We're gonna talk about U.S. expansion because I think that's something that um a large majority of our listeners here in the U.S. But maybe you can explain something a little bit more, Doug, like how what are all the levers that you can pull to grow this thing? Like you have a bunch of different parts of your business. Like, what is the model? And you have obviously the events and the races, right? You have a lot of branding. Now you have this gym affiliate um model, which I'm sure is can be quite lucrative as well. And so there's a lot of different things going on. Like, what are some of the, yeah, when you're when you're growing this thing, what are some of the revenue levers that you can pull?

Look, it starts with the communities and the athletes, right? I think absolutely the foundation of everything we've built has been centered around giving the athlete the ultimate race experience, right? Give them the feeling that they're top athlete, come to our events. Next time they come back, it's a better event. It's a bigger production. They go They don't only just want to improve their time, but they're also we want to give more goosebumps moments, right? We want to give them that experience of hey, wow, I did it last year, that was great. This year it's even better. So the word of mouth, every time we go and do an event, it's like she did it, I can do it, I can do it. So every time we do an event, that person, or every time we have a finisher, that person is motivating and inspiring three to four other people to do it, right? To user-generated content. I mean, it's mind-boggling to see how Instagram has been flooded with high rocks content. It's not our content, it's it's what the consumers and the athletes are putting out there, right? So I think we had 12 or 15 billion Instagram impressions last year of user-generated content. So I think the community has been growing the brand on behalf of us, which is probably the biggest compliment you can have. So I would always say that the event plus the end consumer is the foundation of being able to go and execute this in China, right? We now have 10,000, 12,000 participants in China per event. We're going to ten major Chinese cities. We're building the brand in India. India's probably I'm not going to put a number, but slightly behind the rest of the world in terms of fitness penetration, right? Sure. How are we getting into these emerging markets like Brazil, like India? Really big market. So generally, to be able to go and roll this out globally with a universal product, knowing that fitness is perceived equally in every market, the way that people want to get healthier is the same in China as it is in the US. Which I think is the beauty of the overall concept and the ecosystem that we're all in, where you're listening to Missourian as well. It's a kind of a cool space to be because it's We're universally speaking the same language. It's not that different in LA as it is in Sao Paulo.

I don't think that can be overstated. Because you know, as you were and I were talking about, like the simplicity of the model and how scalable it is. You know, I was telling you I came from CrossFit, that was the world I was in. CrossFit competitions are different everywhere you go. Like uh my wife still competes in different competitions. She's like they they wait for the workouts to come out, right? They come out and they're announced on Thursday, and then it's on Saturday, and then there's a mad scramble on Friday. They're like, I gotta get my double unders, right? And I practice my snatch, you know, whatever it is. There's like this mad scramble, so it's like to be prepared for each event. And I guess that's kind of its own beauty in its own way. But with you guys, it's like people know exactly what they're getting into. They know like they can practice these things if they have a gym, right, where they can go to, um, they can they can do all these things they need, and they know it's gonna be the event. They know exactly what to do, and they know how to pace it, they know how to do all these things where their strengths and their weaknesses are and they where they can improve. And that's something that like it makes it, like I said, so scalable and so unique that I'm sure that's been a big part of fueling the growth is like you can duplicate this anywhere in the world and still have a great experience.

That's the beauty of it from the sport side of things, right? Like I said, it's measurable. You can go and improve, you know exactly what you're getting into, your coach is preparing you in the right way, they can program for you, they know you're gonna get ready in a safe manner, it's a safe sport to participate in. And on the flip side, on the business side, it gives us the opportunity to have 15 massive roadshows around the world with 15 to 18 trucks. We have the relationships to Red Bull, to Puma, it's literally a turnkey show, it's like Formula One is coming to town, right? It's that big a production, but you need a consistent format in order to be able to continuously improve on the experience. If you need to reinvent the sport every event, you're not going to be able to focus on the customer experience or the athlete experience. We know that the sport is set. We're super proud that the sport is set. We think that sport is determined by a set format. We haven't changed the concept since the inauguration in 2017, right? But the ability to improve the experience, the ability to improve the whole ecosystem around what the athlete is going through and what that athlete journey is from the moment they drop their bag off to when they cross the finish line, the way their the spectators are engaging with the sport, the way their friends and family are engaging with the sport, that just makes it so much I wouldn't say easier. But if your mom understands what you're doing, she might not understand it the first time, but she definitely understands it the second time, because she's seen it once. So all of a sudden that makes it so much more memorable. And people go, Oh, doesn't it get boring? Why does competing in front of your loved ones get boring? Why does getting better get boring? It doesn't that doesn't really uh add up.

Well it's um because I mean it's still unique. That's that's a really unique point. Now here's the thing. Even though you get inside the stadium, because I was there for the one in New York that you guys had, the inaugural outdoor one, and I'm very impressed, dude. That was wild. It's a lot of people. But it's still in different places, right? So they still can travel to, they can make it a thing. Like, okay, if there's one in Charlotte, oh, we'll go do it in Charlotte, we'll do the Charlotte thing, but it's still a different event venue, but the workout's the same. So it still offers like a lot of opportunities to to experience things and and do things differently and travel this circuit, which I know like a lot of friends who do Spartan races, they travel the world, right? The ones I know have a lot of money, they can do these things, right? Which is nice. But that that's another thing too. It's it's yeah, it's the same, but you can train for it, but it's also gonna be a different experience everywhere you go.

Totally. I mean, they were finding a Phoenix from New York uh two weeks ago, and I think there was 20, 25 people on the plane coming from two or three gyms. You know, it's girlfriends and boyfriends, it's couples, it's all ages, right? So I do think it's still important to have your local event, right? To be in New York, go to a local gym and be that your magic moment of the year where literally you and a hundred of your fellow gym members are going to that event, you organize a restaurant, you do the whole bananas, but then it's also great that 20, 30% are traveling. Right? You don't only want to be dependent on the traveler, right? Because that shrinks your audience at the end of the day. But to be able to come into LA or Phoenix or New York and really tap into the local gym community is your bread and butter. Yeah. That's going to be 70, 80% of your revenue. And then when you have the 30% of people traveling, then wow, that gets the airline excited, that gets the car companies excited, that gets the insurance companies excited because those are the guys that are spending two, three, four thousand dollars on enhancing their fitness experience, right? Those are the guys buying the most merch, they're buying the new Puma shoe that's coming out tomorrow, right? Those are the guys that are the big spenders, but I always believe that the New York event is 70 75 to 80% for New York. For New York. Yeah.

Yeah. Um the gym ecosystem that you guys have built out, I guess 14,000, it's a large number. I mean, how many gyms in the United States is in it like 2013?

A little bit more. It's probably 40 to 50,000 gyms, commercial gyms, and then we're tapping into hotel gyms, corporate offices, we're talking into uh condominium buildings, so we're trying to build really services to go from your most competitive CrossFit box to an Anytime location to an F-45 and an Orange Theory to a self-serving high-head gym, and all those gyms will treat HyRox in a different manner. They will all use Hyrux for a different purpose.

Right?

CrossFit will look at Hyrux completely differently than F-45, completely different to Anytime Fitness or Golds Gym, very different to a hotel operator. But what's the common synonym is that they believe that Hyrux has become a category. So you go into the Peloton app and you go, hey, I like to do HIROX, and there's dedicated workouts that are HIROX driven. So we also have our own digital platform. So the purpose around HireWorks has always been you can train it anywhere at any time. You want to go to a CrossFit gym, you can train there. You want to you have the money to go to at any time or a Planet Fitness, then you can go and train there. If you just want to train in your local hotel gym, you should be able to go and train the sport that you love wherever or whatever fits your purpose or your needs, or your wallet for that matter.

Two questions on this gym ecosystem is where did you guys get early traction? Like is there a specific category of gym? Was it like you know, cross-it boxes? Was it you know bigger health clubs that have the room to set up a track? So that's the first question is where would you guys get early traction and then maybe give us an example of you know now in 2026, like who is one of your better partners and how and what does it look like inside their gym? What does it feel like to train for high rocks in that facility?

So definitely the first move was where the athletes were coming from. Guys that were coming out of the CrossFit space, functional training, CrossFit boxes, spin off of CrossFit boxes, I wouldn't say elite training facilities, but performance-driven uh um performance-driven gyms, right? That was the first batch. All of a sudden then the F-45 started getting involved, the Orange Fury started getting involved. But the boutique saw it very differently. The boutique saw it as a way to prove that their training methodology resonated well with getting ready for high rocks, right? Sure. F-45 doesn't necessarily need high rocks. F-45 have a very strong brand, they have their own programming, they have their own digital delivery, they have very strong centralized marketing, they do all the things right that a gym needs in order to succeed. But they needed that differentiating factor, saying, hey, you as a high rocks have to come train at F-45. We will get you ready. So they're using it very much for the brand association. Go one step further, and that's almost two, three years down the line. We only started talking to enterprise gyms exactly 12 months ago at HFA. It was the first time that I had, or we as a team had the confidence that we can go and talk to the biggest operators in the market. Why? Because they're dependent on infrastructure, they don't have the equipment, they don't always have the means to go and roll this out across two, three, four hundred locations, let alone 5,000 anytime locations. They're sometimes franchised, sometimes they're centralized. There's a lot of complexity around having a service level that accommodates the needs of those gyms. I think there's a reason why Les Mills is very good on the enterprise gym side. There's a reason why body pump has been embraced in the past very positively by big box gyms. It's a turkey solution. The instructor is getting instructed in a certain way that delivers a turnkey workout that is repeatable on a consistent basis. So the gym goes, okay, I love that product. It's a kind of repeat, my customer knows what you're getting. I didn't show up with Hyrux and go, what equipment do you have? How much space do you have? How good is your coach? What's the level of your athletes? How do we make it adaptable? Do you have enough rowers? And all of a sudden your the barrier to entry becomes a lot harder. But the beautiful thing that we've seen and Club Studio part of um LA Fitness of kind of being the front runner that, hey, we're going to convert basketball courts. Why? Because it's big space. The equipment needs for high rocks, as you'll see outside here today, is pretty minimal for the amount of space that you can optimize. I mean, you can for a hundred fifty thousand dollar investment, you can fill up two thousand five hundred square feet and get thirty to forty people training at the same time, either in an open gym environment or in a group class environment. That's pretty good unit economics. The unit economics are super interesting. Taking that back to our CrossFit box, you know how many class how many people were traditionally in your own.

Dude, if we had a big class, it was twenty people, and it got a little hairy.

Yeah, it got a little hairy, but also because you're focusing on technique, you're focusing on safety. I can now go to a CrossFit box and say, I can get 40 people doing a pretty good workout in your exact same space. And they go, wow, that's interesting, because that's twice as many as I would otherwise have for a CrossFit class. So they can start creating certain economics around, okay, on Sunday morning at 7 a.m. that's my high works crowd, I can get 45 people. And now we're just having to bring that same mindset to the big box gyms and teaching them how to handle group X, how to handle programming, how to handle coaches' education, and give them the tools that allow them to I wouldn't say as standardized as possible, because we truly believe that every gym should learn how to program themselves. But we're giving them the tools and the technologies to help them en route to deliver that high rox programming in a way that meets their demographics.

So if I'm Doug, if I'm whitefish strength and conditioning, right, and I'm looking at becoming a high ROX affiliate. What is asked of me to do that and what do I get in return for becoming a HIROX affiliate?

Barrier to entry is very low. Some people ask us why are you not putting up barriers to entry? Why are you not asking, hey, you need a minimum equipment, you need minimum for sled lanes, you need non-motorized treads. It's a sport. The consumer will decide where is the best place for them to go and train. Sure. They might go and train at a place where the community is amazing, but the equipment might not be perfect. But to have the best coach, the best community, there's a spirit there that You know, versus a gym that has all the equipment but doesn't have the coaching in. So I don't we don't want to put a barry train tree. The consumer will decide where he goes and participates and trains in the sports. So we're asking for 130 bucks a month. 140 bucks a month. 130 bucks a month. 130 bucks a month. That's how much? Fifteen hundred bucks a year. A member for most. It's half a member for most, to be honest. I mean old school.

My pricing sucked.

Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say that because the pricing obviously in the US is very different to Europe, but let's say it's one member for either one member to stay longer. And I think you're coming out of the the CrossFit space where Chris Hinshaw always talks about this. You bring a a member to a hierarchy event, he's gonna train for six months. He's not gonna leave that gym in his journey to that first hierarchy event. Sure. He goes and finishes that hierarchy event, he's so hooked, he's going back to that gym saying, get me ready for the next one. You've got him for another six to eight months. All of a sudden, you're creating a you were like we always say, we're turning members into athletes. Athletes don't leave their tennis clubs, athletes don't leave their golf club, athletes don't leave their basketball clubs. Why should an athlete leave their gym? That's the social community you're training in, that's the coach you're training with, that's the environment you're comfortable with, that's the environment that's making you better. You're not gonna shop around for a $20 discount because gym around the corner is offering the same thing at a lower price.

So $130 a month. I get to use the brand name, right? What else what else do you get for that? So let's start phenomenal fee.

Let's start where we've been evolving, right? Started off the brand association, that was as good as we could give. Like we just didn't have a team. We mean we only started the gym affiliation business two years ago, about 20 months ago, right? To really think about services. Um started out with okay.

We got to 14,000 in 20 months.

Yeah. All right. We had a little bit of a start. We were starting at 1750, but 10% growth a month. So we started out with, yeah, you can use the brand name. That's a good start. Then all of a sudden it was like, okay, events are selling out in Europe. Can we give pre-event access? So we decided to allocate 50% of our ticket inventory exclusive to gym affiliates. Still a rat race, still gotta show up at 9 a.m. when tickets go open. Yes, say New York went live for affiliates. Twenty-one thousand tickets sold, fifty percent of our allocation was sold in twenty-eight minutes across four thousand uh training clubs in the US. But it's a chance to get a ticket, right? So there is this pre pre there's a better chance of getting a ticket if you're a member of a training club. Then if you're not. So that's a good start. Then we started thinking about the service level. Service level was not easy because I'm wanting to serve as a CrossFit gym and I want to serve as a planet a planet fitness, the two extremes. What do we do? So we've built literally uh what we call the performance hub, which is a centralized content and programming hub where we've got a thousand movement standards, we've got workout builders, we've got curated workouts, we've got collections, we've got challenges, we got whiteboards, we got digital whiteboards that can project directly to the screens, we've got video to support that, which we'll see here as well. So all of a sudden, a gym can take our programming, they can adapt the programming in order to meet their equipment needs. If they feel that, like you said, we are um Evictus, a very famous CrossFit gym, and saying, hey, I like to do my own programming, they can program within the structure that we're giving them, they can match it with the video library, all of a sudden they're able to project a really cool curated workout on the whiteboard if they wish to do so. So all of a sudden we build a technical ecosystem that is so flexible and agile that gyms can just build programming or take what we have on the shelf. And I think that's already a good starting point. Are most gyms affiliating because level one and level two? Yes, that's still the momentum that we're having. Are we pushing very hard to get the utilization of the performance hub to the highest level possible that they start seeing the value for a hundred bucks? Well, I'm getting programming, I'm getting content, I'm getting marketing tools, I'm getting business support, I'm getting athlete assessment tools, I'm getting athlete guidance, like, hey, I I'm a stronger guy, but I need to run. How do I help the coach get their athletes on the track? Hey, you should be doing two engine classes a week, we should do be doing more strength. So, how do we really provide tools for the people that need it? And how do we build services for gyms that might not need the education but love the practical tools that we're giving it? And we don't need to raise the price, we don't need to up it by 20 bucks a month. I think we're keeping the barrier to entry so low because we want to grow the sport. We want to get to 20, 30% penetration in the gym space.

One of the things um that I I talked about with Andrew from Center about this too is like as CrossFit evolved, there became like a like a for lack of better term, a secondary market of services and goods that came behind it that were not owned by CrossFit, right? So what I mean is like um you know, specialty coaching programs, like maybe there's a a running form, run running technique workshop that pops up. Or of course, like business coaching specific to the model, all kinds of brands. I mean uh two-brain business, good example. Two-brain business, best hour, Philly University, like all these things have have popped up, right? Are you starting to see that now? Like, is is there a business coaching identity for HIROX where they teach you, like, you know, if you're a gym owner, here's best practices on how to market it, here's how to run it, here's the unit economics. Like, is that starting to pop up yet, or any other like secondary market opportunities are being created at this point?

People are generating significant revenues on the outside of HyROX at the moment, right? Which is great, great to see. We first of all have to make sure that our performance hub plus our academy is at such a level with the expertise that gym owners can take what they need from that. However, at the moment I have HWPO and proven, very famous in the CrossFit space, selling programming into HyROC, into HyRock's gyms. Amazing. I love it. I mean, I don't need or we don't need CrossFit gyms to take our programming. What I do need is that the affiliate to be able to use the brand name. Right? But if they then get the programming from Matt Fraser, amazing. Love it. Like, who am I to say that our programming is better? That's not it's a free world, and I think that's the beauty of what we're creating. We we're trying to partner with Two-Brain Business, we're trying to develop the ROI calculators, we want that to be part of the package in order just to make sure that we're all encompassing. It's not only about programming, it is not only about education. It is about marketing best practices, it is about business best practices. Thinking about how do I bring a little bit of nutrition expertise into that ecosystem. How do I all of a sudden match a food plan with a workout plan? That's normal on one-on-one coaching, it's less normal in group coaching. So there's a lot of facets that we can play with. We don't want to make it too complicated. We want the systems to be scalable. We're in 112 countries, so we already need to translate everything to 24 languages. So we also have to, and I think people sometimes underestimate that, and it's probably my I'm the biggest naysayer in the company. Because I always need to think about if it works in LA, does it also work in China? And if I can't deliver the same quality of service in LA as I can in China, it's probably not the right route for us. We talk a lot about can we do personal road trips? Can we go and do coaches' summits for 50-60 people? Like, yeah, but how do I guarantee the quality of those coaching education seminars when I don't know the coach in Bangladesh, when I don't know the coach in India? Then I rather centralize everything with amazing digital platforms, amazing digital solutions. It might not be as curated, as handholding as many people are anticipating. But we also have to think about what is scalable, what's practical, and what makes sense for the business. And on the back of that, once the scale is there, we can start localizing again with local community events and have the community take on that role, which I think CrossFit does very well, right? They have their local captains of industry that really go into the local affiliates. But at the moment, with the speed we're going at, we cannot be slowed down by practical limitations of trying to get out in front of a group of 20, 30 coaches and make everybody feel good. Technology needs to do that job.

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting. If there's if there's one big lesson that can be learned from CrossFit and its rapid expansion, is like quality control is a real big challenge. And and maybe it's just part of the game, right? When you expand, you expand this fast, this big, across this many gyms are independently owned. Maybe it's just a trade-off. It's just what it is. You just kind of have to deal with it. But you would, you know, so many times I would hear, you know, someone will leave my gym, go travel, go to another one, and say, it just wasn't the same. You know, the the coaches didn't give a shit. It was dirty. Like you know, one of the things, so it's like people associate, but people don't know that. They just see that CrossFits on the door, they must be associated with this other one, they're all the same. Right? So it was like this constantly education, people educating people as they came in my doors, or people, you know, in various ways to try to teach them like, well, no, we're all it's it's affiliate model, but no one really cares. The consumer doesn't care. They don't care. They have too many other things to worry about. So I guess you know that's I'm glad you're talking about that. I mean, that's that's a challenge, right? It's something you guys are gonna have to face as you grow you grow quicker.

But it also means we have to say no to a lot of opportunities, and we we had the discussion around we we never wanted to do the gyms, that's clear, because we never wanted to compete with the ecosystem. That was gonna be our next question. Do we want to put our name on gyms? Oh, if the consumer is not clear when is high rocks and not high rocks and when is a high rox mini event or a high rox simulation happening in gym, is that being organized by high rox? Is it being organized by a local CrossFit box? The consumer we need to be very clear on when a high rox is organizing something and when it's on behalf of somebody else. And I think that's very important that we make that differential, and that's why we focus so much on the event execution. We will build the events to the highest standard uh in 150 cities around the world. We then partner with gyms and it's a free market. We don't oppose, we don't impose the rules, we don't impose the methodology, we don't have a methodology we're trying to bring an open ecosystem of experts to the table to talk about running, that talk about compromise running, that talk about endurance, that talk about strength. But we're not imposing on the market what that is. If you feel that you're better suited to a CrossFit box or to an F-45, it's your choice as a consumer. Sometimes you're saying, hey, we're the capital T antennas, we're the Capital G in Gulf, we're just there to facilitate the sport, and the market has to run with it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good approach, man. I think it's the only way you can really do it. You can't. I was gonna say there's nothing you can do. I mean you could try. You'll you'll go crazy and you'll probably burn through a lot of money trying to do it, but it's it's not something you can do.

Well, first of all, in the IP protection, like of course that's clear, right? Yeah. Jim A is affiliated, Jim B is not affiliated. They're using the brand name. That's not we want to control the brand, we want to protect the brand. That's clear. However, the execution of the brand, we can only advise, guide, educate, prepare, provide best practices, and in the end the consumer will decide. Yeah. Well said. Let's talk about the competition. The the whatever the competition, yeah, not the race, the the competition.

Yeah, like what no, not the competition race, but like the the market competition. So you and I were chatting prior recording, like so th this is what I see as competition. I want to hear what you see as competition. Obviously, CrossFit. Anyone who listens podcast goes that's that's something I would say first. DECA, right? Is seems to be one that that is kind of coming towards your your angle. I think there's of course the sparking is there's the tough mutters. Um, those are the first ones come to mind. But who would you consider when you look at your competitive landscape? Like, who are you competing against? And you can say the couch is what everyone else says, right? It's like, well, we're competing against the couch. We want to get people off the couch, which is great. But like, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. Um, from a business perspective, like who do you think your your biggest competitors are here?

Honestly, it's such a tough and this can be uh a bit of a conversation there because everything you mentioned there would I mean CrossFit is an affiliate model. Right? So in my humble opinion, CrossFit is more like F-45 or Orange Fury. They're some sort, they're not a franchise, but they're close to a franchise system where they are handing over playbooks and education and programming and brands. They walk that line. They walk the line of so why would I not partner with CrossFit in the same way that I can partner with F-45 or Orange Fury? Right? So for us, CrossFit is absolutely not a competitor. It's more a partner than it is a competitor. They're bringing an unbelievable amount of elite athletes to the sport, but also average Joes that are just entering into the box, and we're bringing a lot of business to CrossFit as an example as well, because Hyrux is a great stepping stone to start your CrossFit career. It's a great lower barrier to entry. I would not definitely not say CrossFit is a competition. Okay. The like the way and and that's what's really interesting. The markets where CrossFit was strong was the hardest markets for us to penetrate. And it's an interesting analogy because the reason why is that a lot of members didn't want to jump on Hyrux because they thought it was CrossFit and subsequently didn't want to do it. CrossFit is still only a very small percentage of the fitness market.

It is.

So if 98% of that fitness market thinks that higher rocks equals CrossFit, then 98% of the market thinks I can't do CrossFit, so I'm not going to do HIROX. Are you following? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, because a lot of people look at CrossFit like that's unattainable for me. That's for freaks, right? People who are super into it. Right.

Super into it. It's gymnastics, it's powerlifting, it's technical, it's super it's a different sport for a different human being. And then we were trying to explain, no, we were closer to the marathon. Like, well, what do you mean you're closer to the marathon? Oh, it's natural body movements. And you need a pair of running shoes. We're asking you to hinge, push, pull, squat, jump, get up and down. Right. That's as close to And we're asking you to run a lot. Basic human movement. It's basic human movement. So And guess what? It's already happening in every gym in the world. It's not like we've reinvented a sport where we needed to build pickleball courts. No, the gyms existed, the ecosystem existed, the coaches are there, the ecosystem is there. People were training functional fitness, whether it's at F-45 or at OTF or at CrossFit or at your local LA Fitness, right? So we just build a podium where those athletes, where those members could go and participate in a sport with a very low barrier to entries. I don't think that there's necessarily competition. Spartan is very different. Like I said, you you go to the mountains, you run in mud, you do really cool obstacles, and you you go home and you might go to a gym to get a little bit stronger, but you're not going specifically, you're not joining a membership of a CrossFit box to get better at Spartan Race. Sure. Specifically. Specifically. It might be a thing you do on the side, and like you said, there's a very loyal community of Spartans that probably go to Spartan-specific gyms and travel the world, and super cool community and amazing to see. What we are seeing, which is the beauty of any sport, is that there's gonna be different events that combine running and strength training. Or strength exercises. And they create that in a DECA format or in uh FX format or in a gym race format. There's many things popping up around the world that are only supporting the growth of the sport. You have Iron Man at the top, then you have other Triflons underneath the Iron Man brand, but apparently Iron Man gets considered to be the pinnacle of the sport of Triathlon. I would see that we've created a new category. We've created a new sport, we call it fitness racing, we've created the Champions League event structure. We scaled very, very quickly, we're fortunate enough to be the first mover. But it's absolutely great that the market's picking up. There's going to be more opportunities for members to get involved in the sport, to raise, hey, when New York sold out, they can go do another event. But there's more stuff coming to New York to participate in the sport. It would be a shame if you're playing tennis, but you can only compete once a year. Great that there's many other tennis tournaments going around. So I think we're very much seeing it from we're building out the sports category. You know, our aspiration is to go Olympic, and that becomes, you know, that golden moment where the sport has the global podium it deserves. But underneath it, like and running, you have 5k runs, 10k rounds, have marathons. That you'll see popping up, and we can only advocate for that because the bigger the basis, the bigger the chances that this could be a hundred, two hundred million participant sport. Wow. Wow. But like I said, that reminds me back of our conversations three years ago, which were our humble beginnings in the US, where like I said, we had to knock on every gym door, we had to talk to every person. Anyone that could help us grow the awareness of the sport, we had to go we have to go after it, right?

It's it's it's uh it's guerrilla marketing, man. I mean it's super crazy. Yeah, I call it hand-to-hand combat out there. One of the things where we talk about the US or the uh the gym world is Do you know do you have this number? Like what percentage of finishers at your events train in gyms? Do you know that number?

I am because I'm presenting it tomorrow. It's 92%, right? Oh, sorry, 92% are member of a gym.

Okay. Then what percentage of like affiliates do you think? Or do you know that?

Our biggest weakness is still our, you know, we're trying to get our database up and running, we're trying to build. So we're kind of building out that whole back end now, so I can't give you that number. But if the methodology of us, like yesterday, we gave 50% of our tickets to gyms and that sold out, then we have to assume that at least 21,000, those 21,000 people that bought a ticket, yes, they're a member of our partner gyms.

Okay.

We have 4,000 partner gyms in the US. And we'll probably have close to 300,000 tickets available for racing this season in the US alone. So we have to assume that 150,000 tickets are being spread across 4,000 gyms as a minimum. And of course, when the public ticket sale starts, a lot of people that couldn't get a ticket in the pre-reg might still be able to get it in the public uh ticket sale. What kind of so the numbers are big? Yeah, those are huge. But it's amazing to see that certain like F-45 sometimes shows up in conglomeration with 1,500 athletes. And they're all wearing an F-45 shirt. Like, what better marketing for the F-45 brand when one after the other finisher is proudly representing their local F-45?

Yeah. And that that's great. I mean, I I'm a big fan of the F-45 team. I mean, I've had Tom on this interview on this podcast numerous times, and uh Luke Armstrong, I've known forever, I'm sure you've become buddies with as you guys grow. And they've they've always had a keen eye for innovation and partnerships in the market. Yeah, they grew really fast for a little long time. That caused a little bit of growth, man. So I think we don't have to revisit all that. But they seem to have really done a great job of resetting, focusing on the assets they have, especially when Tom came on board. Tom Dowd, their CEO, and Mike was like, We're we're gonna tight things up, right? And now they've focused on working with you guys. And it's just really good to see that you those cheap brands come along. I think they're you know I'm a fan of both F-45.

But it's beautiful also, and all compliments to F-45, but that subsequently also Orange Fury is jumping on board. Right? Two what you could conceive as great editors and great operators next to each other and on the high streets. Yeah, they're both committing to the same sport. And that's I think the beauty about the high rox ecosystem that we're building, that two what you could conceive as two massive competitors are using the same vehicle to promote their training methodology, their brand, and their community.

Yeah. That's unique. I can't think I can't think of anything else within our industry that would allow to direct competitors like this, like fierce competitors. Fierce competitors.

They're fighting for the same consumer. Yeah. They probably say that the demographics of their consumers are different, but that's why we so advocate make HIROX your own. How does HIROX fit to your brand? How does it fit to your training methodology? How does it fit to your coaches? We're not gonna bowze that on you. If you want to go that route and you think that's gonna resonate with your existing audience or your future audience, that's the one you should pursue. Gold's gym is gonna be different than LA Fitness. Thank God. If it was all just real estate, four walls, and the same equipment, they all have a rower. They all have a ski erg. And that's always the fun discussion where you said my neighbor has high ROCs. Like your neighbor has runners. What are you talking about? Like it's not about I should not do high rocks because my neighbor does hire works. What happens if you don't do high rocks? What happens if you don't buy a rower? What happens if you don't buy a ski orc? That's the fun discussion because it's hard to be different. But the difference comes in the subtle flavor of how you treat your people, how your coaches are educated, how you create a group class dynamic, how you create cool community events. The hardware and the high rox is a given. The rest is the hard work.

Yeah. It is, you know, and as I've kind of gotten more into the consumer market myself as being a fitness consumer, right? Like I'll go to different classes or I'll visit different places. And there's something that you can't like so I I I go to at my gym, I go to um a spin class once a week. So I'm in the summers, I like to get out on my my bike now. It's what people in their 40s do, I guess. But you know, I'll go to two different and shout out to Scarlett. Like I go to her class and the energy's different. It's better, it's bigger, right? She's not flashy, she's just doing a great job. And there's something about that. Like when you get a good one. But it works for you. It works for me. But it pretty much works for everyone in that room. You know, like that room's packed. Like there's not a seat open, and people are hooting and hollering. I'm like, and then I go to another one, I'm like, oh, is it the time or what is it? Like there's just something um intangible that goes into a great experience in the world of fitness that there's so many multiple factors, right? And I think that's the secret sauce. It's like you could put I could put bikes in any room.

Right?

Les Mills, Philip Mills won't we had a chance to meet him, and um unbelievable credit to Philip Mills for 50 years in the industry, literally building from gyms to the group X ecosystem. He compared the growth of Hyrux a little bit to the the spinning boom in 2010. All of a sudden, every gym was investing in a in a spinning space. Similar now. We're just seeing those big boxes thinking about how to optimize their space that we spoke to. And you're seeing that that transfer now where they're looking at, oh, does that yoga studio or that studio space still work for what I'm needing? Oh, let me look into how I can economically renovate that into a high rock space. And I think it was interesting to make that comparison to spinning, which is also a category.

Yeah. Yeah. So um as we kind of run out of time here, Doug, I want to I want to face the future, and this is the future fitness podcast. Um you mentioned Olympic aspirations. That's pretty cool. But this this growth angle that you guys are at, so maybe paint me a picture and I'll put a little timestamp on this. So we're sitting here in 2026, 2029 for a nice even number. Like, what do you project? What's your vision for where Hyrocks can be? When does the Olympic aspirations you guys have a goal for when that may happen or thoughts when that could happen, or is that just something that you just keep pushing for and hope that it happens? Um, yeah, I don't know. What what's what's the grand vision here? Let's put it this way you and I are sitting here in three years and we're having a beer. You're like, dude, we crush it. We're crushing it. Everything we talked about came true. What would have needed to happen? If they still sell beer in 2029.

Let's hope that's not.

Maybe I become a bootlegger. I'll be a lot wealthier guy.

Honestly, it's so weird because we've never planned 12 months ahead, right? So it's just it's so hard because every time you come up with a business model, the business model changes.

Right?

So I think it's really it's clear where we want to be on the event space. 150 biggest cities, not more, not less, 150 biggest cities in the world, three to five million participants. We're very close to that already with the present growth rate, but that's this very simple target that we have, which is where I would say 80% of the focus is going. Get the organization ready to scale to those 150 uh events around the ancillary services and the in the gym path that we're on always, I want to be touching 100 million lives.

The Future of Fitness podcast is proudly brought to you by EGM. In an industry full of noise, with more features, more screens, more promises, eGim is focused on something far more meaningful. Progress that counts. EGM is a global fitness technology leader building the infrastructure behind real results. Their open ecosystem connects smart strength equipment, AI-powered software, and data-driven services to turn fitness into measurable, repeatable progress for members, trainers, operators, and communities. Now, what really excites me is how EGM brings this ecosystem together with WellPass, their corporate wellness platform. By combining their strength equipment with AI-powered software and their corporate wellness platform, Wellpass, they're leading the shift to proactive, preventative health. Isn't that what we all want? That's why we're here. The result members feel more confident and motivated, trainers have better tools to support people, operators see stronger retention and growth, and employers benefit from healthier, more engaged teams. This isn't Innovation for show. It's progress you can see, measure, and repeat. To learn more, please visit eGym.com.

40,000 gyms, 50,000 gyms, but how can we get to 100 million lives that are participating in high rocks in one way or the other? That would make it the third or fourth biggest sport in the world. Which is possible because there's a couple hundred million uh gym members that are actively pursuing fitness and and then we're not measuring kind of people only doing yoga or etc. right? So I think if we can touch a hundred million lives, the ecosystem becomes very interesting. Five million athletes, forty-fifty thousand gyms, hundred million people in database. And what is the ecosystem you can create around that from apparel sales to nutrition to marketplaces, bringing supply and demand better together to then potentially climaxing in wow, this deserves to be at the Olympics because it is not just a movement, it's it is a global movement. It is the biggest mass participation sport outside of running in the world.

Yeah, man. Right on. I love it. Um last question I always ask on here, Doug, is like uh as an industry, what what can we help you with specifically? Like, is there any challenge you're you're you're facing right now? Do you need talent? Do you need technicians? Obviously, you want more gyms or your ecosystem. If people are gonna reach out uh after this interview and and talk to you, what would you like to hear from them about?

We're always learning, right? I didn't come from the fitness industry. Our team hasn't come from the fitness industry. So the more we learn, the more we can adopt and adapt and serve, right? So I think it's it's all about the learning curve at the moment. We've we're s we're simply not tying ourselves to a simple technology, we're not tying ourselves to a simple technology provider, we're not tying ourselves to a simple a single expert. We're just trying to figure out well, we keep the ship moving, but we're open-minded, we have an open ecosystem, right? So there is no yeses or no at this moment. Why? Because in the end we want to do what's best for the affiliates and in the end consumer. And I think a lot hasn't been disrupted yet. There hasn't been that much significant change in technology or in hardware or in it's not fundamentally like Uber hasn't come in disrupted. I mean, Class has definitely made an impact, but all those things are like, hey, we're not saying no to anything. I'm keeping an open mind, so keep reaching out, LinkedIn, email. We try to reply to everybody. I mean, obviously a lot of people are selling, trying to sell us a lot of stuff, but that's okay. And you know, we can learn from you, we can learn from everybody in the room. So no, we keep learning, then we'll start going from there.

Cool, ma'am. And where's the best people for best place for people to go? Do you want to go to LinkedIn, specific email?

Just LinkedIn or Douglashirawarks.com. Absolutely fine. We're we're you know we are we're humble Europeans, and you know we we really want to stay very closely connected to the people. Thank you for having me. And it's always nice to be in person because the chemistry is a lot better. Thank you guys. Possibly.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.