Fitness Trends: Key Physical Activity and Exercise Trends for 2011 Will Challenge Health Clubs and Fitness Centers

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Leslie Nolen, president of The Radial Group

Anyone can say 'exercise more.' Matching it to consumer lifestyles, health issues, and making it fun - forever! - that's hard.

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) December 16, 2010

The new 2011 Health and Wellness Insider's Guide to Durable Trends, Fleeting Fads and Innovative Ideas identifies key fitness trends which will create both opportunities and challenges for health clubs and other fitness businesses in 2011 and beyond, announced Leslie Nolen, president of The Radial Group.

Says Nolen, whose firm provides marketing services and strategy consulting to health and wellness businesses, "Anyone can say 'exercise more.' Matching it to consumer lifestyles, health issues, and making it fun - forever! - that's hard."

The uniquely comprehensive Insider's Guide to health and wellness trends discusses the business impact of trends across the entire health and wellness spectrum: fitness trends and exercise trends, nutrition trends and healthcare trends plus conventional, complementary and alternative healthcare trends, obesity and diabetes, and longevity and aging.

Selected fitness and exercise trends include:

1) Mid-life exercise preferences

Fitness professionals will increasingly recognize that the exercise routine that leaves you drenched and shaking isn't the one that most mid-life exercisers want

2) Small steps, big results

No one wants to hear that their car's engine needs to be rebuilt - and consumers don't want to hear that they need a Total Lifestyle Overhaul either.

3) Fitness myopia

A relentless emphasis on structured exercise will give way to a focus on helping consumers find pleasant, achievable ways to integrate physical activity into their lives.

4) Soft tyranny of low expectations

Public health officials talk constantly about taking control with small steps that add up. Are we creating a new problem by telling everyone that just a little exercise is enough?

5) Medicalization of exercise

It turns out that exercise is indeed a prescription, and can (often) cure what ails you...when taken as directed.

6) Myth of self-directed fitness

Consumers are overwhelmed by the choices - group fitness? Bootcamp? Superslow? High-intensity? They want integrated solutions from health clubs and fitness centers.

7) Die young as late as possible

For mid-life and older exercisers, one goal never changes: compression of age-related disability into the smallest possible timeframe as close to the end of life as possible.

Nolen points out that "Traditional fitness businesses like health clubs will face new competition from multi-stage healthy lifestyle programs that start small to quickly engage consumers, then increase fitness goals in each successive phase."

Preview other health and wellness trends from this uniquely comprehensive report, including nutrition trends, healthcare trends, chapters on mind-body practices, CAM, diabetes, obesity and aging, and exclusive diagrams which shed new light on industry convergence and integration.

The Radial Group, headquartered in Dallas, TX, provides marketing services and strategy consulting to health and wellness businesses ranging from sole practitioners to well-established national brands.

Radial's free weekly Health & Wellness Business Advisor provides business tips tailored to health and wellness businesses.

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