From functional fitness, to the plant-based nutrition trend set to continue, the PerformancePro team explore the 5 Big Trends coming up in the next 12 months.
1. Functional Fitness
In recent years CrossFit has made a massive impact on the fitness industry. It increased in popularity as the classes provided people with a fast and efficient way to get stronger and burn calories. However, in 2020, there will be a shift in focus. Instead of how much weight, or how many reps we can complete, the importance will be on how we perform all of the movements and learning proper technique through functional training.
Functional training, as the name suggests, works on movements that work the muscles we use most for everyday tasks. This type of training allows our bodies to continue functioning at their best for as long as possible.
Functional training concentrates on refining balance and coordination and building strength in the right way. This trend is a particularly important type of training for older adults and will ensure a more long-term, injury-free, health, and fitness plan.
2. Strength Training
In 2020, the widening of participation in strength training will continue apace. Resistance training for everybody is going mainstream. With more widespread recognition of the many benefits of getting strong for people of all ages and genders, and more examples of trailblazing ordinary people transforming their quality of life in the weight room, there will be increasing demand for smart, down-to-earth, accessible and inclusive coaching and training programmes.
Focus is shifting away from short-term results, towards long-term capability, health, injury-prevention and maintaining pain-free function into older age. Fitness professionals will be challenged to provide a high quality, individualised service to equip people with the skills for long-term, safe and effective participation in strength training.
3. Plant-Based Diets
We couldn’t talk about the world of health and fitness without looking at what’s happening on the nutrition side of things.
Sustainability has become a key issue in recent years, and this extends throughout all industries. In past years consumers have been offered vegan or vegetarian alternatives, with both health and conservation in mind. We are now shifting towards a different term: plant-based.
The world has been transitioning into the plant-based territory for the last few years. Numerous celebrities and athletes openly follow a plant-based lifestyle. A recent documentary “From The Ground Up” follows a former meat-eating college football player, who meets with elite plant-based athletes including ultra-athlete Rich Roll, who are powering their performances with plants.
Plant-based originally referred to a diet completely free from animal products. Now it has taken on a slightly different meaning. The term now seems to evoke plenty of vegetables and healthy choices but spares customers the harsher conditions of vegan or vegetarian. Instead, it’s seen as a soft nudge to eat more vegetables, not caution to stop eating meat entirely. For some, this allows a little wiggle room to sneak in the odd burger.
4. Recovery
As the London fitness scene continues to boom, 2019 was the year that we began to discuss the dangers of excessivetraining. 2020 is going to be all about creating a healthy, sustainable relationship with your training regime.
Our obsession with fitness tech isn’t going anywhere, but in 2020 it’s going to be more focused on recovery than caloric burn. Whoop https://www.whoop.com/ is a good example of how to do this.
The strap tracks your energy expenditure 24/7 and then calculates your overall daily strain. It quantifies when and to the degree you have recovered each day depending on whether you have trained or not. In other words, it stops you over-training and gives you constant feedback and analysis to help you optimise your training.
5. Body positive personal trainers
Forget your perfect beach body PT, the next gen of body-positive PTs are all shapes and sizes, in a bid to encourage their clients to understand that they can be too.
Fitness stereotype of professionals having thin, lean and muscular physiques was at one time seen to be ‘aspirational’ but for many it is alienating and intimidating.
The truth is fit bodies come in all shapes and sizes and if we want to get more people active, then people need to see more diversity in body sizes. The gym can be a relatively intimidating environment, so it’s important that everyone feels like they belong and that there isn’t a mould to fit, a certain shape size, aesthetic or ability to be able to participate. (Just look at the PerformancePro Team 😉)
Sources
The Times News Paper. Evening Standard. Glofox.com
Contact the team for your free consultation here.