A New Look to Fitness

By Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Jan. 6–The home gym may be losing muscle mass as fitness-minded consumers drop barbells and weight machines for workouts using mats, balls or cords.

The trend of multiplying fitness options complicates business for a key player in the regionally strong sports apparel and equipment industry: Nautilus Inc., which employs 1,450 globally and 480 locally.

Vancouver-based Nautilus has blamed lower sales of its home gyms in the past year on a slumping housing market, tighter lending standards and its own tactical missteps. The results came to a head last week when a rebel minority shareholder — bent on turning around sagging returns — seized control of the company’s board.

But the company points less to longer-term fitness trends in which athletes and trainers emphasize low-impact and so-called functional exercises over bulking up on weights. Any dampening effect on home-gym equipment sales — widely suspected, but not thoroughly measured — would pose long-term strategic problems for Nautilus and its rivals.

In the past six years, participation in yoga and tai chi has more than doubled, and Pilates training has grown sevenfold, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, an industry trade group. The number of participants in all three low-impact activities in 2006 — 25 million — equaled the number working out in a home gym.

The American Council on Exercise, a fitness-trainer certification group, named nongym and equipment-free workouts the top two exercise crazes of 2008 as active people tire of the health club scene and sedentary folks start exercising in gentler ways.

“The innovative training technique is not going on a treadmill for 30 minutes or pumping iron like bodybuilders do,” said Kerry Kuehl, associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Sciences University who studies exercise and health promotion.

“The new thing is called functional fitness — activities that duplicate real-life motions,” Kuehl said. “The nice thing about them is you can do them at home with a mat. You can do it outside the health club. You don’t have to buy a home-exercise gym.”

Nautilus and other fitness-equipment makers remain upbeat about their long-term prospects, pointing to the aging baby-boom crowd as their target market. Exercise-equipment sales have increased steadily in the past six years, with treadmills, elliptical machines and stationary bikes remaining popular through 2006, the last year for which aggregate industry data are available from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

“Consumers’ desire to look and feel good is very resilient,” said Ron Arp, a spokesman for Nautilus. “That’s why we’ve seen fitness equipment continue to grow over the last decade here.”

But fitness-store owners say 2007 was soft for sales of home treadmills, elliptical machines and gyms as consumers scotched big-ticket equipment purchases for less expensive memberships in workout studios and health clubs. U.S. home-fitness-equipment sales, Arp estimated, could be down between 10 percent and 15 percent industrywide in 2007.

Arp and retailers blame the demand slump on slower sales of new homes, many of which include rooms for workout equipment. Membership growth in health clubs — which buy Nautilus-brand machines — also leveled off between 2004 and 2006, and some industry observers say membership will be flat or down in 2007.

What’s more, fitness experts say, athletes, therapy patients and dieters are more frequently breaking a sweat in low-impact activities and small-studio workouts at such storefronts as Curves.

Pilates training, named after its late creator, Joseph Pilates, emphasizes balanced, controlled strengthening exercises. The method often involves specially designed, expensive machines found in increasingly popular Pilates studios. But it also makes use of rubber balls, mats, jump-ropes and other inexpensive equipment that can be used at home or on the go.

“What we get is people who are disillusioned with their gym experiences,” said Elizabeth Russell, co-director of Bodies in Balance, a 10-year-old Pilates studio in Portland. “They’re bored with their gym workout. (Here) it’s a mental experience as well as a physical workout. They’re asked to be more focused. They’re asked to pay attention and actually feel what they’re doing in their bodies.”

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