The public knowledge of the importance of living healthy and treating your body well has grown exponentially in the past few years. A multitude of new gyms are opening and all kinds of fitness programs are popping up like mushrooms.
We all lead busy lives
At the same time, while people get older, their lives become ever increasingly busy with work, study, family and friends. Most people don’t have the same amount of spare time anymore that they had when they were children. Even though consumers purchasing power is slowly increasing year after year, we still have to choose what to spend our money on. For most people, an expensive gym membership is not at the top of their list of priorities. At the same time we all want to stay in shape, feel fit and be happy with our bodies. However, you don’t have to spend hours and hours in the gym to get reach this. With the right type of efficient training, you can reach your personal fitness goals faster than you might think.
USA vs Europe
Across the big pond in the USA, fitness is an even more booming business than over here in Europe. The reason for this is two-fold. According to Jennifer Sisk (a certified consultant with the American College of Wellness), European countries have a smaller percentage of overweight people and youngsters are more frequently exercising than in the USA (source). Americans also have a more hands-on approach to life, where they are more convinced that they can change their own fate than their European counterparts are (source). Lots of American fitness and lifestyle companies already jumped on this bandwagon, while European companies are lagging behind. Fitness programs also tend to address the more gullible characteristics of human personality. People want to be fit, but don’t want to invest time and effort into it and are looking for a “magic instant solution” (source) (hint: it doesn’t exist).
Availability
Even though the increase in fitness and healthy living is a global phenomenon, a lot of USA-made products are not available in Europe. American websites are of course available worldwide, but show some complications for us Europeans (for example, using the imperial system instead of the metric system). While researching availability of European websites, we noticed there wasn’t that much available (most websites were nationally oriented, in local languages).
One Stop Fitness
This is where the idea for One Stop Fitness was born, providing all European citizens (and, of course, people outside of Europe) with one platform for everything related to fitness and a healthy lifestyle, without the need for an expensive gym subscription. We aim to provide people with handles and motivation for reaching their own personal fitness levels. We hope One Stop Fitness will be able to assist you in your personal journey to get or stay in shape and that you will accompany us on this new journey!
