World Gym Challenge … Ten years in the making.

World Gym Challenge is in its tenth year. That’s quite a significant landmark. It’s even more amazing considering that, when we first started the campaign to increase awareness to Gym Sports that we were hopeful of a catalyst of support that would develop into a flourishing sport.Sadly it obvious that those who want to see the sport develop have not materialised and the sport remains still very much an event showcase, rather the a serious athleteic standard of accepted practise in gyms. So that is where we are now, what of the future?

There has been some highs and lows, but this journey is more about the success of the sport and its potential.

You see in 2007, there were around 7 events that dominated the X Training (What the sport was known as then) calendar year. Each event had its area to cover and regular participants took part. These were the guys and girls who represented some of the fittest in the UK Gym Industry , every time they gathered , they displayed awesome feats of gut busting strength, endurance and physical brilliance that to the average gym goer was mind boggling , it seemed that if only this could be replicated in every gym in the UK, we could find a complete network of the fittest people who went to gyms.

So … enter the creation of the World Gym Challenge, a sort of X Factor of Fitness. Each Gym would hold auditions to find the fittest. From there, regional qualifications would take place. Then national. Eventually, International events would take place because the pool of athletes had got so vast. All that was needed was the website that would be built to bind this all together. It would develop a sport from the infrastructure of searching for the world’s best athletes who went to gyms. Known as Gym Athletes. And the fastest would be known as the Ultimate Gym Athlete.

Finding the best Gym Athletes in the UK

So that’s the theory. And in theory, when I mention to people they are amazed why the idea has not taken off. And to be fair, I can’t really answer them in the directive that would put a finger on it and say this is the reason or that is the reason, what I can say is that a combination of factors have played a significant role in not seizing the opportunity to create a sport for gyms.

If effort was a way to measure success then the role WGC took in this is without question, the more significant attempt to try and bring awareness to the sport. The only website to interview the athletes who took part and write about the sport. Hours and hours spent trying desperately to fathom out the complicated editing of video software to showcase events and interviews with those who took part. And the only website in the world today with the ability to publish live results and conduct a formatted training programme for events. That in itself is probably the greatest reward of the site. Knowing that the events can be trained for, can be practised and can be recognised as a driving force in the industry and the reason for this is because of two people Tracy Davies and Rich Vint.

The Ultimate Gym Athletes

You see to find the best gym athletes, there is only one pool to pull them from and that is the gym. The whole nature of the sport derives from searching relentlessly through hours of training to find unique individuals that are not better than anybody else in anything other than gym sport. It’s a bit like the Olympics. You find a winner every four years in the discipline that is trained for and Tracy Davies and Richard Vint are the best at Gym Sport.

Developing a sport.

When you as a sport developer find these people, it is like a ray of sunshine. A beam of light literally shines down on them and sets them part from everybody else. These are people that push so physically hard that to the normal gym goer who may have tried the World Gym Challenge that would understand straight away just how good these people are. And that is what put WGC ahead of the game. The ability to try Gym Sport at your own gym and the ability for the penny to drop at any gym in the world just how good these athletes are and just how tough this sport can be.

The negative side of Gym Sport

You would think just out of curiosity that gyms and those that run the industry could see the benefit of this. But it seems that if you ask somebody to run this in a gym, that it in some way is seen more as negative sport. Something that has no benefit to the gym or member – because the overwhelming response I have had to any sales pitch is what’s in it for us?

The search to find the UK’s fittest members stops at the first hurdle. The Gyms themselves. Gyms cannot see the benefit of finding the fittest members of gyms and when they do that is the response.

The fittest the industry has .

When Tracy Davies and Richard Vint won titles of The Ultimate Gym Athlete and retrospective winners  of FitBrit run by Fitness First, were they spearheaded as ambassadors of the sport of gyms, regarded as the fittest of those that go to gyms?  A shining example of what can be achieved and what levels of fitness that used as a role model to those starting out. And then you would be surprised to find out, that the reality was not much really – a page in Men’s Fitness and then business as normal really. Fitness First did not capitalise that they had the fittest members in the Industry – better than Virgin Active, better than Tru Gum the list goes on. They just failed to see just how good their members were and how fit they had become.

Ten years and where are we now ?

And of the events that when World Gym Challenge first started, where are we now? Is there a hint of building a sport that can be replicated in every gym in the UK, that can have the backbone of the industry celebrating the fittest members and looking at ways to train that can say every single time I turned up at the gym today I achieved something quite special  … and the answer is no, we are still at event stage .  Six events over a course of the country, that can only be replicated in the gym they are held at. The fledgling sport is still at the base level it was ten years ago. The question has to be asked where will it be ten years from now? And I suspect much the same, unless a massive sponsor can see the benefit and they ask the question whats in it for us? And the answer can be found somewhere in the fantastic results Reebok has seen, a company that was a low level force in the brand awareness of gym wear and footwear, but a company that saw that the vison of tackling the growing trend of gym sports and sided with CrossFit. They invested heavily and saw fantastic exposure and returns.

The best of the best in the UK Fitness Industry still compete.

Of the positive about the events that take place, they represent the fittest members of the UK Gym Industry and the winners are the best of the best . It may be only a small amount that take place, but when you think about it, when the Olympics reach the finals, there are only say eight people on the running track out of a worldwide audience and gym sport is a bit like that. It may be only six events, but the winners are the best in the UK.  

Who is dominating Gym Sports in the UK?

And for those that win these events?  Well WGC tried its hardest to write the reports, do the interviews, get media coverage in magazines, photograph and video so that others may just hooked on the idea of running a sport in gyms and providing and adding to the pool of UK Gym Athletes that represent the best at the gyms . But even that - that takes a million man hours to do is just not enough to encourage the sport of gyms. At the last event WGC attended, we wrote about the event, photographed and videoed, the athletes taking part broke into blood sweat and grime to travel to and cover  and give as much as we possible could, only to be stone walled with silence after the event.  

The sport of the Internet

For a sport to take place, you need the results which WGC was the first to realise. And then you need to sing from the rooftops about the event to encourage participation. Then you need to develop training programs that allow others to take part and then you need the stars of the show to show up and say how good the events was, how they trained for it, what they like to see happen in the future.

The need to go to the gyms they train at and demand local events and cry for the opportunity to compete locally. More events , more people taking part. At every opportunity results that give hard evidence that showcase just how good a sport for gyms can be for its members.

This is the growth pattern for a sustained and continued growth. It has to be almost a daily occurrence for it to take a grip on the industry. It has to be. Otherwise the sport will not grow and evidence that supports this is looking at where we are now.

I feel WGC has been spoken about too harshly in the circles of Gym Sport, but its overriding passion was to see growth and recognition of the athletes on a scalable and more media sensitive scale. Its now got to the stage , where WGC is looking into Internet growth rather than event growth because the events just do not have the exposure that the Internet has and from a marketing campaign to be successful brand awareness via the internet is modern and practical, the internet is the prime location. Everybody knows it.

The reason that CrossFit is so successful – Simple WOD and Reebok.

Workout of the day, something that as a member of CrossFit, somebody can do each day. And the reason that Gym Sports fails so spectacularly isn’t because we haven’t got the athletes to take part, holy crap there are around 8000 gyms in the UK to pool members from. Its because at base level, from the gym to the leaders of the Industry of Fitness, is simply this. Nobody really cares enough in the gym industry to find out where the fittest members of the gyms are. They have an agenda that simply revolves around the simple question – What’s in it for us ? Not, whats in it for the members?

That is the response I have got time and time again in the search to create a sport for gyms so it seems WGC will continue to try and find somebody that is able to beat the WGC records of th Ultimate Gym Athletes, but it seems unlikely.

Rich Vint has moved on to CrossFit, but Tracy Davies remains the lady to beat in the female division.

In search of the brand that wants to be part of the World Gym Challenge and the Ultimate Gym Athlete.

What does the World Gym Challenge want to achieve? The search for the Ultimate Gym Athlete at any gym!  The search is on to find the right marketing company and brand that will support a sport that can start at schools, filter through to college and university and continue into the adult life for anybody that has access to gym equipment. That can impact on a daily level the increased fitness levels of those who go to gyms and stay on that journey with its members, till they are as fit as they possibly can be.

That is simply one of the biggest markets in the world to bring Brand Exposure to. Nobody is in it yet but the opportunity is there now . And now is the greatest time to start exposing the best and fittest members of gyms to the media and the internet to create sport for gyms.

Ten years ago, the gyms were not ready, they still are not. But crucially the members are . They are fit enough, strong enough and have the mental ability to showcase just what it takes to become the Ultimate Gym Athlete and we are looking for a brand that wants to share our vision.