World’s Largest Group Fitness Provider Turns 50

“Marking half a century in the fitness industry this year, the family behind Les Mills, the world’s largest group fitness provider, have shared their remarkable story of struggle, success and striving for a fitter planet.” Australasian Leisure Management reports.

“At the centre of the Les Mills story are three men and three women – split across three generations – whose lives have all been shaped by their elite sporting backgrounds. These are company founder and four-time Olympian Les Mills Snr, his wife Colleen, who also represented New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games and who died in 2005, aged 71; their son Phillip and his wife Dr Jackie Mills; along with their two children Diana and Les Mills Jnr.”

Les Snr and Colleen opened the first Les Mills gym in 1968 on 23 Victoria Street West in Auckland. Today the brand has “evolved into a global fitness movement” and “Les Mills workouts are licensed in 20,000 clubs worldwide, with a team of 140,000 instructors delivering group fitness classes to over six million people a week.”

“I think for class participants, the appeal is that the programmes deliver great results, create an incredible energy and they stay up to date with the latest moves and music,” said Jackie.

“Staying ‘up-to-date’ requires each of the 23 Les Mills programmes to be updated every three months with completely new choreography, music and instructor training,” reports the article.

“The Programme Directors scour the globe for the latest learnings, trends and ideas to feed into this creative process. They also listen to hundreds of hours of music in search of the hottest tracks and then it’s the job of the Music Licencing Team to gain permissions from the record labels, or Les Mills Music (the biggest employer of New Zealand musicians) will create cover versions or an original composition.”

“We’re always very open about what it takes to put our programmes together as it would be very tough to replicate,” said Jackie.

“Our Head of Research Bryce Hastings works with leading academic institutions like Penn State University to make sure all Les Mills classes are independently-tested and this data is used to produce peer-reviewed studies published in academic journals.”

To read more about Les Mills, please click here.

Article Source: Australasian Leisure Management, July 5, 2018
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