It’s Time to Kill Drop-In Culture

Yin and yang, right? Where there is great light there is a shadow of darkness on the other side. This is how I feel about the revolution that fitness went through in the last twenty years.

A hundred years ago physical training for the average American was rare and peculiar. The Golden Era of bodybuilding and the invention of jogging by Nike sparked the concept of the average American working out on purpose (mostly alone). This is where the globe gym came from. 

Soon, group fitness changed everything on the backs of Jazzersize, CrossFit, SoulCycle, and Barry’s Bootcamp. This has improved the consciousness of exercise in America in the brightest of ways. Regular men and women gathering in groups is our brightest outcome from this revolution. 

What’s the shadow of this era, you ask?

We’ve given birth to “Drop-in Culture.” The positive adaptation of group fitness has mistakenly taught the consumer that exercise is a commodity and you can collect hours of sweat sessions and build a fit life. 

This failure is our next opportunity as an industry. 

After all, any one training day is irrelevant. Training only makes sense in the context of other training days. This means that any single training day is in service of progression to the next day. And, that is all but completely lost when you’re swimming in the waters of drop-in culture. You can’t do a Barry’s on a Tuesday and then tack on a couple Pilates sessions before the weekend and think that there’s a progression there. 

If your training age is young, you’ll get the false assumption that your chase-the-shiny-object training schedule is working because, well, anything works in the beginning. But, if you’re training age is two years or older, you’re going to need to progress your capacity in a program and that’s only going to happen if we can put Drop-in Culture when it belongs: six feet under. 

It’s time to kill Drop-in Culture. 

It’s time to follow a program.