My granddaughter opened her Christmas present and giggled, just what she wanted, Chuck Taylor Converse high top black sneakers. When I was 12, which let us say was maybe 55 years before my granddaughter was born, my mother handed me my Christmas present, wrapped in red paper with snowmen sledding down steep hills, one I had left hints for every day since early summer, a beautiful new pair of Chuck Taylor Converse high top black sneakers.

Like those black, old school flat soled basketball shoes, the best never goes out of style. It might be hidden for a time, but if it is something people still feel a need for, a void they can’t get filled anywhere else, that trend or product always rises again. This is why the old school, serious lifting gym of the early 1970s, the Arnold days, is going to be the next big thing in fitness... again.

Joe Gold was right twice, and ahead of his time by several decades. The first Gold’s Gym opened in 1965, deemed the Mecca of Bodybuilding, providing the fundamental blueprint for what a good gym had to be, leading to a 40-year run and thousands of imitators worldwide. Joe and Mike Uretz followed that success with World Gyms, adding another 300 gyms to the category.

Those early gyms in many ways seemed to be crude affairs, just basic equipment, barely survivable locker rooms, no amenities except a horrible cup of free, black, nasty coffee for the early workout crowd, but the looks were deceiving.

Every piece of equipment had a purpose. Enough weight to train the giant men developing their bodies, and these places were early acceptors of the new generation female lifter in the 70s venturing into this testosterone jungle. No frills. Get in. Get it done. Rerack the weights or get kicked out. Serious gyms for serious lifters who didn’t need, nor want, the frills that followed in the later years, such as seas of cardio equipment or group classes, mere bait to get more women in the 80s to cross the thresholds.

Why this style gym is going to be the big thing for the next ten years

Several drivers are already in play which lead us to the reemergence of the serious training gym. First of all, the big box, everything to everyone gym, has reached a saturation point. Investment groups acquiring 40,000-60,000 square foot spaces, just down the road from a competitor running the same concept, is a broken plan.

Simply put, how many of these box players can a single market hold, especially when they are all chasing the exact same demographic, the 24–44 year old, middle of the affluent scale, I haven’t quite made it big financially yet folks? The gyms charge just enough to create the illusion of upscale, then stuff the box with a few thousand people negating the elite feeling.

The lower segments by affluence have found their low price, value gyms, and the upper class, those in the top 30% by affluence, hate big boxes, hate crowds, hate peasants and are happily discovering those upscale adult training gyms (our first-class section in the gym business). Likes attract likes and no one in the top 30% by wealth and income wants to hang out with a mob of folks stuffed into a box paying $39 per month. The reason you chase money in life is to be one of the few, not one of the many, yet we never learn this lesson in mainstream fitness.

These box facilities offer a touch of everything, but the hole in the market is what if the guy just wants to get in, do his routine, maybe walk on a tread on his off days, and does not need, nor wants, yoga rooms, soft cardio equipment, recovery rooms, group anything, immense lounge areas, selfie stations, infrared saunas, barre classes, cardio theater areas or potted trees along the workout areas

What is driving this? IG and TikTok. The influencers have returned to the serious gym life. Heroes in the fitness world, such as Don Saladino, one of the most respected coaches in the modern training world, posts pictures of his personal training days visiting the Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym, considered by many to be one of the last real gyms in New York. IG has endless pics of guys squatting in racks, women punking heavy dumbbells, and guys in worn out workout clothes that would make Arnold smile. Serious lifting is cool again, and social media is driving a lot of this trend.

Most importantly, people are tired of paying for what they don’t need. Here is my money, I just want to lift, hit my treadmill and go home. I do not want to pay for sweaty yoga classes or steam rooms I never use. The serious gym is not another fitness option in today’s market, it is an alternative to the overbuilt, over developed, over stuffed giant box.

Easy to build, easy to staff

Simple boxes of about 10,000-12,000 square feet. No group experience, meaning no search nor need for group instructors. No secondary areas, such a recovery rooms, meaning no extra staffing or cleaning staff needed. Simple décor, retro design, treads and rowers, none of the fluffy cardio needed, just a box and a couple of front counter staff needed per day.

Most importantly, you could create these across the street from the typical big chain club, draining their gyms of the clients tired of too much of too much, the ones who want to return to the days of heavy equipment, big plates and dumbbells, mirrors and loud music.

Eric Casaburi, one of the industries’ creative geniuses, hit it right with his first Retro Gyms in 2004, positioned as the anti-frilly alternative to the what was considered a sell out by the legacy brands who diluted the purity of the original serious gyms, overloading them with group exercise and other distractions that worked against the serious lifting culture. Several decades later, as the investment groups dominate and dictate the shape of the industry, the hole Casaburi filled at that time is now open once more.

Your price can go up, but your operating costs go down

These gyms can be priced at $59-99 per month for simple access, niching them above both the value, $10 gyms as well as above most box gyms in the $39-59 range. But your labor is about half of mainstream box, your marketing is simpler since you are marketing these as real gyms for the serious people neglected in the mainstream market, and you can operate these with far fewer clients than needed to support the bigger concepts.

What has changed since Arnold’s days?

These gyms are recreating the body building experience, or physical culture as it was called, and the basic tools, such as dedicated body part equipment, still work. Big dumbbell areas. Squat racks. Massive leg areas. Selectorized equipment for body specific areas. All still vital for the concept. But what has changed is more open space for kettle bells, TRXs, heavy sleds and the other tools not in play in the 1970s, including stretching corners

Nutrition could also be part of this concept, especially in recovery shakes, supplements and guidance, and that free cup of morning crap coffee would now be a $5 decent cup of the real thing.

These modern versions could also add pod areas, which are small gyms within the gym, usually about 300 square feet. Instead of dragging a training client through the gym to share equipment, these dedicated spaces are only for coaches and their clients, and include everything the client needs for her workout, such as half racks for squatting and power work, dumbbells and even a rower restricted to the clients in that pod.

Training revenue can be a big part of this business plan, or none at all, depending on the owner. As more clients seek these gyms out, training will be more important since the new clients usually will not have much experience in these training environments.

We lost our way in this industry

In the late 80s there was burst of new energy in the fitness business. Aerobics was on fire, a must have to attract females, child care was added, locker rooms expanded, cardio areas became theaters and the players, including some of the founding chains and franchises, attempted to build one gym where every single person in the community could belong.

It seemed logical at the time. Offer more of everything, hoping to attract a wider variety of people in the market, and you would make more money. This worked until the early 90s, when the specialists arose again and segmented the market.

In the early 2000s, CrossFit, one of the most successful marketing concepts in the history of fitness, Curves, which brilliantly based itself on a client that didn’t fit into other gyms, Orange Theory, group only studios, such as cycling, and a second wave of training gyms, targeted specific demographics, and they were all good at it, taking bits and pieces of the mainstream players.

Now, we have arrived where the market is driven by investment players, not by individual gym owners, and they have taken the fitness market back to the one size fits all concept, but the consumer is going the other way. He or she wants, and demands, a gym to fit their specific needs and wants, such as women’s-only gyms focused on women over 40, or training gyms designed to capture the top 30% by affluence, the ones who cannot stand being one of many in a box.

The key, ignored too long in this industry, is the consumer doesn’t want a single methodology gym, which eventually burns down the client through repetition fatigue. Single concept gyms have worked, and worked well, but they are hard to sustain over time because the client gets that, been there and done that mentality, and moves on to the next big thing.

The next generation serious workout gym eliminates burnout because the concepts of training are based upon the individualization of the workout, versus all clients following one specific training philosophy. In other words, here is a gym full of serious equipment, and there are a thousand ways to use this equipment based upon what you want or need, versus let’s do that circuit again for the 200th time... and again... and again.

The serious lifting gym is coming back, is easier and cheaper to build, can throw off a higher profit margin due to lower staffing costs and offerings, and is being driven by social media, feeding this gym model from the backside. What is old is new again, now I have to go out and buy myself a new pair of high top black Converse sneakers, trying to be cool one more time.