#439: How Gyms Owners are Using AI in 2026

So there's been a lot of talk about AI in gyms and fitness studios, and how these worlds are gonna come together, and it's a lot clearer than you think for some people, and it's also very cloudy and murky, and even a little scary for others. But the only reason it's scary for some is because we don't really know where it's going, and we fear things we don't understand or feel that we can't control. So we're gonna dive into the way AI is already being integrated into gyms and fitness studios, espec- especially some of the higher performing ones this year, and also where it's already going based on the breadcrumbs that we're following and we can see easily in our path. My name's Mike Arce. I'm the CEO of GSD gyms. Uh, we've now worked with over 4,300 gyms and fitness studios all over the world, uh, 13 different countries, 60 different franchise brands, and hundreds of independent brands, and we've helped more gyms get to over $100,000 a month than probably anybody else on the planet. And if you wanna learn more about that, you can go to 100kplan.com and see how we do it. Okay, so let's talk about AI and gyms and how this whole thing works. And keep in mind, a lot of gyms have been using AI for a few years now, but they've been using it at a very preliminary level. It might have felt advanced in 2022 and 2023 when we were asking it to, like, write our email copy in, you know, read this contract in, determine the best way to negotiate my lease or create a content calendar for me, and all these things that, like, I think a lot of people were doing back in early 2023. I think today where it stands is, uh, some people are still using it just for that. They haven't really advanced in AI. They just kinda kept doing the same thing over and over, and there's other gyms that already have AI doing things for them while they sleep, and they wake up and things are done that they would normally pay a lot of money to an employee in order to do so or they do themselves. So before I take you into that world, I'm going to really quickly use history to help you see the future because if I-you've ever followed it, uh, history is the best predictor of the future. And so there's this guy named Bill Russell. Some of you may have heard of him, especially if you're a basketball fan, but if you haven't, he's, I think, the most... the winningest, if, if that's the word, the winningest basketball player of all time. He's a Hall of Famer. He's a legend. I think it's 11 championships with the Boston Celtics. Could be nine, but I think it's 11. And, um, he's just a legend, but, uh, he was playing back in, like, the '60s. Okay, so what does that have to do with anything? Well, Bill Russell was mowing his own lawn. He was washing his own laundry, his jerseys, his socks. He was getting his own sneakers. He was icing his own knees. That might not even have been the right thing to do for the injury that he had, but that's what he was doing. Driving himself everywhere that he had to go, deciding what he was gonna eat, if he was gonna work out, what he was gonna wear. He did it all himself. And that was normal. He didn't complain about it. He didn't know any other way. Who else