How Les Mills Junior and Reebok brought Immersive Fitness to life (Guest Post)
IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ is a brand new concept that reinvents everything people expect about exercise. It’s clearly breaking new grounds. I’m a person that’s always curious about HOW extraordinary things come into existence – be it art, digital technologies or an athletes’ top performance. Therefore, I wondered if it would be possible to get a guest post from Les Mills Junior, the inventor of IMMERSIVE FITNESS™, for this blog. It was possible. So here is how IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ came to life:
Bringing IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ to life
My good friend Adam Lazarus is never short on ideas. We team up together whenever we’re keen on exploring new innovations in fitness – it usually results in us sending dozens of emails back and forth discussing different ideas.
When Adam and I stumbled across a ‘BBC Click’ segment on immersive tents at music festivals it stemmed the idea of IMMERSIVE FITNESS™. We added inspiration from the video innovation at concerts like Beyonce and Kanye West and, after seeing the emergence of boutique gyms on a visit to New York, we decided to charge on.
Our vision was to reinvent everything people expect about exercise. We wanted to get people into a whole new zone – a state of mind where they perform at peak, a place of focus, of achievement, of fulfilment. We wanted to create a place without time, a place removed from the day-to-day, a place where we can be the best we can be.
We went through an exhaustive period of planning, creative development and testing. In reality we had no idea what we were doing, it was hard, but we’d just keep thinking outside the square, going back to the drawing board and pushing on – we knew there was potential there somewhere.
This is where the support of Reebok came in. There’s no doubt that without Reebok the concept of IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ would have never made it off the ground. From the word go, the good folk at Reebok recognized the concept’s potential, and provided the commitment and expertise to help make it happen.
It took twelve months, but in May 2014 IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ came to life as ‘The Project’. It kicked off with an amazing global debut in London, and has toured through Stockholm, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. Next stop is Barcelona.
I’ve been travelling with the IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ box and it has been amazing. At every event the atmosphere was insane. We set out to create an extraordinary exercise experience, so it’s super satisfying to hear people describe IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ as “freaking awesome”, and the “coolest thing they’ve ever done”. The positive feedback isn’t just from fitness fans. In every country the media has been describing IMMERSIVE FITNESS™ as the future of training. I know that we’re onto a game changer here.
About Les Mills Jnr
As grandson of the original Les Mills, Les Jnr is the right guy to re-imagine group exercise. Les Jnr and his good buddy Adam Lazarus are all about revolutionizing the industry by creating experiences that appeal to their generation. ‘The Project’ creation is the future of studio fitness, combining a rich visual experience with music and exercise. The result is total immersion.
Les Jnr says he never thought of working for the family company, until he came back from the United States on summer vacation and worked at Les Mills International for a few months. “That was a total buzz. It opened my eyes, making me realize and appreciate how positive the industry is.”
Since then, Les Jnr has gone on to create the popular LES MILLS GRIT™ Series, but his instinct always told him a visual experience could take workouts to the next level. It hasn’t been an easy or short road to create immersive fitness, Les admits there has been “many sleepless nights and some seriously testing times. But now we’re finally here I can see that it will revolutionise fitness. And we’re only just getting started.”
Les Jnr has nothing but good things to say about his collaborator Adam Lazarus. Describing him as “fiercely loyal and an overwhelmingly intelligent dude. He pushes harder than anyone else. None of this would have been possible without him.”
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