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A Look Inside Apple's 23,000 Square-Foot Fitness+ Studio

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Apple Fitness+, the latest service to join the Apple family, integrates tightly with the Apple Watch to offer a comprehensive and growing selection of workout and exercise videos made by a team of professional trainers.

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Apple Fitness+ Studio (via Men's Health)​


Apple curates and records all of the videos at a location in Santa Monica, California, and each video features a similar background and style. For the first time, thanks to a virtual tour by Apple given to Men's Health, we have a look inside the Fitness+ studio. The virtual tour of Apple's 23,000 square-foot studio was conducted by Apple's senior director of Fitness for Health Technologies, Jay Blahnik.

The Fitness+ studio is modern, featuring wood accents and "all-white everything," according to a read-out of the virtual tour from Men's Health. The studio entrance consists of three sliding glass doors that when opened "reveal a verdant garden." Each month, a new team member chooses a quote that's placed on a wall right outside the studio. March's quote reads, "Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this space."

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Apple Fitness+ Studio Control Room (via Men's Health)​

The studio itself features multiple screens scattered around the room that display a live view of what's being captured in the studio. The heart of the studio, of course, is the cameras. For recording Fitness+ videos, Apple uses seven high-end Super 35 cinematic cameras attached to robotic arms. Compared to a traditional human-controlled camera, the robotic arms help enable smoother transitions and movement. Blahnik says that the robotic arms also help the team better coordinate what's most appropriate to show the viewer during a workout.
We built the studio in a way that would allow shooting all the angles to make the right choices to show just the right angle at just the right time.
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One selling point of Fitness+ is its tight integration with the Apple Watch. During a workout, Fitness+ will send metrics from your watch live onto your display. The information helps users stay motivated, engaged, and up to date on progress toward closing their activity ring or their current heart rate, but Apple wanted to go further than just display live metrics.

In the virtual tour, Blahnik explains that the team wanted to create a dynamic and fully immersive experience. To do this, Apple had to develop unique software that would display metrics on screen at the correct time during an exercise. For example, if a trainer says "Sprint all-out for 30 seconds" during a workout, Fitness+ will display a timer for 30 seconds on the screen.
When the trainer says in a HIIT workout, 'Sprint all-out for 30 seconds,' being able to see that time is an incredible motivator," says Blahnik. "It makes for a better, more immersive workout. [Integrated, dynamic smart metrics] take it to another level compared to a typical video workout. We had to think hard about how to curate the experience, so you're not overwhelmed by metrics and animations and that those things are happening exactly when you might expect them to and in ways that are helpful.
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Adjacent to the studio is a rehearsal room that serves as a place for trainers to plan, coordinate, and rehearse their workouts before heading into the studio and pressing record. Like the studio itself, the rehearsal room is equipped with wooden floors, massive mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Blahnik describes the rehearsal room as a place for collaboration, emphasizing that trainers must be open to feedback and modifications for their workout.
[This] is where they ideate, collaborate, and get feedback from each other to create the best workouts... We needed trainers who are open to feedback from experts who know their stuff in that workout type, as well as fitness experts not in their space.
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Apple Fitness+ Rehersal Room (via Men's Health)​

Apple Fitness+ launched on December 14, making the service still relatively young. Apple adds new content across all 10 of its current workout types every week, continually expanding the catalog of exercises and workouts users have access to. Blahnik calls Apple Fitness+ a "marathon, not a sprint" and says that Apple is excited about its future and that it's "really committing to and investing" in the service.

Apple Fitness+ is available for $9.99 per month, $79.99 per year, or as part of the Premier tier of the Apple One bundle. Learn more about Fitness+ in our guide.

Article Link: A Look Inside Apple's 23,000 Square-Foot Fitness+ Studio
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/05/apple-fitness-plus-studio-tour/
himanshumodi said:
The production values are top notch. But till they have proper structured workout schedules of programs for 30 days or 60 days, it will be hard to get on board. I am a big fan of beachbody workout programs. Even discounting the multi-level-marketing aspects of it, the workouts are solid.
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100% this. I do a number of different workouts right now and I'm enjoying it, but it takes too much effort to figure out the right workout(s) each day.

I'd love the ability to join a structured program to follow like you mentioned or have the ability to make a custom program that allows me to pick and choose the specific workout I want to fit into my fitness plan. Doing the same workouts each week with a beadbody style program gets old, but having the ability to add/sub different workouts that still accomplish the same thing would add another level and keep me more engaged. Heck, if they could just add the ability to filter on the part of the body the strength workout targets without having to click into each video, that'd be progress.
 
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Amacfa said:
It’s cool but I can’t help feel apple is wasting money here
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Maybe yes, maybe no. It's a business venture, like any other. The proof won't be in the short run, since Apple doesn't do things for the short run.

But let's look at it this way. For those who decide to buy an Apple Watch because of this feature, every one of those Watch sales is a decent chunk of change for Apple. Add to that the monthly subscription revenue... I'm sure Apple's number-crunchers were able to make a compelling argument to invest in the studio and staffing costs.

But yes, even with a compelling series of Keynote presentations and financial analyses, they can be wrong. But for a product and service that is sold to a worldwide clientele, even a relatively "small" population of users can be big enough to float this particular boat. Within the overall universe of Apple products and services, this doesn't seem likely to be a major contributor to the Annual Report, but as long as it does add something positive to the bottom line it's likely to survive.
 
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Amacfa said:
It’s cool but I can’t help feel apple is wasting money here
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I wouldn’t call it a waste of money. It might have a low ROI right now - but as it becomes more popular and they improve it more people will join (more subs) and more people will buy and/or upgrade older Apple watches.
And, Tim Cook has said many times, he feels Apples legacy won’t be their phones or their computers, but the impact they have had on personal health.
 
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OriginalMacRat said:
The fact that they are doing this in expensive California instead of out in Wyoming is a good indicator of the waste going on so execs and managers can have a beach house.
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If I were shooting a fitness series Southern California would be where I would go. Looks of good-looking fit people that can act and take direction, studio facilities, camera and lighting crews, technical production support, etc. Not so much of that in Wyoming.
 
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Amacfa said:
It’s cool but I can’t help feel apple is wasting money here
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A lot of people said the same thing about the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and App Stores. But Apple does their research and knows subscription services are the future big money makers. The products get people in the door, but the subscriptions make the profits. It is telling that most of Amazon's profits come from Amazon Web Services with monthly and time of use fees, and not from selling goods online.
 
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Will be interesting to see if this becomes worthwhile for Apple. I don't know anyone that has tried it, or even heard of it. Time will tell. It is a nice studio. Wish that was my basement.
 
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OriginalMacRat said:
The fact that they are doing this in expensive California instead of out in Wyoming is a good indicator of the waste going on so execs and managers can have a beach house.
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lol what about Wyoming screams glossy and trendy fitness to you? And how does one lure well liked social media based fitness instructors to Wyoming? Job location is going to be a huge lure when attracting instructors.
 
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himanshumodi said:
The production values are top notch. But till they have proper structured workout schedules of programs for 30 days or 60 days, it will be hard to get on board. I am a big fan of beachbody workout programs. Even discounting the multi-level-marketing aspects of it, the workouts are solid.
Click to expand...
I have to +1 this comment, it's as if I wrote it !
 
himanshumodi said:
The production values are top notch. But till they have proper structured workout schedules of programs for 30 days or 60 days, it will be hard to get on board. I am a big fan of beachbody workout programs. Even discounting the multi-level-marketing aspects of it, the workouts are solid.
Click to expand...
Yep. I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers clearly show that Apple has failed here as they enter yet another business they don't need to be in.

Les Mills and Beachbody do the on-demand fitness videos way better with many different programs for all fitness levels. Apple Fitness+ designers failed to recognize that the people most likely to enter into a program such as Apple Fitness+ are people who have been into fitness for a long time, but I have word from owners that there are no really advanced at-home programs on the level of say, Insanity. So as someone who is into fitness and has completed that program many times in the past, Apple Fitness+ is a non-starter for me.
 
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I was excited to use Fitness+ when it was initially launched and even more so when it was included in the Premier Apple One plan. But my wife and I got a Peloton bike last fall and my daily programs on the bike make it pointless to have or use Fitness+.

I wonder if Apple will start to offer fitness equipment of some sort that would provide a more integrated experience beyond the Watch / AirPods / iPad / AppleTV? Might be interesting to have weights, resistance bands, even jump ropes with integrated chips. I’d likely buy into some of those things as an adjunct to spinning.
 
I've been really pleased with Apple Fitness+, although I can see why structured workout schedules would be attractive. I suspect those will come with time. I like the variety, and really like that I don't have a piece of equipment locked into an expensive subscription service. I don't think it the service is geared to the super-fit/intense, but it's plenty hard enough for me.
 
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jerryk said:
If I were shooting a fitness series Southern California would be where I would go. Looks of good-looking fit people that can act and take direction, studio facilities, camera and lighting crews, technical production support, etc. Not so much of that in Wyoming.
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I believe they brought in instructors from all over the world, not just local Southern Californians. Production crews aren't hard to find or move either
 
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