Les Mills

Les Mills is on a mission to create a fitter planet. As a world leader in group fitness, Les Mills workouts get five million people moving every week in 17,000 clubs around the world.

In 1990 they changed the group fitness game by adding barbells to the studio with the original BODYPUMP class. We were engaged to take the BODYPUMP experience up another level. We worked alongside a special innovation team put together for this project, applying a human-centred approach to design.

During our customer empathy stage we observed that a key sticking point in the whole BODYPUMP class experience was the mad scramble for equipment at the beginning of the class, then being surrounded by a mass of gear during the class only to find out that you didn’t have the right piece of equipment for the exercise being demonstrated by the instructor.

Our solution was the redesign of the weights system creating an all-in-one exercise product. This decreased the complexity in selection of equipment in setting up, and decreasing the space required around each participant during the class. The new weight system also increased the flexibility and speed of change in equipment to match each change of the exercise program.

We worked with the Les Mills team up until early prototyping and testing, following which the final design was completed by 4ormfunction.