Revealed: The digital classes your members are choosing to do

The lovely thing about digital classes – or one of the lovely things, anyway! – is that you can track exactly what exercisers are doing.

Which classes are most popular, what class lengths, what types of workout…? All of this insight is right there, laid bare in the data.

Reviewing this data on a regular basis is therefore hugely valuable for us at Wexer, as it allows us to aggregate more of the great content our end-users – your customers – want.

We thought we’d share some of the latest learnings with you, too. After all, any additional insight into customers’ actual (rather than reported) behaviours has to be a good thing!

Here’s what we’re seeing in the Q2 usage reports from our ‘any time, anywhere, any connected device’ Web Player…

Fitness snacking

Short workouts continue to be a key theme of on-demand class participation, with three of the top five most popular workouts just 15 minutes or less. Two of these are abs and core workouts, the other a yoga stretch class – exactly the sort of workout you’d expect people to do as a quick break from their desk. No sweat, no fuss, no need to earmark loads of time. But a chance to do something, however busy the day, to inject a bit of feelgood.

Even across the top 10 most popular classes, average class length is only 19 minutes.

And workout stacking

Interestingly, although average length of the 10 most popular classes in Q2 was 19 minutes, the average stream time was in fact 11.8 minutes.

Looking at the top 50 most popular classes, those figures become 24 minutes and 15.5 minutes respectively.

Given the popularity of these classes, it’s unlikely people are disengaging and dropping out partway through. Far more likely this is a sign of workout stacking, whereby exercisers skip intros or outros – skipping the stretching/rounding-off section of their first workout to dive straight into a second class, in which they then skip the intro/warm-up.

Low impact to the fore

Looking at the category types, strength and yoga are the clear frontrunners in terms of popularity. Logically this makes total sense: these are simpler formats of workout that require little to no equipment, and the equipment that is needed is sufficiently affordable that many people kitted themselves out during lockdown. For the same reason, these workouts are easy to do any time, anywhere.

Strength workouts also promise clear structures and outcomes, while virtual yoga is perhaps the closest it gets to a live delivery; the difference between the in-studio and at-home experience feels minimal. Unsurprisingly, then, demand for yoga on our platform continues to rise – up around 22% in Q2 vs Q1 – as people continue to do these quieter disciplines in their own time and space.

Cardio isn’t going anywhere

Interestingly, though, the strength category dropped by 25% versus Q1, while bootcamp made up some ground, its Q2 streams double that of Q1. While still some way behind the top two disciplines, third- and fourth-placed cardio and bootcamp now both have a strong foothold in the popularity ranking.

A gym’s cardio floor – kitted out with bikes and cross-trainers, treadmills and rowers – clearly holds great appeal for heart-pumping workouts, but it seems people are still ready to get a sweat on in their own homes, especially when bodyweight and small equipment are the tools used to achieve it.

Find out more about the Wexer Web Player, and its wide range of digital class content across all disciplines at info@wexer.com