How The Athletic Buddha balances fitness and optimism

We caught up with Daniel Ucchino – head of an iconic Sydney fitness centre – to see how new technology and the power of positivity are keeping his customers in shape. 

The Athletic Buddha team believe that physical fitness is only as good as the mental health that backs it up – because what good is a low body fat percentage if there’s an area of your life that’s causing unnecessary stress?

We caught up with Daniel; father, owner, and now aspiring media mogul, about how his fitness business is turning this turbulent time into an opportunity to grow in a new direction.

Hi Daniel! How’re you going? 

Not too bad, came back from a few hours of work this morning, now I’m back home with the kids, who are actually quiet for once.

Ha ha, aw, that’s great. So, I understand your business has switched to doing a lot of workouts online… How’s it been? Do you feel like it’s been busier, or quieter?

We’re a group fitness gym. We had around 170 adult members and 80 kids - we do crossfit kids and that sort of stuff. When we got shut down, all the kids’ stuff just went straight away.

With the adult stuff, about a week before we knew we were going to get shut down, we started to move our clients online and get them used to watching videos. Then, when we did get shutdown, we moved onto Zoom and asked them to come with us.

So, while membership has dropped – some people have lost jobs or a second income – we’re busier. Busier making videos, busier getting ready for when we come out the other side, busier getting our head around Zoom. But revenue itself has dropped.

So business is down, but you’re working harder?

Yeah. In saying that, rents have been frozen, and payments have been deferred. So, we’re still alive, but we’ve had to innovate.  

Have you noticed new people signing up who you haven’t seen before? Have you got customers who’re there exclusively for your online offering?

We’ve intentionally not gone out to the market yet. It’s because we said at the time that once we moved online, if we had 50% of our adult membership stay, we’d just focus on them and continue mastering the online program. We ended up keeping around 90% [of our members] in the first week.

Because our clients are helping us keep an income, we’ve given them everything. There are 3 Pilates sessions a week, 2 yogas, 2 meditations. They’re loving it and getting on board. 

Whoa, that’s awesome!

Yeah, then every week it’s dropped down. So, we’re now down to around 70% of the adults. We lost all the kids, so that was gone. Except we’ve started up a free page for them, and basically delivering content for just for them - giving back to the community to build up some good will for when we come out the other side.

Nice one. Have you noticed much demand for that? Have you got many parents saying “Thank you. You’re keeping us sane!”

Yes. There’s heaps of that, the demand is massive. Our private page that we set up went from zero to 700 users within 10 days.

That’s huge. Any big plans to expand?

Yep, for people who want to sign up [to the adult classes], we’re planning a launch to go global in about 4 weeks. 

It sounds like you’re still pretty ambitious… Were you doing anything worldwide before the crisis? Was your business online much before?

No. We’re only just investing our money in cameras and equipment now. We’ve bought greenscreens, we’ve bought lighting, we’ve bought laptops, mics… We know now that we basically now need to be a production studio.   

Steep learning curve?

Massive. Massive learning curve. It’s a whole new game… Here we are coaching in front of a laptop, watching people in their little zoom box.

Would you continue to do your video workouts worldwide once the lockouts end? Any plans to continue?

1000%. We believe this thing is going to be around for a while in one form or another, that’s why we’re investing in this as a long-term strategy.

What’re you listening to at the moment? Bingeing any TV? Any recipe tips? Anything to confess? What’s keeping you positive?

I follow my mindset coaches and development leaders… And mate, I only watched sport on TV before, and there’s none of that on at the moment, so no, I haven’t been watching much at all.

And something that I do every day is drink one and a half litres of water as soon as I wake up. And then about 10 minutes after that, I have a celery juice. I read somewhere that it’s a really good anti-inflammatory.

Oh, nice.    

And just so we’re clear, just so you don’t think you’re talking to some health freak, I have chocolates and I have ice cream throughout the rest of the day.

Ha ha ha ha…

The thing that keeps me mentally sane, if you want to put this in just so we don’t bullsh*t, is cookies and cream ice cream. That does the trick.

Ok, great. That’s awesome. Anything else you’d like say just before we finish up? Any message you’d like to get out there?

Sure. Without challenge, there’s no growth. In the gym, if you don’t strain that muscle, it ain’t going to grow. I’ve said to my team - “we’re not going to sit down, sleep, or die slowly, we’re going to lift, take the challenge, and go to the next level if we want to come out the other side.”

Thanks Daniel! Awesome talking to you.

You too! And if the Optus team wanted to, we’ll be happy to provide a video workout free of charge…

That’d be awesome! I’ll put it to them.    

Daniel Ucchino owns The Athletic Buddha gym in Concord West, New South Wales. Don’t forget to check out the rest of Hype for more stories of daily optimism.