Equinox announced Monday that the luxury fitness chain is offering a $40,000-per-year membership aimed at improving overall health and longevity — or "100 happy years," according to its partner in the effort, Function Health.
As reported by CNBC, Equinox is teaming up with lab-test startup Function Health to launch “Optimize by Equinox,” a personalized health program that includes everything from personal training and nutrition plans to sleep coaching and massage therapy. The program, believed to be among the most expensive gym memberships in the world, is part of the fast-growing market for longevity and wellness, where the fields of medicine, biotech, fitness and nutrition are merging in the quest to slow the effects of aging, CNBC's Robert Frank reported, adding that it will roll out at the end of May in two locations — New York and Highland, Texas.
“It’s really a paradigm shift in how we’re able to live with vitality and avoid suffering,” said Jonathan Swerdlin, co-founder of Function Health. “It deals with what’s above the surface, your abs and glutes, which you can see in the mirror that are great. But it also deals with what’s below the surface and what you can’t see in the mirror. And that’s revolutionary.”
According to Frank's report, the Optimize program starts with a battery of tests. Function Health will test members for 100 biomarkers — everything from heart, liver and kidney health to metabolic and immune systems to cancer markers and nutrients. Equinox will then run its own battery of fitness tests, including VO2 max, strength and movement range. The tests are repeated twice a year.
An Equinox “concierge” pulls all the tests and data together and helps the member design a personalized plan to improve their overall health and fitness. Each member will have a core team that includes a fitness trainer, a nutrition coach and sleep coach as well as a massage therapist, Frank reported.
The Optimize membership includes three, 60-minute training sessions per week with a top-level trainer, as well as two half-hour sessions a month with a nutrition coach, two half-hour sessions a month with a sleep coach and one massage therapy session per month — all totaling 16 hours a month of coaching and training, according to Equinox.
“It’s the same as Formula One or an athlete, where you are given a team of top experts in all these different verticals, to design a program based on all the data that we collected,” said Julia Klim, vice president of strategic partnerships and business development at Equinox.
"The move will mark a major test of Equinox’s continued efforts to expand beyond fitness into the broader health and wellness business, which has become a booming market among the affluent," Frank wrote. "The company recently closed a new $1.8 billion funding round that refinances $1.2 billion in existing debt. It said its performance last month made for its second-best April in company history."
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Klim said Equinox, which operates 107 locations globally, has always focused on “the four pillars” of longevity: movement, regeneration, nutrition and community.
“I sometimes joke that we’ve always been in the longevity business and the science is catching up,” she said.
The new program will cost $3,000 a month for a minimum of six months. The fee doesn’t include an Equinox gym membership, which brings the total to about $40,000 or more for the year.
“It’s a human-first, highly luxury service meets data meets coaching program,” Klim said.
According to Frank's report, Swerdlin said Function Health’s mission is to help people live “100 healthy years.” The company’s own program costs $499 for the tests of 100 biomarkers, with a reported waitlist of more than 200,000 people.
“Living 100 healthy years doesn’t happen inside of a doctor’s office,” Swerdlin said, as reported by CNBC. “It happens in your daily decisions. And it also happens with the way in which you exercise, and Equinox really helps close the loop on that.”
