Equinox fitness is largely known for two things: being a luxury wellness brand and having sky-high prices. This week it’s leaning into both with the announcement of a new personalized longevity program, Optimize by Equinox, that’ll deliver members a range of in-depth assessments and guidance—to the tune of $40,000 a year.
“Equinox has always been known to anticipate consumer needs and to come up with programs to support them,” Julia Klim, vice president of strategic partnerships and business development for Equinox, tells Fortune. She notes that the company started hearing reports on the ground about their members—“educated consumers who like to push performance to the next level”—sharing blood-test results with their trainers as a way of seeking personalized ways to adjust their workouts and nutrition.
“We thought, if we know the future of coaching and performance is personalized, then let’s partner with the best company and physicians out there,” says Klim. So the program is being offered in partnership with Function Health, a personal health-management platform that includes access to over 100 lab tests, cofounded by internationally known physician, best-selling author, and podcaster Dr. Mark Hyman.
“This partnership represents an inflection point that redefines ‘fitness’ as what’s happening both outside and now inside the body, beyond the gains seen in the mirror,” Hyman, Function Health’s chief medical officer, tells Fortune. “Strength is not built in the gym alone. Rather, it’s created by a multitude of factors—from biology, psychology, nutrition, hydration, hormones, and even environment. The list goes on, and so to accurately evaluate strength and fitness levels, it’s important to look beyond the muscle.”
Klim likens Equinox’s new approach to that of top athletes, who typically work with a team of people to help them achieve optimal performance. “There’s a doctor, a nutritionist, a sleep coach, a mental performance coach, and they come together as a team,” she says. “So, it’s data, but a human-led approach.”
And athletes, she notes, don’t only have to be fitness pros. “CEOs are athletes, musicians are athletes … We attract the consumer who wants to bring more energy and vitality to their performance,” she says. “Coaching by designing around movement, nutrition, and regeneration is something we have been doing for years and are now essentially upleveling it.”
What a $40K longevity program includes
The program goes live at the end of the month in New York and Texas (with new markets being added throughout the year), where a personal “concierge” will guide interested members through filling out medical questionnaires; doing diagnostics around movement, nutrition, and sleep to establish baselines; and getting lab tests for more than 100 biomarkers (regarding the heart, thyroid, hormones, metabolic, inflammation, kidney, liver, nutrients, and more) up to four times a year. Other benefits include personal training with Equinox’s most experienced coaches three times a week, twice monthly nutritional coaching and sleep coaching, an Oura Rest & Recovery Kit, and monthly massage therapy.
It all costs $3,000 a month, with a required six-month commitment—on top of the average $300 monthly base gym membership (which varies by market)—adding up to the $40,000 annual total.
Regarding the price point, Kilm stresses it allows members to interact “with a top expert in any of the categories for roughly 16 hours a month.”
Equinox’s move is not surprising to Beth McGroarty, vice president of research for the Global Wellness Institute, a research-based nonprofit that aims to educate public and private sectors about preventative health and wellness—a global $5.6 trillion economy, according to the organization’s 2023 report.
“Definitely the biggest or most notable trend across the wellness world, globally, is this focus on longevity and healthspan,” she tells Fortune. “It’s really astounding, the speed at which it’s taken off.”
With fitness being the No. 1 most evidence-based practice for longevity in the health space, Equinox “sees an opportunity to take this whole longevity thing to the nth degree,” she notes. “It’s gym-as-longevity-clinic.”
McGroarty points out that Equinox is not the first to move in this direction: Another luxury fitness chain, Life Time, launched the similarly-conceived Miora last year, as have several Australian businesses.
“It’s part super-high-end gym, part MRIs, cryotherapy, lab tests … Basically these new hybrid models with so much more, many being realized through partnerships with these diagnostic companies,” as with Equinox and Function Health, she says.
The trend has even spread into the travel sector, with hotels all over the world, including the Four Seasons, which offers stem cell treatments and biomarker testing, says McGroarty, though she notes that everyday wellness centers are more logical to have in gyms. “If you’re really gungho on this relentless self-optimization and testing, you want to do it in an everyday way,” she says. “Also, having a longevity model without fitness doesn’t make sense.”
More on aging well:
- Silver lining: The U.S. workforce has more employees over 65 than ever before and it could mean great things for the bottom line
- This 64-year-old was surprised she ranked 5 in a millionaire’s longevity contest. Here’s her inexpensive routine for a long life
- This 102-year-old shares her secrets to aging with grace: 3,800 steps, an adult tricycle, and a lot of laughter
