2.0 Somewhere Along the Way, Working Out Became the New Going Out.

We used to go out to drink and dance, now it feels like every event has a wellness twist. We’re running, hiking, spinning, pilate-ing, but we’ve brought the music, fashion, drinks, brands and social rituals with us. So when did late-night bar hopping bowed down to wellness raves?

I've spent a lot of my career creating experiences around sport and entertainment for huge brands, sports teams and agencies. Creating, pop-ups., fan experiences, brand activations, hospitality, and content for big sporting moments, and one thing I've always loved about that world is that the sport itself is only part of the experience.

It's the music playing when you arrive. What you're drinking, what people are wearing. It can also be what ridiculous game you somehow become incredibly competitive about to the giveaway you actually want to keep.

It's the stuff around the sport that turns it into an experience and lately, I'm seeing that same thinking appear somewhere slightly unexpected. Wellness or is it fitness or is it hospitality? I'm actually not really sure what we're supposed to call it anymore.

Because somehow, working out became going out and I am so here for it.

Is this our new club scene?

There are run clubs with DJs, boutique fitness studios where the playlist and lighting matter almost as much as the workout. Padel courts with great music, good food and somewhere to have a drink afterwards. Hiking communities where everyone seems to have simultaneously discovered excellent outerwear and becoming instant 'it girls' drinking premium electrolytes and natural wine from a can.

Maybe it's because I'm at a stage of life where going clubbing until 3am has lost its appeal, but give me a brilliant workout, a DJ, 30 people I haven't met before and somewhere to have a glass of wine afterwards? I'm listening, and I don't think I'm alone here?

The rise of the fitness fan. Let's talk run clubs. What started as quite literally people meeting up to go for a run is becoming something much bigger. Communities like Run Dem Crew in London and Limitless Club in Lisbon aren't interesting to me purely because people are exercising together. It's everything they've built around the exercise.

Music, fashion, coffee, wine, DJs, brand partnerships, events, you don't necessarily have to be obsessed with running to want to be part of it.

They're creating fans, not just participants. People want the merch, they know who's going, they follow the Instagram account and they recognise the brands involved, which ultimately wants them to be at the next event.

We've taken some of the mechanics that made nightlife, music and sport culturally powerful and applied them to movement, and the brands have noticed. This is where my old world and my new one start colliding.

When I worked across sport and entertainment, we spent a huge amount of time thinking about how you turn someone's interest into participation.

How do you get the fan off the sofa? How do you create something they'll tell someone about afterwards? What's the production element, what's the giveaway? What's that photo moment, or the thing that makes this feel like more than another piece of advertising? I'm seeing exactly the same thinking in fitness and wellness now, only instead of building an activation around a football match, we're building one around a 5K or a padel game, or a strength class in a dark basement below Oxford St.

Hospitality hasn't disappeared, it's moving.

Hospitality used to have quite a clear home; restaurants, bars, hotels, clubs.

Now? A coffee cart at the finish line is hospitality, a DJ beside a padel court is hospitality. A beautifully designed recovery space after a workout is hospitality and a bottle of wine opened after a hike is hospitality.

The experience doesn't have to start when you sit down at a table anymore, it can start when you lace up your trainers.

Even what we're drinking is changing.

Take hiking for example. Hiking culture itself has had something of a glow-up.

Technical clothing has become fashion. Outdoor brands have become cultural brands. Gorpcore escaped the mountains a long time ago and what's in the backpack has evolved with it. Yes, there are beautifully branded sachets of premium electrolytes, but there's also genuinely good wine in cans now, and I LOVE what that is now doing to how we see and consume wine.

Not because I'm suggesting we all start drinking halfway up a mountain.

But because the old categories are starting to blur. Less, stiffness around wine, new ways to create, and consume.

I'm increasingly less interested in those rules. Personally I drink my electrolytes daily, and then sometimes I genuinely want to enjoy a glass of wine after a long day of not sitting down.

There's another part of this that I think matters, and that's we're constantly online.

Yet some of the communities growing fastest around us are giving people a reason to physically show up. You might discover the run club on Instagram.

You might photograph your outfit when you get there, The DJ might end up on TikTok, so no, we're not exactly staging a digital detox, however what we are doing is or an hour or two, you're doing something alongside actual people, being a fan of something together and when we strip it all back, perhaps that's what we're craving.

If I am honest, I'm still questioning all of this. Is every run club suddenly a "community"? Does every workout need a DJ? Does every hobby need merch? Does everything need to become a brand? Probably not.

But I like that we're experimenting, because I don't think people necessarily want less socialising, maybe we just want to socialise differently.

We still want the music and care about what we're wearing. We still want something delicious to drink whilst meeting new people and we still want that little buzz of walking into somewhere and thinking, this is going to be fun. We've just added a bit of movement into the middle of it and perhaps that's why this world feels so familiar to me. I have spent years creating experiences around sport and entertainment, alongside teaching fitness classes, and with my love and respect for wine, I am increasingly interested in what happens when you add hospitality into that mix.

A run that ends around a table or Padel followed by wine or a workout with a DJ throwing out some true bangers... Not fitness for fitness's sake and not drinking for drinking's sake. Simply coming together, moving your body, eating and drinking well, listening to good music and hopefully leaving feeling better than when you arrived.

If this is the new club scene, I'll see you there.