| Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. It's day 12 of the new year, which means if you set a resolution, you're likely to have quit it already. Maybe a little inspiration will get you back on track. In August 2022, Brandon Presser wrote for Pursuits about what it was like to work as a celebrity fitness trainer. You can find an excerpt below and the whole story online here. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. Forty years ago, Nerio Alessandri requested a meeting with Giorgio Armani. Growing up poor in Cesena, Italy, Alessandri was used to making his own clothes, and he'd become quite good at it. Fresh out of school, he wanted to explore a career in fashion design. Armani declined, but today Alessandri counts the fashion icon among his most devoted fans—not for couture, but cardio equipment. Rather than move to Milan to pursue fashion, Alessandri applied his design skill to his growing affinity for fitness. In 1983 he founded Technogym in his garage and began constructing a suite of exercise equipment. In the '90s he expanded into workout software designed to sync one's progress across a variety of machines. The company eventually grew to become the official gym sponsor of the last eight Olympic Games and the favorite brand of professional athletes such as Rafael Nadal, celebrities including the Kardashians, and entrepreneurs like Richard Branson. You can find Technogym machines in five-star resorts and aboard most tricked-out superyachts, not to mention in over 85,000 gyms and 400,000 private homes across 100 countries. More than 55 million people get fitter every day using the brand's video content or hundreds of global fitness partners providing top-tier personalized training. In my reporting for Bloomberg Pursuits, I embed within the world's most prestigious lifestyle brands—everywhere from New York's Plaza Hotel to the Las Vegas Strip—all to decipher what goes on behind the scenes of their services. To find out what it takes to be an in-demand personal trainer, I sought insight from the all-star team at Technogym. I spent three days at its starshiplike headquarters in Cesena to work with a coterie of international instructors as they perfected their form, led live group classes, and recorded videos. Then I hopped from London to Los Angeles, shadowing other personal trainers who coach sports and movie stars every day. Here's what I learned about the life of a personal trainer to the world's elite. The fitness revolution will be digitized Instagram and TikTok have become integral to expanding a portfolio of clients. "We found all of our trainers through social media," explains Attilio Grilloni, Technogym's content director. When he began his international search for a world-class team of instructors, he combed apps to find individuals with compelling personalities and—most important—excellent form. The ability to properly explain technique for at-home viewers was key as well. According to Alessandri, 90% of people who exercise are doing it wrong. It could be incorrect movement, speed, range of motion, heart rate, rest time, or the type of exercise for their physiology. Since Covid-19 emerged, "there have been more sports injuries than ever before," he says, "because people are trying things on their own without guidance." Out of 400 auditions, Grilloni flew 40 aspiring stars to Italy for further vetting. The in-house team secretly observed potential trainers as they watched themselves played back on camera; those who cringed at seeing themselves on film were deemed better candidates—they were less self-involved. Eventually he whittled down his core team to six all-star "talent trainers": Harry Sellers, Patrick Frost, Meghan Hayden, India Bailey, Deena Pierce, and Steph Nieman.  Illustration: Carolina Moscoso New York has the most intense clients … For Alessandri it was natural to start a fitness company in his hometown. It was the Romans, after all, who conceived of the healthy-body, healthy-mind lifestyle. But it's New York that's widely considered to be the fitness capital of the world, fueled by a less healthy work-hard, play-hard ethos that stretches from the boardroom to the squash court. "New York is easily 10 years ahead of other cities," says Frost, who was ensconced in Manhattan's boutique fitness scene before decamping to Miami. "Down here people come to class with sunglasses on and play on their phone." Lauren Kanski, who trains her high-net-worth clients on Technogym equipment, agrees. "New Yorkers will never miss a workout," she says. "They're the most overstressed people. They're drinking too much and probably on some kind of substance." Several trainers say it wasn't uncommon to see finance guys at 6 a.m. who hadn't yet gone to bed and still smelled of tequila. … and the weirdest trends New York is also the capital of fad exercise, says Chris Howell, who's designed and outfitted luxury gyms for brands like Soho House. The strangest one "was literally smoke and mirrors," he says. "There were lights everywhere and misters spraying clouds of rosewater. Everyone had to climb on a treadmill in the dark at a 10% incline while John Cena yelled on the big screen. When you reached the top, they sprayed an evergreen scent, but everyone was falling off of their machines because it was so loud and disorienting." Frost says he was offered a gig at a concept studio that strapped clients into harnesses with bungee cords and had them crawl around like spiders. "It was basically a bunch of rich White women bouncing on trampolines," he says. He's also seen boxing blended with treadmills and once got invited to teach rowing classes at cryogenic temperatures. Despite his last name, he declined. Keep reading: Wild Secrets I Never Knew About Fitness Trainers Until I Worked as One | 
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