Name: Inside the "Lifemaxxing" Economy: Has Fitness AI Optimization Gone Too Far?
Uploaded: 2026-09-03
Duration: 9 min 39 s

Nearly half of all Americans wear a fitness tracker, up from just 13% a decade ago. But while early wearables just counted steps, connected fitness giants like Oura and Tonal are using artificial intelligence to predict your recovery before you even feel it. 

Fortune senior writer Allie Garfinkle goes inside the $2 trillion wellness economy to test the tech, analyze the multi-billion-dollar data moats, and ask a fundamental question: Is hyper-optimization making us peak performers, or just more anxious?

Inside the "Lifemaxxing" Economy: Has Fitness AI Optimization Gone Too Far?

Tech

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3 We're going all out. Welcome to the life maxing economy. We're capturing an additional 1000 points of data every second from our camera that's tracking 36 different points on your body. The global consumer wellness market is now worth $2 trillion and nearly half of American adults own at least one wearable of 33% points from a decade ago. Sherman and Allie here today. We are going to show you the new Order Ring 5 and our thoughts on it. When it says you're getting sick in 3 days' time, you will be sick, and it's the AI that's tuned to you. Now AI is. Transforming passive step counters into active coaches with hyper personalized insights designed to optimize every hour of your day, awake and asleep. So it's your AI spotter. Exactly. But some people are getting burnt out. Do you really need to be wearing 56 devices? No. Will all this information really make us healthier, or are we just becoming data obsessed? There's no reason to overoptimize. That 1% improvement is not going to change your life. Amazing. Later March. Hey Ali. Hi, Coach Woody, it's so nice to meet you. Super excited to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, this is where the magic happens. The global smart fitness market is projected to grow to over $60 billion over the next decade, fueled by an increase in wearable devices and connected gym systems. Oh, it's helping me. Maybe you start to reach failure or fatigue. You cannot complete a rep. Burnout will kick in to lessen the load so that you can finish the wrap, so that you can finish the set. And fitness tracking isn't new. Basic pedometers go back decades, and more modern devices tracking calories, heart rate, and sleep surged in the late 2000s and early 2010s. AI is transforming the capabilities of these tools. Connected devices are no longer just collecting data. Now they're telling users how to use this data. AI really kind of underpins almost everything that we do, and we're becoming predictive in that. A world with generative AI allowing members to talk to the product in kind of human language. Tonal makes smart home gym equipment with AI-powered resistance weights that learn and adjust based on the user. They also offer AI coaching software and human-guided workout classes. Founded in 2015, Tonal has accumulated trillions of data points from everyday lifters to brand ambassadors like LeBron James and Serena. Williams Toal says its members have lifted more than 235 billion pounds, building the largest strength training data set in the world. What our members are telling us is that I want to run a marathon or I want to get my mobility back, you know, we're now offering through Tia, which is our total intelligent assistant, an ability to ask those questions, predict outcomes for individuals, and prescribe them workouts along the way. Pal is one of several connected fitness devices introducing conversational AI coaches into their products, but established large language models pose a significant threat. If chatbots can analyze the same fitness data for free, they risk reducing connected devices to what they once were pricey data collectors. Do you feel like you're competing with the large LLMs on that level? I think what they built is a phenomenal system where those systems fall short is in areas of specialization. What we bring to the table is a wealth of data, 8 years plus worth of workout experience for hundreds of thousands of people that allows us to augment what those companies do and specifically address. Strength training outcomes in a way that these companies just don't have systems trained to accomplish. What are we looking at here? We've talked about all this data. This is a system that we use that measures the force input for the motor. Every time you pull on a cable, go ahead and grab a cable. We're collecting data 50 times a second, thousands of data points every second that aggregate to give us a really, really, really highly specific force curve on what it is. That you're doing, how that complements your given move and how we build all of that into a system that personalizes your lifts. Companies like Tonal are positioning their proprietary data as the defense by matching trillions of data points with its own closed loop large language model. Tonal says they provide personalized analysis. This also adds a lucrative subscription revenue stream to their existing hardware sales. We didn't want to just be a wrapper on top of one of these big foundational models, which no harm or no foul to any company that wants to do that. What we wanted to do was take the time to really train our system on the data that we have and augment it with the expertise of our staff. To what extent do you feel you're competing with chat GBT or cloud? I mean we certainly have observed people taking medical information and uploading it to. Chat GPT or cloud and asking questions and we thought oh we can do this but we can do this with with the data not just as you prompting the LLM. Why don't we have that machine intelligence, the doctor in your pocket monitoring what's going on with you and then giving you an insight. Aura, the Smart ringing and health tracking platform that monitors sleep, physical activity, and other biometric signals, originally only sold physical devices. But in 2021, Aura introduced a subscription-based revenue model built on AI-powered personalized health insights. Under CEO Tom Hale, that software model became a revenue driver. I think AI and our particular take on it is going to be a pretty big mode. The second thing that is a competitive mode is the data set itself. The data is actually the scarce resource here. Our data set, 42 billion hours of data across a huge population, that data asset is what fuels the intelligence. The intelligence is the thing that you can't. Create unless you have the data. The company says it generated over $1 billion in revenue in 2025, doubling sales for the second consecutive year. About 20% of that comes from subscriptions. A rumored IPO candidate, or it could be valued at more than $16 billion if it goes public in 2026. Where we end is everyone's already got a supercomputer of some sort, and there'll be a device that you wear on your body. And that device will monitor your physiology, and those things are looking out for you and making you healthy. And by the way, that will bend the curve not just of your personal health outcome, but bend the curve on a societal health outcome. We spend 1 in $5 in this country of our GDP on healthcare. That's ridiculous compared to European countries where it's like 1 in 10 or less. We think that should change and we think this is part of that change. So this is my favorite drawer here. This is my wearables drawer. OK. We go ahead and open it up. Oh my gosh, there's so many. This is where people get the most shocks. It's probably like 30 different watches, smart rings, bands just in this drawer right here. Shervin Shaikh, known as Shervin Shares on YouTube, is a fitness influencer known for reviewing the latest products in the booming health and fitness technology industry. I've With every fitness tech equipment out there, and today I'm reviewing the tonal 2. He has done paid branded content for Tonal and Aura and earns commission on Aura rings sold through his affiliate link. And then what have we got in this corner over here? So this is the filming setup. What did we say? Sherman and Ali here. Sherman and Allie here today. We are going to show you the new Aura Ring 5 and our thoughts on it. So we're going to show you our little colors. What do you have on? What do you have on 2 Aura rings right now, OK. And then I have a Fitbit, the new Fitbit Air, and then the Garmin Circa. And then the whoop on this arm. So there's 3. There's an invisible one as well, exactly. And then just the Apple Watch on this side. When every choice becomes a data point from sleep to heart rate variability, some question whether all that information ultimately does more harm than good. There are also questions about the reliability of this data. Aura is currently facing a lawsuit accusing the company of providing misleading sleep tracking information. In a written response to Fortune, Aura said that they stand behind their claims of accuracy and are committed to communicating how members should use the data that Aura is measuring. I think a lot of people are kind of hitting a wall after years of over optimizing perhaps um I certainly have a complicated relationship with the data myself. How do you think about that, especially in the context of this massive data set you have? Our goal is to improve people from a strength outcome perspective and improve their health. What we're attempting to do is build a system that allows you to basically get that same value out of your training that you would get with a personal trainer. But importantly, without the cognitive load that would require you to even think about data. Has there ever been a time where you sat there and were like, oh, I have too much data? Always for me specifically, like, do you really need to be wearing 56 devices? No. And I think there was one point where I was wearing 2, like I was wearing an Apple Watch and a Whoop, and people were like, why are you wearing 2 watches? And now it seems like it's become more common where I see other people wearing 2 devices, and I guess I've become the guy who wears 6 devices. So many people think if I buy X, Y, Z, you know, this gadget, this fitness tech is going to make me fit. Buying anything is not going to change your behavior. If we use the data to influence how we feel, then we forget how we feel, and I think. How we feel is is the biggest metric for how that day is gonna go.