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Here’s your weekly roundup of news, trends, and stories in the health & fitness space. A list of what’s happening, new innovations, interesting finds, and more.‍

Weekly roundup

Rex Fit launches wearable nutrition tracker. The world’s first automated wearable nutrition tracker called “The Drop”. Using computer vision and AI to automatically record what you’re eating throughout the day and give you a full picture of the calories and macros you’ve eaten.

• Last week I wrote about an AI meal scanning app where you take a picture of your food and it tracks nutrition. Well Rex Fit said hold my beer, and launched a wearable that does all of that for you. This product looks very cool and follows 2 themes I am high on 1) practical AI use and 2) niche wearables. And I do appreciate the innovation here, however, I’m not sure I’d want to wear something around my neck all day, just to track my food. Taking a picture of my meal on my phone sounds more appealing to me.

ClassPass released their year in fitness report. Showing that Pilates was the most popular workout, growing 84% from last year. And massages were the most popular wellness appointment category, growing 39% from last year.

• The top categories popped out to me because it follows a clear trend of mindful, recovery based activity. Consumers are becoming more health conscious, but a lot of offerings in health & fitness can be daunting to beginners. Walking into a packed gym with weights everywhere can be overwhelming for first timers. Recovery and low impact activities have a lower barrier to entry and helps people get on the right track to living a healthier life. Which is why wellness spas and recovery clubs like Remedy Place and Othership are seeing such great growth.

INTVL launches Terra. A new app feature that gamifies running through “territory” capture. When users go on a run, they capture territory in the app. But when other users run through that territory, they now own it. It features a leaderboard of territory amount and an interactive map showing user territory.

• I made a video back in October talking about gamifying run clubs. With social running exploding in popularity, I felt the market was missing a product that made the experience more engaging for consumers. Well, INTVL thought the same thing and made a running gamification feature that is 10x better than the idea in my video. Basically making a combo of Pokémon Go and Snake for running. And this new feature led to them jumping up to a top 15 health & fitness app. If this sticks and has staying power, I think it could be something big.

Create unveils creatine sticks. Single serve creatine packets now available for early access. Create continues to push convenient, on-the-go use cases for creatine.

• Create has mastered the art of taking a proven product and changing its form function to succeed. Creatine has been around for years, but Create was the first company to combine great marketing with a more convenient product form. I’ve talked about them a handful of times, and I highly recommend going down their rabbit hole because it’s a great case study on how to win in E-Commerce & CPG.