Former ukactive CEO David Stalker believes it’s time for the fitness industry’s old guard to “be off doing something new” and says veterans should leave the new generation to drive the sector forward.

According to Stalker, the industry remains too reliant on old methods of doing business rather than embracing change, and needs fresh thinking to evolve towards a new model of taking data-driven decisions.

“This is still an industry largely based on the gut feel,” he says. “We do things because that's the way we've always done them.”

The comments come from the June 2016 edition of Health Club Management, in which Stalker gives a valedictory interview to mark his move away from the frontline of the fitness sector to focus on his trampolining firm Oxygen Freejumping. As well as the ‘gut-feelers,’ Stalker takes aim at the growing number of ‘fitness industry gurus’, but caveats that Dr Paul Bedford is an exception as someone who offers "invaluable" advice.

“Too many people are still in the sector when they should be off doing something new and are therefore preventing a new generation more in touch with the future direction of the sector and the changing demands of consumers,” says Stalker.

“We've got a whole gaggle of so called ‘gurus’ striding around the industry – Gurus of Data, Gurus of Retention, Gurus of Behaviour, Gurus of Marketing and so it goes on – who make a great living running the industry down and contributing very little to its genuine progression.”

Despite his dissatisfaction with the status quo, Stalker is optimistic for the future. He says the insight from services such as GymMetrix is helping take the industry into “an era of data, science and fact, beyond this first generation of the sector where we were doing everything for the first time.”

He adds that the arrival of top talent from outside sectors – such as The Gym Group’s Jim Graham and Pure Gym’s Humphrey Cobbold – demonstrates this sea change, and he believes new initiatives from the likes of ukactive will help to produce the sector’s next generation of chief executives.

“We're breeding a new generation of Future Leaders who are as comfortable talking to the board of a CCG as they are in securing investment from the City,” says Stalker.

“They'll sweep away the gut-feelers in the course of the next few years and that needs to happen.”

To read the full interview with David Stalker, from the June 2016 edition of Health Club Management click here.