Dean of the College of Health Sciences, Gary Liguori, discusses his involvement with
Dr. Gary Liguori, Dean of the College of Health Sciences, recently attended a summit in Madrid, Spain for GO fit, as chairman for the Research and Innovation branch of the Scientific Advisory Board.
GO fit, a Spanish company owned by Ingesport, is the largest provider of health and fitness centers in Spain and is working on expanding their facilities around Europe.
“GO fit is a big operation and Ingesport is a big operation and they want to have a large research and innovation arm, which is not typically seen in the health and fitness center,” Liguori said. “They have about 200,000 memebers throughout the country so there are some really amazing opportunities to do some research that has a real impact.”
According to Liguori, the Scientific Advisory Board is working on expanding itself and currently, about half of the members are from universities in Spain, as well as having members from England, Australia, the U.S. and China.
The advisory board oversees about six Ph.D students who are working on multiple projects, and Liguori works directly as a mentor to them, helping them with their committees and guiding some of their research.
“We have a couple of projects going right now, one is the development of an app that every member has access to,” Liguori said.
This new app tracks member’s activity through a key that each member receives and swipes to use each piece of equipment. Through each key swipe, the equipment connects with the app, giving members a way to see and review their activity and energy expenditures.
Along with this, they are also working on producing a feature called “Age Score.”
“You put in certain parameters about yourself and about your lifestyle and it tells you your theoretical age, not your literal age,” Liguori said. “As you hopefully improve upon those, it will tell you how your age changes.”
GO fit is also working to add a body mapping feature to the app in order for people to gain motivation for their weight loss or gaining goals.
“With your cell phone, you take a photo of yourself from the front and from the side and within a millimeter it can tell you your entire dimensions,” Liguori said. “Because they have mapped literally tens of thousands of people, they have predictive equations, so if you say you want to lose ten pounds or ten kilos, then it will show you what your body will look like, so it’s an idea of how we can use behavioral science to help motivate people towards their goal set.”
According to Liguori, part of GO fit’s success is that they have a deal with all of the local governments where their facilities are located, in which GO fit is able to purchase the land at a very low cost to get their center.
“In return, they have to price their membership relative to the economics for the region so that people can afford to go there so they’re extremely inexpensive for a family based on typically E.U. prices,” Liguori said.
Along with being reasonably priced, they also have to make other efforts to engage the community at little or no cost.
“They partner very strongly with the local communities to not just be the fitness center but to be a key point in health and wellness for everyone,” Liguori said.