Why the Over-50s Market Is One of the Biggest Opportunities in Fitness Right Now — Lessons from Active and Ageless Founder Heath Jones

There is a market sitting right in front of most fitness business owners that is largely being ignored. It is loyal, financially capable, underserved, and growing faster than almost any other consumer segment in Australia. It is the over-50s market, and Heath Jones has been building his business around it for the past six years.

Heath is the founder of Active and Ageless, a boutique fitness concept dedicated entirely to mature adults. What started as a single location in Hurstville during arguably the worst possible time to open a business has grown into four locations across Sydney, with more on the horizon. His story is one of conviction, patience, and a willingness to go where the rest of the industry was not looking.

I sat down with Heath on the latest episode of ‘Profit Made Simple’ to unpack his journey, the lessons he has learned across four locations, and what the rise of healthy ageing means for fitness business owners paying attention.

The misconceptions around the over-50s market are significant, and Heath addressed them directly. The most common one is fragility. Many fitness business owners assume that training mature adults requires an overly cautious, watered-down approach. Heath’s members train hard, move with integrity, and get genuine results. They are not fragile. They simply need programming that is designed intelligently for where they are.

The second misconception is loyalty. Younger gym demographics are notoriously transient. They are drawn to new models, new brands, and new experiences. Mature adults are different. Many of Heath’s founding members are still training with him today, years after joining during the disruption of Covid. That stickiness has enormous implications for the unit economics of a fitness business. Lower churn means lower acquisition costs, more stable revenue, and a community that compounds over time.

The third misconception is purchasing power. There is a persistent assumption that older Australians are on fixed incomes and cannot afford premium services. Heath runs a premium facility and positions his locations accordingly. The right members in the right locations absolutely have the capacity and the willingness to invest in their health, particularly when they understand the value of what they are getting.

Heath’s first location looked very different from what Active and Ageless has become. The original Hurstville studio was built around machines, self-directed programs and individual training paths. Members would tap an ID card on a monitor and follow a customised program circuit. It was highly personalised but difficult to scale as membership grew, and it created operational complexity that became increasingly hard to manage.

As classes started gaining traction, Heath noticed something important. Fifty percent of his members were retired, and many of them had lost the daily social connection that work had provided. They were not just coming for the training. They were coming for each other. When the community aspect of group classes started driving attendance and retention, Heath made a bold decision. He went fully class-based and removed the gym-only model entirely. He lost two members out of 150 in the process and never looked back.

The shift to a class-based model also changed the economics of setting up new locations significantly. Without the investment in heavy machine-based equipment, the cost of fitting out the second location was roughly a third of the first. That difference has compounded across every subsequent opening.

One of the genuine challenges Heath has had to solve is programming for a demographic with an enormous range of physical capacity. Two people of the same age can present completely differently in terms of mobility, strength, cardiovascular fitness and movement experience. Putting them in the same class without a structured approach to accommodate that range creates problems.

Active and Ageless addresses this through a thorough onboarding process. Every new member completes a movement assessment that covers balance, strength, coordination and medical history before they attend their first class. Based on that assessment, members are placed into graded classes that match their current capacity. Within those classes, coaches are trained to regress or progress exercises in real time based on what each member needs.

The time-based class format was another deliberate design decision. Rather than programming repetitions, exercises are timed. Everyone finishes the same station at the same moment regardless of how many reps they completed. Nobody feels behind. Nobody feels embarrassed. That small design choice removes one of the most common psychological barriers that stops beginners from coming back.

Heath’s approach to marketing is built around social proof, and it works exceptionally well with this demographic for a simple reason. Mature adults research before they commit. They read Google reviews thoroughly. They ask friends. They look for evidence that a business is trustworthy and credible before they take the next step.

When Heath asks his members for a Google review, they do not leave a sentence. They write essays. Detailed, personal accounts of what has changed for them since joining. That kind of authentic social proof is marketing that no budget can easily replicate, and it has become one of the most powerful acquisition channels the business has.

The trial offer structure also reflects a deep understanding of the psychology of his market. Many of Heath’s members have not exercised in decades. Some have never trained in a structured gym environment at all. The hesitation they feel is real, and a hard sell approach would actively work against conversion. Instead, Heath offers a five-class trial for twenty dollars. Low enough that there is almost no barrier to saying yes. Enough classes that members have time to experience the community, feel genuine progress and build confidence. The conversion from trial to membership speaks for itself.

Heath’s background in the military and as an emergency nurse gave him an appreciation for systems and procedures that many fitness business owners lack. As he has scaled to four locations, those instincts have become one of his most important assets.

His staff onboarding booklet runs to sixty or seventy pages. It covers how to set up a class, how to conduct movement assessments, how to deliver a warm-up, how to handle member communications, even how to schedule music across different session types. Everything is documented and supported with video. New staff can reference it independently rather than relying on Heath being present to answer questions.

His approach to recruitment has also evolved. He no longer relies on face-to-face interviews as the primary filter. Instead, he brings candidates into a class environment and watches how they interact with members, respond to challenges and operate under pressure. The interview is easy to perform well in. The class environment is much harder to fake.

The story he shared about Jasmine, his manager at Hurstville, captures his leadership philosophy well. She came in as a student placement, showed genuine enthusiasm and a willingness to learn, and Heath invested in her over time. She eventually wrote in a staff goals document that she wanted to become a gym manager one day. Heath built a pathway for her to get there. She has now been managing Hurstville for three years and is exceptional at it. Heath’s point was clear. You can teach skills. You cannot teach attitude or mindset. Hire for the latter and develop the former.

One of the clearest messages from this conversation is that the healthy ageing market is not a niche. It is a growing segment of the population with significant purchasing power, a deepening awareness of the importance of strength training, and an appetite for quality that most fitness businesses are still underestimating.

Heath shared a story about one of his oldest members, a woman in her early eighties who recently travelled through South Africa and Italy. He attributes a meaningful part of her capacity to do that to the training she has done at Active and Ageless. That is the product. Not the class. Not the programming. The ability to carry your own luggage, get down on the floor with your grandchildren, and live the last decades of your life with energy and independence rather than just existing through them.

As Heath put it, the previous generation largely grew old gracefully and accepted what came with it. This generation has no intention of doing the same, and the businesses that show up to serve them well will be very well placed for a long time.

Heath Jones built something genuinely different in an industry that too often copies itself. He identified an underserved market, ignored the sceptics, survived a brutal start, and spent six years refining every part of the model until it worked. Four locations later, the business is stronger than it has ever been and the opportunity ahead of it is significant.

For gym owners and fitness entrepreneurs, the lessons from this conversation extend well beyond the over-50s market. The importance of building community, designing for your actual member rather than the fitness enthusiast version of them, creating systems that allow you to scale without being present everywhere at once, and hiring for mindset rather than just skill are principles that apply to any fitness business at any stage.

The full conversation with Heath is available now on ‘Profit Made Simple’ on all podcast channels and YouTube.