Survival Among The Fittest

The nine things I learned while spending a week with some of the world’s most in-demand personal trainers.

- Brandon Presser

Forty years ago, Nerio Alessandri requested a meeting with Giorgio Armani. Growing up poor in Cesena, Italy, Alessandri was used to making his own clothes, and he’d become quite good at it. Fresh out of school, he wanted to explore a career in fashion design.

Armani declined, but today Alessandri counts the fashion icon among his most devoted fans—not for couture, but cardio equipment. Rather than move to Milan to pursue fashion, Alessandri applied his design skill to his growing affinity for fitness. In 1983 he founded Technogym in his garage and began constructing a suite of exercise equipment. In the ’90s he expanded into workout software designed to sync one’s progress across a variety of machines.

The company eventually grew to become the official gym sponsor of the last eight Olympic Games and the favorite brand of professional athletes such as Rafael Nadal, celebrities including the Kardashians, and entrepreneurs like Richard Branson. You can find Technogym machines in five-star resorts and aboard most tricked-out superyachts, not to mention in over 85,000 gyms and 400,000 private homes across 100 countries. More than 55 million people get fitter every day using the brand’s video content or hundreds of global fitness partners providing top-tier personalized training.