On October 28 and 29 Garmin held its 2026 Health Summit in Bangkok, and UPTIVO was there as one of six finalists for this year's Garmin Health Awards.
Garmin chose the six from more than 130 nominations. The awards are open to established, active solutions built on Garmin smartwatches, fitness trackers or smart scales, and entries are judged on customer benefit, scalability, uniqueness, innovation and performance.
Five of the finalists came from healthcare, insurance and research, including a major US health system and a Thai hospital. We were the only finalist from the fitness area, and the only one built for gyms.
What we took to Bangkok
Our entry was UPTIVO SNAP with its Garmin integration. A member connects their Garmin once, through the app or at the club, and from then on their heart rate appears live on the club's screens during class, with zones, effort and calories, on any TV with a browser.
There is no strap to buy or rent, and members pay nothing to use a device they already own. After class the full session lands in their UPTIVO profile through Garmin Connect, and so do workouts done at home or outdoors, which earn the same points and count toward the same club challenges.
With the member's consent, daily activity, sleep, resting heart rate and recovery data flow in as well: valuable data that NATE, our AI coach, makes easy to read, so coaches can follow each member between sessions and not only while they are in the room.
CIRQA, the screen-free band Garmin launched in July, came up again and again in conversations at the summit, and we consider it SNAP's ideal companion. We have tested it in live classes: with no display on the wrist, the member's zone appears exactly where SNAP puts it, on the screen in the room, and the connection held steady with precise readings, thanks to a Garmin optical sensor that performed very well in class.
Garmin's third-quarter results, published on October 28, point the same way. Fitness revenue rose 16 percent to $694 million, outdoor revenue rose 20 percent to $597 million and total revenue grew 12 percent to $1.99 billion, with CIRQA among the recently launched products Garmin credited for the quarter. To us, those numbers show how strongly people now want data that helps them improve their health and fitness.
Members already measure themselves every day
For most of the history of fitness, a member's progress was checked now and then: an assessment at sign-up, perhaps a retest a few months later, a scale in the locker room. Between those moments, the club and the member were both guessing.
Wearables have changed that rhythm. Heart rate, sleep, recovery and daily activity now update continuously on the wrist, and the sales figures above show how many people already live with that kind of feedback.
In our view that growth signals less an appetite for gadgets than a demand for evidence. Members increasingly expect to see, in numbers, whether what they are doing is working.
A club that only rents space has no answer to that question
The traditional gym model sells access: a floor, equipment and a timetable, paid by the month. It works as long as members bring their own motivation and judge their own progress.
A member who checks their recovery every morning and their sleep every night will sooner or later ask what the club itself adds to those numbers. A club that cannot show it, session by session, ends up being judged on equipment and price, which is the comparison independent clubs usually lose.
That is why we read a gym platform on Garmin's shortlist less as a trophy than as a sign of an increasingly holistic approach to the data people collect on their wrist. The other finalists show how wide the field has become: a Thai insurer gives its customers Garmin wearables at no cost and turns everyday movement into immediate financial benefits, while a Thai hospital group is turning its staff's annual check-up into continuous risk monitoring.
The most surprising entry came from Japan. Asahi Quality & Innovations, the research company of the Asahi group, best known around the world for its beer, is developing an app with the National University of Singapore that uses biometric data from Garmin wearables and AI to support people's wellbeing through beverages, so the same kind of data a coach reads in class is starting to shape what a drinks company develops.
If insurers, hospitals and even a brewer are building on that data, the club floor, where people actually train, can hardly stay out of it, and the clubs that benefit will be the ones that can show results instead of simply opening the doors.
Numbers on their own rarely get anyone to class
Measurement is only half of it. A member can watch their resting heart rate fall in an app and still skip Thursday's class, because a chart is information while turning up is a habit.
The other half is giving the numbers a meaning people care about. In class that means seeing effort live on the screen next to everyone else's, and over a month it means a score that counts what the member did, wherever they did it.
We built UPTIVO Performance Points for that purpose. The score is earned minute by minute against the member's own maximum heart rate with any wearable, with a monthly goal of 2,000 points based on World Health Organization guidelines and ten levels to climb, so a Sunday run with a Garmin counts in the same way as a Tuesday class.
A good coach then turns those numbers into a conversation, which is still the part no wearable does.
What we brought back
Bangkok put us in a room with healthcare and insurance organizations doing serious work with the same devices our clubs' members wear in class, and we came back with ideas for clubs that we will share as they take shape.
For club owners, the takeaway does not depend on us. If your members already measure their training and their health every day, the question to answer in 2027 is what your club adds to those numbers that they could not get by training alone.
If you want to see how it looks in a real class, our Garmin integration page explains how members connect, and the first SNAP class runs on the screens you already have, at no cost.
Sources
Garmin, Garmin announces finalists for the 2026 Garmin Health Awards
Garmin, Garmin issues global call for entries for 2026 Garmin Health Awards in Bangkok, Thailand
Garmin, Garmin announces third quarter 2026 results
Garmin Japan, Garmin、日本のアサヒクオリティーアンドイノベーションズ株式会社を「Garmin Health Awards 2026」のファイナリストに選出
Tech-hangout, การ์มินประกาศ 2 องค์กรไทยเข้ารอบสุดท้าย Garmin Health Awards 2026