A Day Well Spent With... Nerio Alessandri, Founder and President of Technogym

Alessandri is the founder and chief executive of Technogym, the world’s biggest gym equipment manufacturer.

An industrial designer by training, he started the high-end gym equipment company in his hometown of Cesena in Italy at the tender age of 22, designing and building the first product himself in his garage.

To date Technogym has equipped some 80,000 fitness centres and over 300,000 homes around the world. Among their clients are Virgin Active gyms, Hyatt and Marriott hotels, and the offices of big brands like Ferrari, Facebook, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

The company has also been the official equipment supplier to the last seven Olympic Games and it’s estimated that approximately 50 million people use Technogym products every day.

We catch up with the man at the helm of Italy’s biggest fitness empire to hear a bit more about how he maintains a healthy lifestyle.

The first thing I do in the morning is make an espresso, of course, as a proper Italian

I exercise three or four times per week. I like variety and trying different types of workouts. Kinesis, Technogym’s cable system to improve strength, balance and flexibility, is one of my favourites…sometimes I do cardio and I can keep up with the news or watch my favourite movies on our digital consoles whilst exercising. If I feel energetic, I take part in one of our Skillathletic classes, our new athletic training-based discipline.

Working out and exercising in the morning is the best way for me to have a positive mind-set each day.

My regular training habits do not change when I travel. I always stay at Technogym equipped hotels and thanks to our Mywellness digital platform, I can connect via my mobile app to my personal training program anywhere I am in the world.

Over the past forty years my training routine has evolved in line with technological advances. In the ’80s I focused on strength training, then I began incorporating more cardio into my routine. Now, thanks to Technogym’s Mywellness digital platform, I can connect to my varied personal training programme no matter where I am, day or night and experience state-of-the-art bespoke training. Four decades on, there is much more variety and I am fully in control of the experience.

For lunch I love to eat a bit of everything. I usually have one big dish with 1/3 of pasta, 1/3 of proteins (preferably fish) and 1/3 of vegetables