EMS franchise SpeedFit enters NDIS space

Looking to help people with hearing and visually impairments get more active, Perth-based electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) franchise SpeedFit has become a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider.

Operating 31 locations across the nation, with 12 outside Western Australia, multi-site deals signed recently in NSW are expected to lift the total number to 40 studios by the end of 2024.

In addition, the company has appointed Julie Lin as its new Head of Growth to help expand the brand across Australia and New Zealand with the goal to reach 180-plus locations.

With 4.3 million Australians living with a disability, catering for this market has long been as an area of potential for fitness operators offering new opportunities for those that want to train people with a disability.

Keen to make the technology accessible for more people, SpeedFit founder Matej Varhalik - who first used EMS in his native Slovakia as a convenient, 20-minute low-impact workout to help regain fitness without aggravating his back pain - backed the initiative of the SpeedFit's Health Promotion and Training Officer Bashar Skayni to, in 2021, research EMS applications for health.

Speaking to Business News Australia, Varhalik stated "I just empowered him to do more research. We allocated time for him to investigate, and we built it from there.

"We identified a gap that hearing and visually impaired people don’t have easy access to normal exercise - it’s tricky for them because of physical limitations.

"When we were doing our R&D activities, we realised that no one was catering to this market. We ran a few tests and realised that our studios can be easily made accessible, offering these NDIS participants a suitable and effective solution to fitness."

Looking at working within the NDIS framework, Varhalik noted "We ran preliminary research and observed a gap within the health and fitness industry in the way of providing physical activity to those living with disabilities and chronic illness, as they had no tailored physical activity training programs.

"Specifically, it was observed that those with hearing and visual impairment, as well as spinal cord injuries, faced various physical, social, and environmental barriers that limited their degree of participation in physical activity, thus further diminishing their overall health and quality of life."

He says this led the team to undergo a series of operational changes, creating a comprehensive course about disabilities to upskill instructors, educating them about how to work with people living with disabilities.

Varhalik explained “we established internal systems to meet the NDIS registration requirements. We improved our studios' accessibility and ensured that all our spaces were safe for people living with disabilities. Finally, we created a series of training programs that we will test, and assess the impact and benefit of in our local communities."

Varhalik says another area of focus has been tailoring the offering to people with diabetes, for whom it was believed for a long time that EMS was unsafe due to the lack of research into its effects.

Here he added “we compared a lot of data from around the world, and we cracked the code that we can train people with a certain level of diabetes.

"We created our own tool for assessing people, and based on their answers we can create scoring points: if you score from zero to 100, we can train you safely; if you are 100 to 150, you need to have a clearance from the doctor; and if you are about 150 we cannot advise you and we can’t train you.”

Opportunities for the NDIS in encouraging people with a disability to be involved in fitness is explored in a feature in the upcoming Australasian Leisure Management issue 156.

Image: SpeedFit's electrical muscle stimulation technology (top) and SpeedFit founder Matej Varhalik (below).