PULSE CHECK ISSUE NO. 04
What’s Ahead at Willpower
As we head into fall, Willpower is building momentum with two major touch points on the calendar:
Willpower Human Performance Roundtable — September 22, New York
An intimate, invitation-only dinner convening founders and executives who are redefining the future of human performance and wellness technology. A smaller table, sharper conversations, and a chance to connect at depth as we ramp toward what’s next.
Willpower World of Sports & Human Performance — October 15-16, Austin
Not a conference. Not a party. Something bigger. Two days where wellness, consumer brands, pro sports, and government agencies collide under one roof. Expect programming that spans cutting-edge recovery tech, cultural conversations, and collaborations with organizations shaping performance at the highest levels.
Where Performance Moves Next
Human performance isn’t confined to gyms or training grounds anymore, it’s becoming the backbone of culture, commerce, and daily life. Defense contractors are adopting wearable tech, AI is rewriting women’s health, and functional beverages are scaling into mass retail. At the same time, capital is accelerating expansions, acquisitions, and category crossovers, pushing performance into places it’s never been before.
In this issue, we track the moves, across investment, innovation, and culture, that are setting the pace for the next chapter of human performance.
💸 Capital & Growth Plays
Money tells us where performance is headed next. From established players doubling down to newcomers scaling fast, here’s what’s shaping the growth story:
ŌURA Brings Manufacturing Stateside to Scale Human Performance in Defense
In a strategic move blending wellness tech and national readiness, ŌURA, best known for its highly precise smart ring, has announced a major U.S. expansion: a new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, dedicated to fulfilling defense contracts. The site, which is set to open in 2026, represents more than mere production capacity. It signals ŌURA’s commitment to bringing biometric-powered performance tools closer to mission-critical needs, right in the heart of American soil. From enhancing fatigue risk models to fine-tuning stress resilience among service members, this domestic footprint underscores a growing trend: recovery and readiness technologies are no longer siloed behind civilian wellness, they’re becoming embedded into the infrastructure that powers high-stakes operations.
Nutrabolt Doubles Down: Supercharging Bloom Nutrition’s Growth Trajectory
In a clear signal of strategic ambition, Austin-based Nutrabolt, the powerhouse behind C4 Energy, Cellucor, and XTEND, is expanding its investment in Bloom Nutrition, the flavor-forward functional beverage and wellness brand founded by Mari Llewellyn and Greg LaVecchia. After leading a $90M financing round in January 2024 that secured roughly a 20% stake, Nutrabolt has now infused a second round of capital, extending its reach into new product categories and use cases while reaffirming the brand’s independent leadership and vision. This expansion comes on the heels of breakout successes, including Bloom Sparkling Energy, which has moved over 35 million cans in its first year, and the recent launch of Bloom Pop into 3,000+ Walmart locations, underscoring a broader shift: once niche, functional beverages are rapidly evolving into mainstream, lifestyle-defining staples.
Excel Fitness Goes Hunting: Eyes on Suburban Expansion
Austin-headquartered franchise powerhouse Excel Fitness, already operating over 166 Planet Fitness locations, has signaled a bold next phase: aggressive acquisitions in select suburban markets. The company’s widening search reflects an evolved growth strategy, one that blends organic expansion with strategic buyouts to deepen penetration in high-opportunity regions. With Excel’s stronghold in the “Judgement Free Zone” firmly established, this acquisition push signals a shift toward disciplined scale, fueled by both cultural ethos and market ambition. By doubling down in neighborhoods primed for approachable wellness, Excel is reframing the fitness franchise model: not as rapid footprint proliferation, but rather as thoughtful, community-infused growth.
🏋️ Breakthroughs in Training & Competition
Formats That Move Culture. New approaches to training are doubling as cultural activations, part sport, part entertainment, reshaping not just how we move, but how we gather.
Life Time Enters the Ring with LT Games: A Hybrid Fitness Playbook
Life Time, long known for its athletic country clubs with recently embedded workspaces, is stepping squarely into the hybrid competition arena with the launch of the LT Games, set to debut on October 25–26, 2025 at its Target Center location in Minneapolis. This 17-stage hybrid-athlete competition, blending strength, endurance, power, and agility challenges, features an innovative weight-to-repetition scaling system that invites customization based on personal strengths. With a total prize pool of $20,000, winners across male and female categories will walk away with $5,000 for first place (plus rewards down to fifth place).
But LT Games is more than just a competition; it’s a cultural activation. To prepare participants, Life Time is offering dedicated training classes at the Target Center and a complimentary 8-week training program via its app. Today’s fitness clubs are evolving from workout spaces into training ecosystems, combining on-site programming, digital coaching, and competition under one roof. Life Time is quietly taking aim at brands like HYROX, leveraging built-in scale, in-club credibility, and digital infrastructure to potentially redefine how hybrid fitness gains visibility, traction, and reach.
Surfset: Balance Meets Performance
In exploring how different modalities push the boundaries of training, I came across Surfset, a class concept that brings the challenge of surfing indoors. Using a custom board mounted on stability balls, Surfset sessions combine strength, cardio, and balance into workouts that look familiar, lunges, squats, planks, but feel entirely different once performed on an unstable surface.
What makes Surfset interesting is less about novelty and more about how it reframes functional training. By forcing constant micro-adjustments, it builds core stability and proprioception in a way traditional gym floors can’t. It’s a reminder of how class formats continue to evolve, meeting consumers’ desire for experiences that feel effective, while being engaging, expanding the definition of what performance training can look like in practice.
⚖️ Ethics & Strategy in Sport
Sometimes the biggest performance questions aren’t about who’s fastest, but about how decisions are made under pressure.
Fair Play or Foul? McLaren’s Monza Dilemma
At the Italian Grand Prix in Monza (Sept 7), McLaren sparked one of the season’s biggest debates, not with a crash or a victory, but with a call over fairness. A slow pit stop shuffled Lando Norris behind teammate Oscar Piastri, and with just laps to go, the team ordered Piastri to give the place back.
Norris finishes ahead of Piastri, taking P2 at the Italian GP
McLaren defended the swap as “restoring balance,” but the optics were thornier: a title-leading driver told to move aside, and a team caught between loyalty to individuals and its own principles. Both Norris and Piastri backed the decision publicly, yet even Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ Team Principal & CEO, widely regarded as the most powerful figure in F1 team politics, weighed in and cautioned that moves like this can set a dangerous precedent. If you know anything about the sport, you know Toto is the guy when it comes to power dynamics in the paddock.
In the end, Monza highlighted how the battles that define Formula 1 don’t end at the checkered flag, they continue in the decisions, values, and strategies that shape the sport behind the scenes.
🔮 Tech, Recovery & The Future of Wellness
Pro athletes, robotics, and women’s health: performance tech is expanding in every direction, weaving its way into culture, care, and daily living.
Stephen Curry Joins Google as "Performance Advisor"
Google has tapped NBA icon Stephen Curry to become its Performance Advisor, a role that extends across Pixel hardware, Google Health, and AI services like Fitbit’s new AI-powered health coach. Sporting tools such as Pixel devices, earbuds, and watches, Curry will collaborate with Google product and research teams to fine-tune athlete feedback features, form insights, and training technologies. Curry’s involvement highlights how elite-level insight is being built directly into consumer tools, collapsing the gap between pro performance and everyday health.
From the Ring to Recovery: Logan Paul Steps into AI-Driven Massage with Aescape
Aescape, the AI-powered robotics brand redefining the massage experience, has tapped a notable new partner, Logan Paul, the YouTube megastar turned athlete and entrepreneur. His entrance comes on the heels of Aescape’s $30 million Series A and its expansion into high-profile locations like Equinox, Life Time, Marriott, and Hyatt. Paul’s association does more than raise buzz, it signals the mainstreaming of smart recovery tools, and how cultural icons can help shift them from niche wellness curios to shareable lifestyle statements. With Paul now in the fold, Aescape is entwining its precision recovery tech with both relevance and reach.
Clara: The Women’s Health AI That Speaks Up
Rescripted has introduced Clara, the first large-language model trained exclusively on medically reviewed women’s health content, and it’s free to use for everyone. At launch, Clara is backed by partners spanning mental wellness, menopause care, nutrition, fertility financing, hormone testing, and endometriosis diagnostics, including Brightside Health, Midi Health, Needed, Gaia, Teal Health, Proov, and MyReceptiva.
What sets Clara apart is its dual focus: tackling misinformation and censorship in women’s health while providing accessible, evidence-based guidance. By blending clinical expertise with approachable storytelling, it reframes women’s health not as a fragmented category but as a central pillar of wellbeing. In the broader performance conversation, Clara points to how AI can become trusted infrastructure, offering clarity, context, and access in spaces where reliable information has long been difficult to find.
🧬 The Edge of Possibility
Some innovations stretch beyond familiar boundaries, raising new questions about where human performance begins and ends.
By Design: The Next Frontier in Human Performance?
A new wave of health innovation is starting earlier than ever, at the very beginning of life. Startups are exploring how technologies like IVF, embryo screening, and genetic scoring could one day help parents reduce health risks before a child is even born. It’s a bold and controversial idea: applying the same mindset we use for recovery, fitness, and longevity to the earliest stages of human development. While the science is still early and the ethics are debated, it raises a powerful question.. if performance and wellbeing can be “designed in” from day one, how will that reshape the way we think about health across a lifetime?
Looking Ahead
What these stories make clear is that human performance is hitting an inflection point. No longer defined by singular products or trends, it’s accelerating into a network of systems, from defense and healthcare to retail and sport, that collectively shape how we recover, compete, and live.
The next phase won’t be about invention alone, but about scale and stakes: which innovations break through, who earns trust, and how performance reshapes culture when it moves from boutique to mass adoption. The future isn’t abstract, it’s arriving in real time, carried by the choices brands and consumers are making right now.
