Wellness: We know what to do, but what helps us keep doing it?

For the last two consecutive years Strava’s Year in Sport data highlighted that: 

Why?  

While the activity remains the same, the social context has changed. People may be encouraged to push themselves further because working out together can bring accountability, encouragement, belonging and a reason to show up that’s stronger than individual willpower. 

Many people already understand what they “should” do to live healthily: move more, eat a balanced diet, get sufficient sleep, manage stress levels and do health screenings. So, the problem isn’t usually a lack of knowledge.  

Traditionally, wellness programmes have tried to close the gap between knowing and taking action by offering reminders and incentives. 

Personalisation has evolved from a nice-to-have feature to an expectation. Consumers increasingly seek experiences tailored to their goals, preferences, and lifestyles. However, recent research shows that personalisation is most effective when paired with opportunities for connection, support, and shared experiences. People want to feel recognised as individuals while still belonging to a community.

The 2025 Year in Sport report from Strava found that while users increasingly adopt personalised tools and coaching, they also place growing value on clubs, group activities, and fitness communities, demonstrating that individualisation and connection are equally important parts of modern engagement.

Success lies in balancing personalisation with belonging. Organisations that help people feel seen as individuals while also creating opportunities for meaningful connection will be best positioned to build lasting engagement and loyalty.

But maybe we’re trying to solve the wrong problem  

While one person may not know where to start when it comes to making healthier choices, another may know exactly what to do but have two children, a demanding job and too little sleep. Giving them both the same standardised support makes little sense. 

Do we need to rethink how wellness programmes are designed? 

Instead of asking, “How do we convince people to be healthier?”,  should we be asking, “How do we make it easier for people to make healthy choices, and easier for them to keep making them?” 

This is an important shift because it recognises that real life is often unpredictable and untidy. Even our best-laid plans regularly unravel, so making healthy options easier to choose may mean that people are less likely to make unhealthy ones. 

We may also have developed an unrealistic idea of consistency in our goal to make healthy choices. Does the following scenario sound familiar? We start afresh on Monday, committing to five workouts a week, cutting out sugar and promising ourselves we’ll get eight hours of sleep a night. Then life happens and we miss the run and order the takeaway, and suddenly it feels as though our whole health plan has failed. 

But consistency doesn’t mean never slipping up. It means returning and trying again … and again. So perhaps the more useful question for wellness programme designers to ask is … 

What makes people come back? 

We’ve traditionally designed wellness programmes around the individual: tracking your steps, rating your sleep, earning points for healthy grocery purchases and being rewarded for reaching your goals. But the Strava data points to something we already know intuitively: healthy behaviour often enjoys company.  

Recent fitness trends like CrossFit, Park Runs and HYROX have turned individual training into something people work towards, talk about and experience together. Human connection provides something that information, incentives and personal motivation often don’t: a sense of belonging, accountability and a reason to keep trying. Sometimes we return not because of a goal or reward, but because of the people. 

Research beyond exercise backs this up. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has found that the quality of our close relationships is associated with our health and happiness over time. Similarly, the World Health Organization (WHO) has highlighted loneliness as a serious public-health concern, associated with poorer mental and physical health and increased risk of premature mortality. 

Wearable technologies, risk-flagging data and AI’s individualised coaching can tell us what to do and highlight what we need to change, but it’s our relationships with people that help us to keep going. 

This is why connection shouldn’t be treated as just a nice-to-have addition when we’re designing wellness programmes. Alongside asking what benefits, rewards, technology and information to provide, we should also ask … 

How does this programme help people connect with and support one another? 

How do we make healthy behaviour easier, with the support and company of others?
How do we create accountability without creating shame?
Can technology help people find, encourage and support one another rather than simply helping them manage their health alone?  

And perhaps the same question applies beyond formal wellness programmes 

So, the next time you set yourself a health goal, don’t only ask what you’re going to do. Ask who you’re going to do it with. One of our most powerful wellness interventions may be surprisingly old-fashioned … each other.