A swarm of yellow 18-square-meter containers named Micro-gym has spread in various parts of the city of SIngapore: each one hosts a  small gym, with air conditioning, treadmill, weights, and other equipment to train alone, avoiding the warm-humid climate of the area.

The project was born in 2018 but found its success during the Covid pandemic, allowing people to train without risking being infected during group sessions. Today 50 containers are available, which can be booked by users through the app The Gym Pod. The general appreciation has beebn so high that another startup – My Gym Lab – has recently entered the market, with another 10 containers.

A one-hour session – without a personal trainer – costs between $9 and $11.30, providing the additional advantage of eliminating all waiting time, usual in normal gyms, for using the machines. Singapore already boasted record levels of physical activity for its inhabitants, but it seems that micro-gyms have led to a further improvement of 20% of this habit, so much so that in 2022 people who trained at least once a week had reached 74% of the population.
At the moment the project is aiming to land in the United States, with two containers now installed in Chicago, and others expected to arrive in California, Florida, and New York.