Cali to set life-changing world record
Xem Tiếng Việt 
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; 27 April 2021: California Fitness & Yoga, part of FLG Vietnam, today announced its forthcoming World Record Attempt to change 20,000 lives here in Vietnam.
The attempt, sanctioned by the Guinness World Records organization, will involve having people all over Vietnam who have undergone a transformation to submit a before and after photo of themselves and support those who are currently on their journey with access to their Transformation Challenge over the course of the coming two months. A World Record will be set if at least 20,000 people participate in the program.
“To participate in the World Record Attempt, one does not need to be a California member,” explained Mr. Dane Fort, Chief Executive Officer of FLG Group, the group which owns California Fitness. “The program is open to everyone in the country.”
The application process is relatively simple: all applications run through this form (https://link.cali.vn/ctc-pr). If you have already undergone a physical transformation, you simply need to provide a before and after photo. If you’re still on your journey of transformation, you will need to provide a current photo of your physical shape and a photo of your best shape ever.
All applicants will receive a certificate of participation and an invitation to join the California Transformation Challenge program which runs until the end of June. This program, usually paid, is being offered free of charge nationwide in a simplified format which includes access to the gym for two months plus 16 group PT sessions given for free and focused on helping World Record Applicants change accelerate their results.
The World Record is part of the group’s ambitious goal – announced in 2020 – to impact the health and wellness of 100 million Vietnamese people by 2025, and 43 million by the end of this year.
“We have made it a mission at FLG to transition from a system locking people out of fitness to unlocking access to as many people as possible,” said the group’s Chief Executive Officer Mr. Dane Fort. “This is part of our wider vision to be a part of Vietnam’s healthcare ecosystem,” he explained.
“Healthcare has two components to it: preventative, or what you do before getting sick; and responsive, what you do after you get sick. While Vietnam has done great work at the responsive level with creating new hospital infrastructure and providing wide access to medicine; the preventative side is still relatively under-developed,” said Fort.
“Fitness and nutrition are two key pillars of preventative health, and the Covid pandemic of the past year has served to remind us all of just how important this is. Indeed, according to a recent study, exercise is one of the key aspects of Covid recovery which has triggered major public awareness and led the industry to boom despite quarantines all around the world.
“Our company mission is to democratize preventative healthcare, making it just as widely available as responsive healthcare. We want everyone in Vietnam to have access to fitness, nutrition and, in future, mental health services – regardless of what they do, how much they earn and where they live.”
Central to this mission is the group’s LivWell app, which gamifies daily fitness habits by offering incentives for healthy behaviors and provides free streaming fitness content to everyone in Vietnam, in Vietnamese.
“Our mission is to have every smartphone owner – 43 million people in Vietnam presently, to download the app and use it regularly. Healthy habits are not hard to build, but sometimes one needs a bit of incentive to get there. And what better incentive is there than making money for simply walking?”
California has also added protection to its prevention mission, having partnered with insurance providers to provide both life and accident insurance coverage to their members, the last one for free with any new membership purchased since middle of March.
“These past 1.5 years we’ve taken steps no other fitness company world-wide has taken” said Fort. As such, all new members joining California are now automatically insured for personal accidents (inside and outside of the gym), free of charge. And one can also bundle life insurance with a membership package at a far more attractive premium than anywhere else in the market. We will be expanding the product offerings in the coming months to help address a significant price mismatch between what insurers are charging, and the perceived value to consumers – particularly those who already have healthy lifestyle habits.”
Partnerships are, otherwise, a core strategy of California Fitness. The group recently inked a partnership with tiNiWorld to launch its tiNiFit program, offering exercise classes for kids and aiming to address Vietnam’s growing child obesity problem and enlisting parents to join the World Record Attempt too. Equally, VPBank, which launched a co-branded credit card with California last year, will also be teaming up with the company to join the Record Attempt as part of the bank’s own internal drive to a healthier workforce. Further, the company will coordinate with the Standing Committee of Public Security’s Youth Union to pilot a program to train health for more than 800 combat officers in the City Police force of the Ho Chi Minh Road and Railway Traffic Police Division, then officially signed for deployment in the entire Ho Chi Minh City Police force. The group aims to have over 100 corporate partners join this program in the coming months following the enthusiastic support from partners such as Sunlife Vietnam, PVI Insurance, Hong Bang International University, and Lotte Mart.
People looking to get on board the World Record attempt can register and submit an image of themselves at https://link.cali.vn/ctc-pr
