Press release · For immediate release
Weight-loss drugs take muscle with the fat. This Welsh gym just became the first in Britain to watch it live.
At a glance
- HYVE, the Llanelli-headquartered gym group with sites in Burry Port and Cardiff, becomes the first gym in Britain to give its members a real-time muscle-protection score
- Rolling out to all HYVE members as part of standard membership, at no extra cost: members log meals by speaking to the app, see a live 1 to 100 muscle-safety score, and get workouts prescribed automatically to raise it
- An estimated 1.6 million adults in England, Wales and Scotland used weight-loss drugs in the year to early 2025, and 3.3 million more said they would consider them [4]
- Peer-reviewed estimates: 15 to 40% of weight lost on GLP-1 medication is lean mass, roughly a quarter in meta-analyses [1-3]. Lean mass includes muscle, the very thing people join a gym to build
- Privacy by design: the gym sees anonymous, aggregate trends only. A coach sees a member's data only when that member explicitly opts in, revocable in one tap
HYVE, the Llanelli-headquartered gym group with sites in Burry Port and Cardiff, more than 2,000 members and a place among Wales' largest independent gyms, has become the first gym in Britain to give its members a real-time muscle-protection score, through a founding partnership with ParrotPal, the London and Cambridge-based health technology company founded by Welshman Scott Flear.
The timing is not accidental. Weight-loss injections have reached the gym floor: an estimated 1.6 million adults in Great Britain used drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro in the year to early 2025, with millions more interested, according to UCL research published in BMC Medicine [4]. The question those members bring through the door is no longer just how much weight they are losing, but what the lost weight is made of. Peer-reviewed estimates suggest between 15 and 40% of the weight lost on GLP-1 medication is lean mass rather than fat, roughly a quarter in meta-analyses [1-3].
"Gyms are where this problem gets solved," said Scott Flear, founder and CEO of ParrotPal. "Weight-loss injections are doing the appetite work. Nobody is doing the muscle work. Protein and strength training are the answer, and that is a gym's home turf. HYVE saw that faster than anyone."
For Flear the launch is a homecoming: the founder is Welsh, and the first LeanShield gym in Britain opens its rollout in Llanelli before anywhere else.
What HYVE members get
Access is rolling out to all HYVE members as part of their standard membership, at no extra cost. Members use ParrotPal's consumer apps, winners of Innovate UK's AI for Healthcare Resilience award: they log food by speaking to the app, see their own LeanShield score, a 1 to 100 measure of how well their weight loss is protecting muscle, and receive workouts prescribed automatically to raise that score. Weekly check-ins and community support run both online and on the gym floor, where HYVE's coaches add what software cannot: form, technique and encouragement.
"Lots of my members are asking about GLP-1s, or are already on them, but have no wraparound support. I'm happy to partner with ParrotPal and LeanShield to make sure they've got that daily care, and something we can monitor as a gym. Our goal is healthy outcomes, not just membership numbers."
Ioan Jones, CEO, HYVE
Care, not surveillance
Member data stays private by default. HYVE sees anonymous, gym-wide trends only. A coach sees an individual member's data only when that member explicitly opts in to coaching, and sharing can be revoked in one tap. ParrotPal publishes its privacy approach at parrotpal.com/trust.
HYVE is also first in line to become a LeanShield Certified Gym, the standard for muscle-safe coaching done properly.
The science behind the score
LeanShield is patent pending and was developed with the guidance of Professor Nick Wareham, Director of the Cambridge Institute of Metabolic Science. A randomised controlled trial, measured by DXA body scanning, is in design with the University of Cambridge to test the score against gold-standard body-composition measurement. The company is explicit that the trial could go against it: in its words, if you are going to call something a safety score, you fund the science that checks it.
ParrotPal's apps serve more than one million users across its brands. The average new member joins LeanShield with a score of 49, a level the company's data associates with the zone where 30 to 40% of weight loss comes from lean mass. Members enrolled in LeanShield improve their scores by an average of 50% within the first 30 days, according to company data.
References
- Wilding JPH, et al. Once-weekly semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity (STEP 1). New England Journal of Medicine 2021;384:989-1002. In the trial's DXA body-composition substudy, lean mass accounted for approximately 39% of total weight lost.
- Prado CM, Phillips SM, Gonzalez MC, Heymsfield SB. Muscle matters: the effects of medically induced weight loss on skeletal muscle. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 2024;12:785-787. Lean mass reported at 25 to 39% of weight lost with GLP-1-based therapy.
- Karakasis P, et al. Effect of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and co-agonists on body composition: systematic review and network meta-analysis. Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental 2025;164:156113. 22 randomised trials, 2,258 participants; lean mass accounted for approximately 25% of total weight lost.
- University College London. Study of weight-loss drug use in Great Britain, published in BMC Medicine; reported by UCL News, January 2026: an estimated 1.6 million adults in England, Wales and Scotland used weight-loss drugs between early 2024 and early 2025; a further 3.3 million expressed interest in using them in the next year.
Notes to editors
- On the "first in Britain" claim: this refers to a live, behaviour-based muscle-protection score delivered continuously through a consumer app to every member of a gym, as distinct from periodic body-composition scanning available in some clubs. The companies are not aware of any other British gym offering an equivalent. We welcome corrections.
- About HYVE: HYVE is an independent gym group headquartered at Sandy Road, Llanelli SA16 0EZ, with a second site at 8-9 Colchester Avenue Industrial Estate, Cardiff CF23 9AP, and operations in Burry Port. With more than 2,000 members, it is one of the largest independent gyms in Wales. Led by chief executive Ioan Jones, HYVE is the founding LeanShield gym.
- Company data caveat: the score figures (average starting score of 49; average 50% improvement in 30 days) are ParrotPal's own member data across all members enrolled in LeanShield, not clinical trial results. The Cambridge randomised controlled trial is in design and has not reported.
- The Welsh angle: HYVE is headquartered in Llanelli and also operates in Burry Port and Cardiff. ParrotPal's founder Scott Flear is Welsh; the company is based in London and Cambridge, with its registered office in Carmarthenshire. Cambridge-collaborated health technology arrives on a Welsh gym floor first.
- Interviews: Scott Flear (founder and CEO, ParrotPal) and Ioan Jones (CEO, HYVE) are available. Contact: partnerships@parrotpal.com.
- Assets: HYVE gym-floor and team photography, both founders/CEOs, logos and product imagery available on request. A Welsh-language version of this release is available on request.
About ParrotPal Group
ParrotPal Group builds the first platform designed around a real-time muscle-protection score. Its products include the ParrotPal app (700,000+ users, 4.7 stars on the App Store), the women's health brand Turtle Method, and LeanShield, the muscle-safety intelligence layer licensed to clinics, gyms and partners. Founded by Welshman Scott Flear, the company is based in London and Cambridge and is currently hiring its founding team. parrotpal.com