Insights and Trends continued

Strength and Longevity Gain Ground Beyond Weight Loss

Perhaps the clearest shift is the move away from weight loss as the primary motivator for exercise. According to HFA’s 2026 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report: Headline Trends, free weights are the standout equipment category: dumbbell users grew 6.8% to 26.4 million in 2025, with 56.4% of dumbbell users training weekly—the highest habitual-use rate of any equipment type. Treadmills remain the single most-used piece of equipment (34.4 million past-year users), while ellipticals and resistance machines continue multi-year declines.

This tracks with research from other industry sources. According to Life Time’s 2026 Health and Wellness Survey, 42.3% of respondents, including both members and non-members, identified getting physically stronger as their top 2026 health goal, the most-cited objective in the survey, while 46.5% said they plan to lift more weights in the new year. Longevity ranked as a central motivator for 33.2% of respondents, and 37.8% named longevity as the wellness trend most likely to define 2026, ahead of GLP-1 medications and peptides (24.4%), and AI-guided training (14.6%).

Community Becomes a Leading Reason to Stay

If strength and longevity define what members want to achieve, community increasingly defines why they stay.

According to ABC Fitness’s Wellness Watch Q4 2025 report, community is becoming an important driver of fitness engagement and retention. Its consumer research found that 73% of respondents agreed that being part of a fitness community helps them stay motivated and consistent, while one-third reported engaging with fitness communities daily. Community resonated especially strongly with Gen Z, 47% of whom said it was the primary reason they remained committed to fitness. Separately, ABC’s platform data, covering more than 40 million members across 30,000 gyms, health clubs, and studios, showed that Gen Z accounted for nearly half of new gym joins within its network in 2025.

“In my mind it validates not just the want but the need for connection and community,” said Mike Escobedo, chief customer officer at ABC Fitness. Escobedo noted that community means different things across generations—younger members seek a “vibe” and sense of inclusion, while older members gravitate toward direct interaction with trainers and small-group settings. “What attracts a member to your club is likely not the same thing that's going to keep them there,” he said.

That dynamic is borne out in HFA's membership data as well. Multi-membership, where consumers hold memberships at more than one facility type, remained a stable behavior for more than a quarter of members in 2024, with 75.2% of studio members holding an additional membership elsewhere, according to HFA's 2025 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report: Expanded Insights. Studios also posted the largest one-year tenure gain of any facility type, rising from 3.9 to 4.5 years.

Pickleball, Padel, and Recovery Services Extend Their Momentum

Pickleball’s growth continued to outpace every other club member activity tracked by HFA, reaching 7.6 million members in 2025 and a 36.3% compound annual growth rate since 2021. Nearly 65% of pickleball participants played weekly, the highest habitual engagement rate of any activity in the survey. Padel also expanded rapidly. The 2026 Playtomic Global Padel Report found that 4,969 clubs and 7,898 courts were added worldwide in 2025, bringing the global court total to 58,334, up 16% year over year. The UK is among Europe’s fastest-growing padel markets; according to the Lawn Tennis Association, the country had 1,553 courts across 559 venues at the end of 2025.

Wellness programming also extended its post-pandemic recovery. Yoga remained the most widely practiced activity among US members at 17.7 million past-year participants, while Pilates and tai chi grew 28.1% and 23.4%, respectively, since 2021. High-intensity formats such as HIIT, cross-training, and stationary group cycling continued to soften, which HFA researchers attribute partly to the absorption of high-intensity training principles into strength-based and functional formats rather than an outright decline in interest.

Recovery services are now a staple of many commercial fitness facilities. Common offerings include red light therapy, massage chairs and beds, infrared saunas, spa amenities, and cold-therapy options such as cold plunges. Some operators are also adding mindfulness pods and hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Higher-end facilities increasingly offer longevity-oriented services, including biohacking tools and hormone-related programs, either directly or through clinical partners.

The HFA 2025 Fitness Industry Benchmarking Report, which analyzed 2024 data across 175 facility operators, found that 79% of responding facilities offered recovery amenities. Separately, among responding brands with more than US$5 million in annual revenue, 96% reported offering mind-body and recovery services.

The category continues to evolve alongside the growing integration of medical services and telehealth partnerships for GLP-1 therapy, IV treatments, peptides, and related services.

Technology Usage Grows but Trust Still Lags

Consumers are engaging with AI-powered fitness tools at a higher rate than they trust them, according to ABC Fitness's research. Only 26% of active consumers describe themselves as very familiar with AI-powered fitness tools, but 64% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennials have used an AI-powered fitness or wellness app, most commonly for workout tracking or nutrition guidance.

Trust remains a bigger hurdle: only 33% of Gen Z, 43% of Millennials, and 17% of Baby Boomers say they trust AI apps with their wellness needs. ABC Fitness's report recommends that operators position AI as “a co-pilot, not a replacement,” emphasizing personalization and churn prediction while maintaining human oversight.

Payment behavior is shifting as well. According to ABC Fitness, subscriptions are now normalized, with 92% of Americans holding at least one, while digital wallets account for 18% of preferred payment methods. Neobanks—online-only financial institutions—represented 4% of ACH payment volume within ABC’s network but 26.3% of failed or returned ACH payments; they were also used by 17% of new members. The mismatch makes payment failure a growing concern for operators as younger consumers adopt these services.

Taken together, the industry’s growth is increasingly driven by community, strength, and long-term health across price points that consumers continue to protect even when household budgets tighten.