Engagement Strengthens, Reducing Churn Rate

Equally important, the quality of that engagement is strengthening. The industry-wide churn rate fell to 7.1%—its lowest level in a decade, down from 10.2% in 2024—while average membership tenure rose to five years, also a decade high. Fewer members are leaving the industry entirely, and those who stay are staying longer.

Perhaps the most striking indicator of this shift is the dramatic decline in member non-utilization. The share of members who held a membership but never visited a facility during the year fell to just 4.6% in 2025—roughly half the pre-pandemic norm of around 10%. That figure speaks to a fundamental change in how Americans relate to their gym membership. While average visit frequency has not yet fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, sitting at 81 days per year compared to 109 days in 2019, the near-disappearance of the "ghost member" reframes that gap.

The industry's principal challenge is not disengagement but rather the more nuanced—and more solvable—question of how to increase the frequency of members who are already showing up.

Shifting Habits

What members do inside facilities is shifting just as meaningfully as how many are showing up. Free weights have seen the strongest equipment usage growth of any category since 2021, with dumbbell users growing at a 6.4% compound annual rate to 26.4 million in 2025. More than half of dumbbell users—56.4%—engage on a weekly basis, the highest habitual usage rate of any major equipment type. Treadmills remain the single most widely used piece of equipment at 34.4 million past-year users, but the gap with free weights has narrowed considerably. At the same time, ellipticals have continued a multi-year decline, and traditional standalone cardio formats are softening more broadly as members increasingly gravitate toward strength-based and functional training.

On the activity side, pickleball's rise remained exceptional: The sport now counts 7.6 million fitness facility members among its players, with 64.8% of those participants playing weekly—the highest habitual engagement rate of any activity tracked. Yoga remained the most widely practiced activity at 17.7 million past-year participants, while Pilates grew 28.1% and tai chi increased 23.4% between 2021 and 2025. Coach-led services also reached new highs, with personal training participation among members climbing to 26.2% and small group training rising to 34.7%—both all-time highs in the data series.

The report is based on HFA’s long-running national tracking study, which surveys approximately 18,000 US residents aged six and older each year. The research is conducted in partnership with Sports Marketing Surveys USA (SMS), a Buffalo Groupe company, as part of the Physical Activity Council (PAC)—a coalition of leading governing bodies and trade associations across the US sports, recreation, and leisure industries.

The 2026 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report: Headline Trends is available here at no cost to HFA members and for purchase by non-member operators and suppliers. A follow-up report with deeper analysis of pricing, retention, attendance patterns, and emerging participation segments is planned for release later in 2026.