The future of fitness in the UK is not shaping up as a lonely procession of app-guided burpees in the spare bedroom. According to Total Fitness and its 2026 report, The Great Reset?, people have returned to health clubs since the sector reopened in April 2021 — but they are arriving with broader ambitions than a smaller waistline and a heroic relationship with the rowing machine.
Five years ago, the outlook was foggy. Britain had spent months walking, streaming workouts, improvising with tins of beans and discovering that a yoga mat can double as an expensive place to lie down.
Would people return to enclosed exercise spaces? Would digital fitness permanently replace the club? Would the national health crisis trigger an indiscriminate rush for memberships?
The answer emerging from Total Fitness’s latest research is less tidy and rather more interesting. People came back, but the club they wanted had changed.
The gym survived, but its brief expanded
The report compares 750 new Total Fitness members surveyed shortly after the fitness sector reopened in 2021 with 770 new members surveyed in 2026.
It is not a census of the entire British population. It is a comparison of people joining Total Fitness at two distinct moments, which makes it particularly useful for understanding motivation at the point when somebody decides to pay for a health-club membership.
More than three-quarters of the 2026 members surveyed, 77%, said fitness was more important to them than it had been five years earlier.
The more substantial shift, however, concerned health beyond exercise. Some 87% said they now thought more about their long-term health, while 76% placed greater emphasis on mental wellbeing.
The old gym proposition was relatively straightforward: equipment, exertion and perhaps a changing room with a hairdryer that sounded like a light aircraft. The newer proposition is more expansive. Members are looking for environments that support routine, confidence, recovery and everyday resilience.
Sophie Lawler, CEO of Total Fitness, said: “Coming out of Covid, there were two very easy stories. One was that gyms were finished because people had replaced them with walking, home workouts and digital fitness. The other was that a national health scare would create a simple membership boom. Neither captured the full picture.
“What we are seeing now is that people did come back to health clubs, but not simply because of Covid and not in exactly the same way. Fitness is now more closely tied to long-term health, mental wellbeing, confidence, routine and how people want to live.
“For many members, exercise is no longer just about a short-term goal. It is about feeling better, managing stress, building confidence and creating a routine that supports everyday life.
That changes the role of the health club. People still want great facilities, but they also want space, support, atmosphere and experiences that help them look after themselves in a more rounded way.”
Fitness has become a mixed programme
Modern exercise habits appear less tribal than they once were. The choice is no longer necessarily between being a gym person, a runner, a swimmer or somebody who owns several resistance bands but cannot remember where they are.
Six in ten new members, 61%, said they now combined different types of fitness activity more frequently than they had five years earlier. Another 59% were trying new fitness experiences more often, while 45% were exercising outdoors more frequently.
That suggests the physical club is increasingly one component of a wider routine rather than an exclusive fitness headquarters. A member might lift weights, swim, walk outdoors and attend a class without feeling obliged to declare lifelong allegiance to any of them.
This more varied approach is central to the future of fitness. The successful health club is not necessarily competing with outdoor exercise. It may instead provide the facilities, structure and support that help people keep several forms of activity in their lives.
Digital fitness remains a supporting act
The lockdown period gave fitness apps, online classes and home equipment an audience they might otherwise have taken years to assemble. Yet Total Fitness’s findings challenge the assumption that convenience would permanently overpower communal exercise.
Only 10% of the new members surveyed said they regularly used fitness apps. Home workouts or home fitness equipment were used by 21%, while just 2% participated in online fitness classes.
Those figures do not make digital fitness irrelevant. Apps can track progress, offer instruction and remove some of the practical friction around exercise. But they also underline the limits of a screen.
An app cannot provide a swimming pool. It cannot make a sauna appear beside the kitchen. It cannot offer genuine human encouragement, nor can it create the subtle social pressure of being surrounded by people who have also made the effort to turn up.
Digital tools may support the routine. The club still supplies the place.
The swimming pool is doing the recruiting
The report’s most striking finding concerns the facilities influencing a person’s decision to join.
The swimming pool was cited by 68% of new members, making it considerably more influential than the gym itself, which was chosen by 48%.
Sauna or steam facilities influenced 51% of respondents, while hydrotherapy facilities mattered to 47%. A friendly atmosphere was cited by 32%, and 31% valued having enough space to exercise comfortably.
This is a revealing order of priorities. The conventional gym floor remains important, but it is no longer sufficient to define the entire club experience.
Swimming offers cardiovascular exercise, resistance and a lower-impact alternative to many land-based activities. Recovery facilities add another dimension, particularly for members who see exercise as part of managing stress, mobility and long-term wellbeing.
Space and atmosphere sound less glamorous on a facilities brochure, but both can determine whether somebody actually enjoys attending. A technically impressive gym can quickly lose its charm when every bench is occupied and the free-weights area resembles an overcrowded railway platform.
A more experienced and selective member
The profile of new members has also shifted.
First-time gym members accounted for 11% of new joiners in 2026, down from 22% in 2021. Meanwhile, the proportion switching directly from another health club increased from 44% to 57%.
This points towards a more experienced and potentially more demanding customer. A person moving from one club to another already understands the basic proposition. They are not merely deciding whether to exercise; they are judging where they will receive the right mixture of facilities, atmosphere, convenience, recovery and support.
Price and equipment may remain part of that calculation, but the decision increasingly resembles a choice about quality of life. Members are evaluating whether the environment fits the routine they are trying to build.
For operators, that raises the standard. A bank of treadmills and a motivational slogan in vinyl lettering will not automatically create loyalty.
Human connection remains difficult to automate
David Stalker, Chair of ukactive, said: “This report reflects a shift that has been building for many years. People are increasingly thinking about fitness not only in terms of workouts, weight loss or appearance, but as part of how they stay healthy, age well, manage stress and improve quality of life.
“That is an important shift. Technology and apps can support fitness and make operators more efficient, but they cannot replace the encouragement, empathy and human connection people get from being part of a club or community.
“The opportunity now is for health clubs to play a bigger role in people’s everyday wellbeing, not just their exercise routines. If the sector is serious about supporting public health, those human strengths need to remain central.”
The human element is difficult to measure neatly, which is probably why the fitness industry has often preferred counting memberships, visits and repetitions.
Yet atmosphere influences behaviour. So does being recognised by a member of staff, exercising around other people or simply having somewhere to go at a predictable point in the week.
For some members, a health club supplies equipment. For others, it provides structure — and structure is often the uncelebrated machinery behind consistency.
The new challenge is relevance, not survival
The report does not describe the death of the gym or the triumph of the app. It depicts a more nuanced market in which people borrow from several forms of fitness and expect their health club to contribute more than machinery.
Sophie Lawler added: “The question is no longer simply whether people will come back to health clubs. They have. The more important question is what they are coming back for.
“Today’s members are looking for more than access to equipment. They want environments that support their health, wellbeing, confidence and routine. For health clubs, the priority now is to listen and provide the variety, space and support that help people feel confident, enjoy being active and make fitness part of everyday life.”
That leaves the sector with a demanding but valuable opportunity. Clubs can position themselves not merely as places where exercise happens, but as practical parts of people’s wider health routines.
The winners are likely to be those that understand the difference. The gym did not die during lockdown. It simply returned to find that having equipment was no longer enough of a personality.
The Great Reset? What really changed in fitness, wellbeing and health club membership, five years on is available from Total Fitness.
