Americans are shrugging off home exercise and racing to the gym as the U.S. moves on from the pandemic, with a heavy focus on back-to-basics strength training.
Older adults are joining the fitness frenzy, too, forcing gyms to reshape their programming and helping Pickleball blossom from a pandemic obsession to the nation’s fast-growing sport.
COVID-19 cases and deaths are dwindling, and President Biden declared an end to the virus emergency in May.
Alongside that shift, there’s been a “post-pandemic boom” in the fitness industry, said Walt Thompson, former president of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and lead author of its 2023 fitness trends survey.
“People are flocking to gyms,” he said. “Gyms are full every single day, memberships are up.”
Shutdown policies forced gyms to close their doors during the height of the virus crisis in 2020 and 2021, so there is pent-up demand now that society is back to normal.
“The second reason is that gym owners are smart,” Mr. Thompson said. “They have significantly discounted memberships to get members back in, to try to make a profit again.”
The fitness industry started to rebound in 2022 and continues to surge into 2023, according to Placer.ai, a company that tracks consumer foot traffic.
Visits to gyms and health clubs were up 30.3% compared in January compared to the same time in January 2022. That is not a huge surprise, given lingering problems from the omicron variant at the start of last year.
But the trend continued into May, with gym foot traffic up 7.8% in 2023 compared to May 2022, “indicating that fitness is continuing to build on last year’s strong traffic,” the tracking company said.
Planet Fitness, a major gym chain, said its revenue grew by 19% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the prior year.
The company is “seeing that our members are more committed to fitness than they were pre-pandemic with higher overall visits per member as all age groups are visiting more frequently than 2019,” CEO Chris Rondeau told investors. “This is a good sign since non-use is the No. 1 reason why members cancel, so more usage should continue to bode well for our cancel rate.”
But the post-pandemic boom is not being enjoyed across the fitness industry.
Gyms that flung open their doors are doing well, Mr. Thompson said, while those that stuck with virtual, “FaceTime”-like programs fell short.
“The home exercise market has declined rapidly,” he said. “Everybody thought that that was going to continue into 2023. They failed with that.”
Others say the jury is still out on the online trend. It tends to cost less than a gym membership, and it opened new avenues for people to exercise on the road for work or vacation.
“This allows a cheaper cost and greater access. I do not think the training was quite as good, as we are still learning how this might work,” said Gregory Biren, an associate professor of exercise science at Rowan University in New Jersey.
Peloton, the home-workout company that offers instructors-led virtual sessions, soared during the pandemic because people were trapped at home. Its stock price has slumped since then, due to lagging demand for its bikes, prompting the company to relaunch its brand and revamp its app with a tiered membership structure.
“Historically, we have experienced a seasonal decline in subscriber growth in [the fourth quarter],” Peloton CEO and President Barry McCarthy told shareholders in May. “We’re expecting a decline this year as well. Notwithstanding the relaunch, Q4 will be among our most challenging from a growth perspective.”
ACSM said online training was the No. 26 trend in its 2020 fitness-trends survey but surged to No. 1 in 2021 after the pandemic took hold. Online training dropped to the No. 9 position in 2022 and fell to No. 21 this year.
Peloton says it shouldn’t be counted out. A company media representative pointed to signs that people are engaging in a combination of at-gym and at-home workouts and that subscriptions in exercise-streaming services remain robust.
While demand for Peloton bikes crashed as the pandemic receded, its overall “connected fitness” subscriptions increased by 5% compared to the prior year, according to the May investors’ call.
The company also grappled with a 2021 recall of its treadmills and a recall this year of 2 million bikes.
Among other trends, there is interest in “wearables” that track fitness metrics, as the devices proliferate and become more accurate. Strength training with free weights and bodyweight training is also becoming more popular, in part because it is easy to do and shows quick results.
“I do not think that COVID necessarily increased strength training, but I believe that more information is out there about the benefits,” Mr. Biren said.
Yet Pickleball, a sport in which two or four players hit a hollow plastic ball using solid paddles, is a hard-to-miss success story from the pandemic.
The sport was growing before the coronavirus hit, but it “really took off” during COVID-19, when people were told to avoid indoor groups and engage in social distancing, said Melissa Zhang, a spokeswoman for USA Pickleball, the national governing body for the sport.
“People began playing pickleball because it was a great way to still get outside and stay active while remaining at least 6 feet apart from one another,” she said. “We haven’t seen it taper since, and it’s continued to grow significantly over the last few years.”
The Sports and Fitness Industry Association says pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for the last three consecutive years and reached about 9 million players.
Part of the appeal is that it is not as strenuous as racket sports like tennis, so grandparents can participate alongside younger generations.
Mr. Thompson said a surge in Baby Boomer exercise is also showing up in the gym scene. Some clubs are catering to the older crowd by offering a more serene atmosphere during midday hours.
“The really smart clubs are turning their clubs around at 9 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “They’re turning down the music and putting on Bach and Beethoven rather than Dre and Drake.”
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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