By Erin Phelan
Fitness Industry Council of Canada
Here’s a paradox worth considering.
The fitness industry is performing better than it has in years. According to the latest Health & Fitness Association data, industry churn has fallen to 7.1 per cent, its lowest level in nearly a decade, while net membership growth has climbed to 4.6 per cent. Consumers are increasingly treating fitness as a protected spending category, even as economic uncertainty continues to influence household budgets.
By almost every business measure, those are encouraging signs.
Yet Canada remains stubbornly inactive.
In spite of considerable awareness campaigns and growing recognition of the importance of exercise, Canada still has a participation problem. Less than 20 percent of Canadians hold a gym membership, despite research proving that members have lower rates of chronic disease and better mental health. In fact, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Preventive Medicine found that health club members were more than 14 times more likely to meet both aerobic and strength-training guidelines than non-members.
Last weekend’s National Health and Fitness Day served as an important reminder of our industry’s mission to help Canadians become more active.
But if the fitness industry is winning, why isn’t Canada?
Part of the answer may lie in how we define success. For decades, the industry’s growth model has focused primarily on acquisition. We celebrate new memberships, new leads, and record sales months. Those achievements matter. However, if Canada’s inactivity crisis is to improve meaningfully, the more important question may not be how many people start exercising. It may be how many continue.
Recent research highlighted by the University of Queensland points to a troubling reality. Physical activity participation often declines over time, particularly during major life transitions and as people age. The issue is not that people suddenly stop believing in exercise. Rather, they lose routines, face competing priorities, experience setbacks, or simply drift away from behaviours they once intended to maintain.
This distinction matters.
Members who develop meaningful social connections within a club are significantly more likely to remain engaged than those who remain anonymous.
If inactivity were simply an awareness problem, the solution would be education. If it is an adherence problem, the solution becomes far more complex. It requires environments, relationships, accountability, and experiences that help people stay engaged long after the initial motivation fades.
Retention expert Paul Bedford has spent decades studying why members stay and why they leave. One of the most important lessons from his work is that retention is rarely driven by equipment, facilities, or amenities alone. Members who develop meaningful social connections within a club are significantly more likely to remain engaged than those who remain anonymous.
The implication for operators is profound.
People do not leave communities as easily as they leave memberships.
The facilities with the strongest retention rates are often those that create a sense of belonging. Members know the coaches. Coaches know the members. Friendships develop. Accountability increases. Fitness becomes part of a person’s identity rather than simply another monthly expense.
This may also explain why the industry’s improving retention numbers have not yet translated into meaningful population-level change. Retaining members is important. Retaining healthy behaviours is even more important.
Is It Time for a Mid-Year Retention Audit?
As operators enter the second half of 2026, this presents an opportunity to conduct a different kind of performance review. Rather than focusing solely on sales targets and membership growth, it may be worth asking a few harder questions.
Who signed up but doesn’t show up? Who is quietly drifting away?
The warning signs often appear weeks or months before a member submits a cancellation request. Reviewing attendance patterns from the last 30, 60, and 90 days can often reveal members who are at risk before they make the decision to leave.
Which members have no meaningful connection to the facility?
Can they name a coach? Do they regularly participate in a class? Do they know other members?
If the answer is no, their risk of disengagement may be higher than operators realize.
The distinction is not between active members and inactive members. It is between connected members and disconnected members. Members who build relationships with coaches, staff, and fellow members have more reasons to return when motivation fades. Those relationships create accountability, support, and a sense of belonging that no facility feature or promotional offer can replicate.
It doesn’t have to be the member in the front row of every class. It could be the newcomer who set a goal of visiting three times a week, knows the front-desk staff by name, and is beginning to build exercise into their routine.
A harder question operators might ask is this: would your staff notice if that member disappeared?
Retention tells us whether a member continues to pay. Impact tells us whether they continue to participate, build healthy habits, and remain engaged in a lifestyle that improves their long-term health and well-being.
If Canada’s physical inactivity crisis is going to improve, that distinction matters.
The industry has become sophisticated at tracking revenue, visits, and cancellations. Yet the metric that may matter most is harder to quantify: how many people are staying active long enough to improve their health, confidence, independence, and quality of life?
National Health and Fitness Day serves as a rallying cry for a more active Canada. But awareness alone will not solve our inactivity crisis. The fitness industry’s greatest contribution is not introducing Canadians to exercise. It is helping them stay active long enough to reap the benefits.
The good news is that the industry is making progress. Churn is falling. Membership growth is improving. More Canadians are investing in their health than they were just a few years ago.
Yet millions remain inactive.
For fitness operators, those numbers are both a challenge and an opportunity. Every member who leaves a facility is potentially returning to the very behaviours that contribute to chronic disease, declining physical function, poor mental health, and rising healthcare costs.
When a member cancels, we often measure the revenue lost.
What we rarely measure is the health opportunity lost.
That is where retention becomes more than a business metric.
It becomes one of the most important contributions our industry can make to the health of Canadians.
Fitness Industry Council of Canada (FIC) is the not-for profit trade association that represents the voice of fitness facility operators across Canada. Representing more than 6,000 facilities with more than six-million members nationwide, FIC pursues a legislative agenda in the hope of bettering the fitness industry for both consumers and operators. FIC aims to work with both industry and government to improve the health and physical activity levels of Canadians.
