Read for Free: 2025 State of the UK Fitness Industry Report

OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE

As a GP myself, I see medicine over-medicalising everything and being risk-averse. I see the fitness sector being alienated by medical processes, frameworks and terminology. It doesn’t have to be that way. One of the biggest things we do is take all of our knowledge and experience of healthcare and simplify it to implement into our Fitness & Wellbeing Centres. We then have the evidence base to take back to consultants, surgeons and GPs, showing that what we do is safe, effective and delivers a good patient experience. As a sector, we do need to think about the design of our services from a patient pathways perspective. We need to look at our inclusion and exclusion criteria; at what could go wrong and what safeguards we need to put in place; at the minimum standards we must ensure; at what outcomes we will share. We also need to get much better at data. How good would it be if we had some sort of standardised coding and easy-to-implement, standardised audit frameworks on effectiveness? Nevertheless, if we can share outcomes and show we have patients’ symptoms at the heart of our goal-setting, healthcare will bite our hands off.

We’re confident we’ll show our sector can be used very effectively as a national-level secondary care NHS cancer pathway

We also see that increased activity levels are maintained at month 24, which throws out of the window the myth that exercise referrals don’t lead to lasting change; we’re now working with Manchester Metropolitan University to independently verify the findings. This will hopefully give us something that can be used across the sector, showing that proper behaviour change, coaching and goal-setting does work in populations with long-term conditions. Also from our Joint Pain Programme, we have clinically validated evidence of movement as effective medication in the treatment of anxiety and depression – and specifically, movement in a group setting that normalises being in a gym for these individuals. We see some people get to the stage that they no longer need medication. Another exciting initiative: we’ve just completed a fascinating five-year research trial for men living with prostate cancer, in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. NICE guidelines say all men should have access nationally to an approved exercise referral pathway for prostate cancer, but none exists. We’ll publish official results in mid-2025, but we’re confident they will show the fitness sector is safe and able to be used very effectively as a national-level secondary care NHS cancer pathway – one that enjoys a high level of acceptance from patients.

The fitness sector has sometimes felt it has to do it all, but it doesn’t. We can focus on being professional movement specialists.

Do we need to upskill as a sector? The fitness sector has sometimes felt it has to do it all, but it doesn’t. We aren’t there to talk about medication, illness or the suitability of a treatment pathway. We’re there to focus on movement and coaching to help people be the best version of themselves. A siloed, multidisciplinary approach therefore works well, enabling our teams to focus on being professional movement specialists. There is a gaping hole here and we have the teams and the expertise to fill it. We don’t have to upskill everyone to Level 3 or Level 4. Better to recognise that different people have different interests, motivations and skillsets and that the best thing we can do is create varied career pathways. In line with this, I’d like to see more opportunities for fitness professionals to come together, share and learn. This isn’t a highly-paid sector and many educational events come at significant cost. I think we’d move ourselves on

quite a bit as a sector if we empowered our workforce to be professional in a really accessible way. What we do need to do as a sector is establish clear, visible baseline standards that we are all committed to meeting. What is the lowest minimum standard we will accept in our gyms? What can we assure potential partners of in terms of experience, safety and ongoing competency? There’s an important role here for an impartial body to drive the agenda of standardisation and collaboration. There will be gains for everyone here, so we need to put unnecessary competitiveness aside and get much better at sharing best practice. We are currently where primary care was 15–20 years ago. They’re all providers working individually, but they all join up at a system level to meet the needs of their patients. We can do similar. I really think this could be the new model – a new maintenance model that sits alongside primary and secondary healthcare.

Can we replicate this success across the sector?

I think for the first time ever, our sector really does have an opportunity to bring health into fitness. We’re hearing so much more around exercise and movement at a policy level. We’re seeing more emphasis on place-based interventions, with leisure facilities coming into that. The Royal Colleges are lined up and ready to support the sector. And the fitness sector itself seems ready to grab hold of something new.

STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2025

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