From Hyrox to Bathhouses: Key Takeaways as Wellness Economy Hits $7.5T

GWI’s new report shows the wellness economy hit $7.5 trillion. For fitness, it’s a story of race days, reformers and premium clubs that look more like clinics. Here’s what to know

Global consumer spending on physical activity hit a record $1.23 trillion in 2025, up 7.6% from the year prior, according to the Global Wellness Institute’s new Global Wellness Economy Monitor. That makes it the second-largest sector in a wellness economy that reached $7.5 trillion.

The 160-page report covers all 11 sectors, from skincare to real estate. For fitness, the headline numbers are just the warm-up.

Here are some key takeaways:

Race Day Is Big Business

GWI singles out mass-participation competitions such as Hyrox, Spartan DEKA and Turf Games as a defining shift in physical activity. And part of their appeal is that, unlike extreme endurance events, many are designed for a range of fitness levels.

The business doesn’t end at the finish line, either. “An entire ecosystem is forming around these competitions—from specialized training programs at gyms to apparel, travel, hotels, and destination events,” GWI writes.

Hyrox has been working in that space. At this month’s Eudemonia Summit in West Palm Beach, it teamed with Orangetheory to host classes all four days inside a 2,000-square-foot gym built for the event.

The report also flags the “festivalization of wellness,” multi-day events modeled on music festivals that often draw “people who may not otherwise visit a traditional wellness retreat or destination spa.”

Social Sports

The same social pull that has led people to sign up for run clubs and the like extends well beyond racing. GWI says pickleball, golf, running, hiking, cycling and paddlesports have “surged in popularity since the pandemic,” with women’s flag football emerging too.

Running is enjoying a “particularly strong revival” as more people join social clubs and sign up for races, while pickleball and padel “continue to spread rapidly across countries and regions.”

Padel, for its part, is now heading to campus. The Pro Padel League and five club operators launched the College Padel League, which counts Yale, UCLA and Penn State among its early schools, plans to reach 40-plus universities in its first season.

The catch for operators is that many of these activities, like informal run clubs and hiking, are free. GWI notes they “can flourish outside the commercial fitness space.”

Friday Stairs is one to watch. The coach-led stair workout fills its 250 weekly Tampa spots within minutes and doesn’t charge participants, yet it’s expanding to Miami Beach, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Nashville while courting brands for category-exclusive partnerships. Co-founder Lev Ekster has also floated ticketed Hyrox-style competitions for the future.

Lift Heavy, Pedal Less

No surprise here — strength training is top of mind for fitness consumers, boosted by research tying muscle strength to longevity, particularly in women. GLP-1s add another push, since the drugs heighten the need to prevent muscle loss.

But other spaces are growing, too. Mindful movement, GWI’s category for yoga, Pilates, barre and similar practices, grew 12.3% to $55.7 billion, led by a Pilates boom that’s drawing newcomers, including more men. The Nofar Method and Pvolve are among the emerging brands to market classes to men.

Meanwhile, interest is cooling in group cycling, bootcamps and high-intensity cross-training, and GWI says yoga “appears to have matured in some markets.” The report suggests consumers are moving away from some of the “intense, repetitive, and highly structured fitness formats of the 2010s.”

Spending hasn’t slowed. Fitness, which covers gyms, studios, classes and digital workouts, grew 11.9% in 2025 to $239.6 billion.

GWI also describes a split between “hard wellness,” driven by longevity science, GLP-1s, wearables and AI, and a “soft wellness” countertrend of walking, social running, Pilates and exercise without constant tracking. It expects both to coexist.

Over the Optimization

GWI doesn’t break out fitness spending by age, but younger consumers surface throughout the report. It cites a Deloitte survey finding more than a third of Gen Z and millennials in 44 countries feel stressed or anxious most or all of the time.

They’re drinking less, and younger generations, women in particular, are pushing back on what the report, borrowing from the Global Wellness Summit, calls “hyper-optimized, high-pressure, uber-commodified wellness” in favor of “lower-tech, less lonely experiences.”

They’re also showing up at a new wave of urban bathhouses, which GWI says are “especially appealing to younger guests.”

Operators are responding. Bathhouse opened a 36,000-square-foot location in Philadelphia in September, its first outside New York, after raising $35 million with plans for 10 locations nationwide. 

Gyms Go Upmarket

Fitness has its own K-shaped economy, with high-value, low-price gyms on one end and premium clubs and boutique studios on the other.

At the top end, clubs are adding recovery, diagnostics, longevity medicine and AI coaching, now overlapping and competing with spas, wellness clinics, longevity centers, and wellness clubs. Exclusive wellness clubs blending coworking, social space, spa and fitness are emerging in some top metro areas, too.

Some appear poised to serve both ends. Mark Wahlberg’s Municipal Gym, set to open in Las Vegas in December, plans to offer longevity at a lower price, with blood work, recovery services and hormone therapy at what Wahlberg told TechCrunch is “a better price point than our competitors.”

The money is real. Personalized medicine, covering preventive diagnostics and individualized health plans, reached $363.8 billion in 2025, and GWI projects 9.3% annual growth through 2030.

But GWI, which lists boutique fitness among its examples of premiumization, cautions that some wellness growth may be “driven by small segments of consumers making more expensive purchases, and not by an expanding pool of wellness consumers.”

Partners in Movement

Wellness is no longer just for wellness companies. GWI says brands from finance and tech to fashion and autos are embracing it. This month, Equinox and American Express are hosting House of Equinox, a four-day event in Manhattan that gives Amex Platinum and Centurion cardholders access to guided recovery, yoga and meditation.

Hotels are adding and marketing spa services to stay competitive, GWI says, and race travel opens another door, with hotels part of the ecosystem around fitness competitions.

Fitness Finds a Home

Wellness real estate reached $875.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $1.79 trillion by 2030. GWI counts fitness among the businesses building healthy design into their projects and says residential projects are moving beyond luxury into middle-class, student and senior housing.

At the luxury end, buildings are starting to look like competition. In Manhattan, 547 West 47th Street pairs yoga and Pilates studios with an infrared sauna. There’s room for partners, too. Buildings like 18W55 and One Williamsburg Wharf bring in LIVunLtd for programming and personal training.