What Belongs on the Fitness Floor of the Future?

Operators, equipment makers and tech execs share the equipment, technology and physical design trends set to shape the next generation of fitness facilities

For decades, outfitting a fitness floor largely meant deciding which strength and cardio equipment to buy. In 2026, that equation has become considerably more complicated.

Strength continues to command more space. Pilates is moving deeper into traditional fitness facilities. Functional and hybrid training are reshaping floor design. Recovery and wellness are becoming part of the core club experience. AI, connected equipment and wearables are creating increasingly personalized training journeys. At the same time, members are arriving with more specific goals, whether they’re training for performance, longevity, weight management or simply trying to move and feel better.

All of it has to fit within essentially the same four walls, forcing operators to ask more of every square foot of the facility.

To that end, the question facing operators isn’t simply what’s new. It’s what deserves to be there.

The answer emerging from equipment manufacturers, technology companies and operators is nuanced. The gym of the future may be more connected and intelligent, but that doesn’t mean putting more technology on every machine or chasing every new modality. Instead, operators are becoming more intentional about how equipment earns its footprint, where technology meaningfully improves the experience and how individual investments work together to serve a much broader range of member needs.

Rowdy Yates, executive vice president of fitness at EoS Fitness, sees that nuance playing out on the gym floor.

“I don’t think the gym floor itself is going to look dramatically different five years from now, but the equipment and the experience around it will be much smarter and more connected,” Yates tells Athletech News.

The result may challenge an old assumption about what a futuristic gym actually looks like. The next generation of fitness facilities may be defined less by how futuristic the equipment appears and more by how intentionally every piece of the experience works together.

Making Every Square Foot Work Harder

The expansion of strength alone illustrates how much more today’s fitness floor is being asked to accommodate. Dan Wille, chief product officer at Life Fitness / Hammer Strength, says its growth now spans performance, weight management, healthy aging and longevity, bringing people with very different objectives into the same training environment.

“Strength is not just growing, it is expanding to serve more people and more purposes,” Wille says. “That shift will require operators to think more intentionally about zoning, programming and making strength approachable without losing its performance foundation.”

Other modalities are expanding alongside it. Technogym identifies strength, Pilates and a resurgence in running among the trends shaping its product development. Its upcoming Technogym Reform brings connected technology to Pilates, while Pure Strength addresses high-load performance training and AI-enabled Biostrength adapts training to the individual user. Its RUN X 5K treadmill competition with World Athletics brings a competitive, community-driven dimension to running inside the club.

As operators make room for those varied experiences, equipment itself is evolving to help them do it.

Torque Fitness‘ upcoming Omnistack, for example, consolidates cable, lat, row, back, hip, triceps and other training stations onto a modular selectorized strength system, with four- to 10-station configurations that can evolve as programming changes.

“Space efficiency and modularity are becoming design principles in their own right,” explains Sarah Dettinger Schmitt, vice president of marketing and consumer sales at Torque Fitness. “Floors can be reconfigured as programming changes, rather than fixed rows that lock a facility in.”

Skelcore is tackling the same challenge through simpler, smaller strength machines. 

“Operators are asking for equipment with fewer adjustment points and smaller footprints, allowing them to introduce more machines within the same real estate,” founder and CEO Marc Ackermann says. 

That pressure is changing how operators evaluate the floor itself. Irina Dima, vice president of growth, strategy and operations at Sport Alliance, says operators are starting to think more like retailers, examining revenue per square foot and which classes, equipment and experiences justify the space they occupy.

Core Health & Fitness is seeing the same shift. 

“Operators ultimately want to know: How can I get more value from my space, create greater engagement, and give members more reasons to keep coming back?” says Joey Osborne, vice president of global sales, marketing and product.

Core’s Gym Rax powered by Wexer reflects that thinking, combining functional training equipment with digital content and programming to create multiple training experiences within an efficient footprint.

Connected, With a Purpose

Technology is changing the floor too, although more technology on the machine isn’t necessarily the end goal.

EoS offers one real-world view of where connected equipment can add meaningful value. Through EoS Smart Strength powered by EGYM, members receive guidance around positioning, resistance, repetitions and tempo, while advanced users can access modes including negative, adaptive and explosive training.

“What we’ve seen is that members really respond when technology makes strength training feel less intimidating and more purposeful,” Yates says.

EoS has also expanded its EGYM partnership through EoS Gainiac, which uses AI to build personalized training plans that evolve as members log workouts and progress. EGYM’s broader ecosystem, including its latest Smart Strength Series 3, is designed to connect training and member data across the fitness experience.

Technogym sees AI and data becoming foundational to personalization, with tools including Technogym Checkup assessing strength, mobility, cardio and balance. 

“AI allows us to move toward hyper-personalization, where training can continuously adapt to the individual,” says Enrico Manaresi, global head of communication.

At the same time, members are bringing more of their own technology into the gym.

Precor sees personal devices becoming a larger part of that ecosystem. 

“Wearables and smartphones will increasingly inform recommendations around exercise, sleep, recovery and nutrition,” Erica Tillinghast, vice president of commercial marketing, says.

Ackermann, meanwhile, sees a growing debate around how much technology members actually want embedded into the machines they use, particularly when some view exercise as an opportunity to disconnect.

From Collecting Data to Acting on It

Behind the scenes, Daxko chief product officer Wes Gillette sees AI becoming infrastructure within the systems already running a facility.

“AI is poised to become the new operating system for member experience and club operations,” Gillette says.

The opportunity comes from connecting signals such as attendance, equipment usage, engagement and wearable data with operational information and then acting on it. Instead of requiring staff to interpret another dashboard, software can identify an at-risk member, personalize outreach or automate administrative work.

Sport Alliance is taking a similar approach with PerfectAI Engage, now rolling out to customers. The system can detect when, for example, a member who regularly trained three times per week drops to once and initiate engagement before that behavior becomes a cancellation.

WellnessSpace Brands is bringing greater visibility to another category of equipment. Its Control 2.0 platform allows operators to see usage patterns across WellnessSpace recovery products, giving them insight into which experiences members are actually using and how utilization changes over time.

“The goal isn’t to add technology for technology’s sake,” explains Eric Jaworsky, vice president of sales at WellnessSpace Brands. “It’s to use data and connected technology to create a better member experience while giving operators better insight into their business.”

Recovery Becomes a Core Experience

What counts as essential equipment is changing as well.

“The next generation of fitness facilities won’t just be places people go to work out,” Jaworsky says. “They’ll be places people go to feel better.”

Recovery once occupied an ancillary corner of many clubs. WellnessSpace now sees operators evaluating it around retention, premium membership value and revenue generation, while looking for ways to deliver those experiences without adding significant staffing or operational complexity.

That requirement is influencing the equipment itself. WellnessSpace’s RedZone Sauna and PolarWave dry plunge were developed to bring modalities traditionally associated with buildouts, water management and greater staff involvement into high-volume commercial environments with fewer operational demands.

Precor similarly sees wellness rooms, specialized strength and cross-training spaces replacing more generic zones as operators create experiences with distinct value propositions. Daxko’s Elevate Wellness pushes the definition further, giving operators a way to connect members with medically supervised weight management and metabolic health services as fitness facilities play a larger role in the broader health journey.

For all the innovation entering the fitness industry, one of the clearest messages from manufacturers, technology providers and operators is also one of the simplest: buying what’s newest isn’t a strategy.

“Buy the solution, not the SKU,” Dettinger Schmitt says.

That means evaluating whether equipment can serve multiple member populations, withstand commercial use and adapt with the facility over time.

The result is a different vision of the gym of the future: potentially more varied at the equipment level, while becoming more integrated at the experience level.

For Wille, the place to begin is with the outcome.

“Start with the outcome you want to create, not the equipment you want to buy,” he says. “The strongest investments begin with a clear understanding of who the facility serves and the experience it wants to create. Then align equipment, technology, service and long-term support around that goal.”

This article originally appeared in ATN’s 2026 Gym of the Future report, which explores how brick-and-mortar fitness businesses are building for a new era. Download the free report.