Posted on 30 April 2025
By James Smith, Business Development Manager at Active IQ
In our April blog, James Smith, Business Development Manager at Active IQ, takes a deep dive into the recently released UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2025 from ukactive. The report paints a positive picture for the sector with encouraging signs of growth across key industry metrics, such as membership, revenue, and club visits.
But, as James highlights, growth alone isn't enough. Behind every statistic lies a vital question: Does the sector have the workforce in place to sustain and build on this momentum?
In this blog, James explores not only the headline figures but also the less visible opportunities and challenges within the industry, especially those related to recruitment, training, and workforce development. Read on for a thoughtful analysis of where the sector stands today and what needs to happen to ensure its long-term success.
Growth
First and foremost, as an avid advocate for the sport and physical activity sector, it is fantastic to see the growth highlighted in the UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2025.
According to the report, Membership grew by 6.1% in 2024 compared to the previous year, reaching 11.5m members. Total income also increased by 8.8% reaching £5.7bn. Coupled with an 0.9% increase in the number of clubs, an 8.2% increase in Visits and a 0.9% increase in total Penetration rate, these statistics are extremely positive and certainly align with ukactive’s vision of More People, More Active, More Often; something shared by everyone working within the sector.
Whilst this growth is wonderful and absolutely should be celebrated, one question not discussed in the report is whether we currently have the workforce to support this growth?
Struggles
Whilst the increase in clubs, membership and visits is to be celebrated, the sector must ensure it is staffed appropriately to not only cope with this growth, but flourish and provide exceptional service to ensure continued growth and provide wonderful experiences for all members and facility users. The growth needs to be supported by strong recruitment, continued professional development and potential career pathways provided to employees within the sector.
Recruiting and retaining staff is a challenge the industry continues to face. Active IQ’s 2024 Skills Gap Report, aimed at identifying skills gaps in the health and fitness sector, identified that 42% of gyms and leisure centres said they are struggling to find people to fill fitness instructor roles, with only 20% of fitness professionals stating that they believed there are “plenty” of opportunities to develop.
The lack of structured career development routes in the industry undoubtedly makes it less attractive to potential entrants. This perception hinders the recruitment and retention of talent within the industry. Employers and training providers can work closely to provide potential new talent into the industry with a full picture of future opportunities, as well as partnering together to develop ongoing CPD to support the development and retention of staff.
As Jenny Patrickson, Managing Director at Active IQ, said in the 2024 Skills Gap Report: “Active IQ has long advocated for employers within the fitness sector to commit to keeping professionals in the practice of continued professional development following their initial qualifications. But it’s not the only piece of the puzzle; development needs to be paired with a clearly communicated path explaining how careers can advance as skills are developed.”
According to the Active IQ 2024 Skills Gap Report, 65% of fitness professionals claim to have seen other fitness professionals acting in a way they believe to be unprofessional or dangerous. As such, it is critical that all stakeholders drive home and reinforce the professionalism required to work in the sector.
Ultimately, visitors to facilities range from children to the elderly, with very different reasons for attending and with very different physical and mental conditions. It is critical that we ensure all team members, from front-of-house to the gym floor, are equipped with the skills required to encourage safe, accessible and friendly behaviour, and that they represent your company and this industry in the right way to support sustainable and successful growth of the sector.
To return to my question, “Do we currently have the workforce to cope with this growth?” Possibly not at the moment, but we have an incredible industry which has always been an exciting proposition to work in. It is imperative to ensure that we harness this opportunity of growth in order to recruit, develop and retain our future workforce.
Opportunities
I have already mentioned employers and training providers working closer together to highlight the wonderful opportunities available in the sector, as well as the development of ongoing CPD training to support regulated qualifications. One key area to address within this is for employers to work closer with fitness professionals on their CPD. With Brexit, increased energy tariffs and many other challenges, staff development in the industry has taken a backseat in recent years. As I mentioned, now is the real opportunity to recruit, develop and retain an incredible workforce for the future.
The UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2025 highlights the increasing use of data and digital solutions in the sector, particularly in consumer engagement and business operations. This shift creates a need for fitness professionals to be trained in digital tools, platforms, and data analysis to help operators make informed decisions and improve user experience. We’ve already seen wonderful examples across the sector of fitness professionals receiving training in how to analyse and harness the data provided by wearable technology, so it is key to ensure that similar training is provided to more fitness professionals.
The report briefly mentions The Rise of the Experience Economy. We’ve all had average meals made into amazing dining experiences, all due to incredible staff members and so experienced the role people play within this experience economy. As such, it’s disappointing that the Experience Economy wasn’t discussed further within the report, especially as we all know People being a key aspect.
We may traditionally look at “high-end” facilities and boutique facilities as the places delivering on these experiences, but all facilities play a huge and critical role in providing positive experiences for users and members. This presents a real opportunity for excellent staff training, whether delivered in-house, via a third-party specialist or utilising customer service qualifications.
There’s clearly a growing demand for fitness professionals who can offer support beyond physical training, especially in mental health and well-being, highlighted by the report underlining the sector’s role in tackling broader public health issues. Training providers can fill this gap by offering qualifications and CPD in areas such as Mental Health Awareness.
The report also highlights a focus on engaging older adults, disabled individuals, and people with long-term health conditions. Customising training programmes are a fundamental part of a fitness professional’s role, given each person is unique, along with their needs, goals, preferences and abilities.
Despite this, the Active IQ 2024 Skills Gap Report reports that 32% of fitness professionals believe they do not have the required skills and education to training customers across various areas of diversity, 45% of fitness professionals feel it is difficult to customise for those with physical disabilities and 41% find it difficult to customise programmes for those with chronic illnesses.
Whilst the above statistics may seem worrying, they present a huge opportunity for fitness professionals to upskill in areas such as Supporting Clients with Long-term Conditions, which also provides employers with to have better trained staff to support a wider range of users and members.
Summary
Acknowledgement of the workforce was limited within The UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2025. Perhaps I am overthinking this very limited acknowledgement of the workforce, or perhaps it’s something that should be taken more seriously and addressed.
One key mention of the workforce was when highlighting that this sector stands ready to help address many issues faced by the NHS and in getting more people active from demographics, where Sport England data shows that many longstanding inequalities remain. The report states how our sector can help address these issues “through its services, spaces and workforce”.
With a growing sector and the want to support the National Health Service in both preventative and reactive methods, coupled with existing staff shortages, it’s imperative that we ensure the importance of training, recruiting, developing and retaining an excellent workforce is placed front and centre of the industry’s agenda.
Huw Edwards, CEO of ukactive, is quoted in the Active IQ 2024 Skills Gap Report as saying “our sector’s workforce is vital to achieve our collective ambitions, making recruitment, retention and training crucial areas for improvement to support the nation’s health and economy” – a quote I wholeheartly agree with.
Many of the key figureheads in our industry started off as personal trainers, lifeguards and group exercise instructors (you know who you are!).
I hope the entire sector rightfully celebrates the growth reported in the UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2025, and also works together (employers, employees, training providers, awarding organisations and all other stakeholders) in order to ensure we recruit, develop and retain an incredible workforce to support this growth, and ultimately ensure we get more people, more active, more often.
We welcome your feedback on this recent report and our insights. Feel free to reach out to us via our social media pages or by emailing our Business Development team.