For fitness operators, growth has traditionally been a straightforward equation: more members, more revenue, more locations. But conversations with three leading operators in the middle of 2026 suggest that equation is becoming more nuanced.
Mark Harrington Jr., Sheldon McBee and Jeff Linn are still investing in their businesses. They’re raising prices, adding services, renovating facilities, exploring AI and responding to changing consumer preferences.
But they’re also asking more sophisticated questions about growth: Can the facility handle more members? Does the membership deliver enough value? Are members actually using the services being added? Can technology eliminate friction without sacrificing the human experience? Is the business investing in the people responsible for delivering that experience?
Across the three conversations, one theme emerged above the rest: the best operators are becoming increasingly focused on the quality of the member experience, and are making growth work around it, rather than the other way around.
Growth Doesn’t Always Mean More Members
One of the clearest examples comes from Linn, whose club is approaching what he described as a “one out, one in” level of membership. The reasoning is straightforward: adding members can create short-term revenue, but overcrowding can damage the experience for everyone already in the building.
That philosophy has changed how the club thinks about membership capacity. Rather than continuing to add members and risk overcrowding, the team has spent the past six months learning to manage capacity more tightly with the membership department, including the possibility of eventually requiring new members to wait for an opening before joining. The strategy ultimately comes down to balancing pricing, growth and capacity without compromising the experience of existing members.
“We’re not quite at the stage where we’re saying to somebody, ‘Hey, you can join, but starting in a month from now,’ but we’re very close,” said Linn. “That’s been a big focus of ours of learning how we’re going to manage that. And that also spins into our freeze policy. We’re tweaking our freeze policy more and more over the years. We were extremely flexible pre-COVID-19, flexible coming out of COVID-19, and we’ve really reeled it in much tighter than it’s ever been. We’re thankful for the business to be able to dictate that.”
The result is an operator looking at membership growth not simply as a sales metric, but as an operational decision.
Harrington Jr. is taking a different approach at Healthworks Group. His organization set a goal to grow membership strategically in 2026, but that didn’t mean every club was expected to add members. At more than half of the clubs, the goal was to finish the year with roughly the same number of members while increasing quality and price per member. Three clubs, meanwhile, were tasked with pursuing double-digit membership growth.
That distinction illustrates an important shift: growth doesn’t have to mean the same thing at every club. For one location, it may mean more members. For another, it may mean higher dues, better retention or greater revenue from an existing membership base.
The Member Experience is Becoming the Growth Strategy
The member experience was the common thread connecting all three conversations.
For Harrington Jr., the focus has been on rituals. The goal is to position fitness as part of members’ broader lifestyles rather than simply something they do to accomplish a short-term goal.
“Rituals are more about a way of life, quality of life and a mentality of life,” explained Harrington Jr. “There’s lots of ways that can happen and kind of fitness is one of those ways. And we want to be part of this journey and part of this ritual with you. And we’re here to help you stack and build your rituals.”
That strategy appears to be translating into business results. Harrington Jr. said sales have been relatively flat, but retention has improved, while personal training revenue is outperforming projections. He doesn’t attribute the retention improvement to a single initiative.
“I would say we’re doing a lot on kind of quality of facilities, group fitness and quality of customer service, that theoretically should all have an impact on it,” said Harrington Jr.
That’s an important takeaway for operators: retention isn’t necessarily created by one program or amenity. It can be the cumulative result of dozens of decisions that make the club better.
McBee is seeing a similar connection between engagement and retention. His club has developed a member journey that encourages new members to complete several critical engagement steps during their first 30 days, including meeting with a fitness professional, completing an assessment, checking into the club and downloading the app.
“We give a discount on membership if you do six critical steps of engagement up front, which include seeing that fitness professional,” said McBee.
The strategy is designed to get members to experience more of the club early in their memberships. “That has helped our check-ins bump up a little bit more over the first 12 weeks of membership, which I think is contributing to increasing lifetime value,” explained McBee.
The underlying lesson is bigger than the incentive itself: operators don’t just need to sell the value of membership. They need to make sure members experience that value.
More Value Doesn’t Always Mean More Add-Ons
Recovery and wellness remain major areas of investment, but these operators aren’t necessarily treating them as isolated revenue streams.
McBee has taken the approach of building some recovery offerings into the base membership. The thinking is that giving members access to more of the club can increase usage and reinforce the value of the membership itself.
“A lot of facilities make you pay for these things, but we don’t,” said McBee. “I think that helps people want to stick around more, use the club more often and think they’re getting more for what I pay for in the membership. Those kind of things help us to retain better and manage our attrition rates.”
At the same time, McBee’s organization has gone deeper into recovery and health-span offerings. The club doubled the size of its recovery zone and created what he described as a mini boutique within the club. Recovery services have generated double the revenue year over year, youth programming has expanded, and pain-relief training is up 75% year over year.
Harrington Jr. is taking a more measured approach. His organization has researched recovery extensively and plans to make a significant investment in products and services, while continuing to work through how those offerings should be priced for different membership levels and non-members.
The takeaway isn’t that every club needs to add recovery. It’s that operators are increasingly asking how an offering fits into the overall value proposition before adding it.
Members are Becoming More Sensitive to Value
Pricing is another area where the member experience is directly influencing business decisions.
Linn said his organization has historically made relatively small annual increases, but that approach wasn’t enough to keep up with rising operational costs. “We looked at the market in the industry, and we were really behind it a bit,” explained Linn. “So we did a 10% increase at one point along this recent pathway, and we’ve been doing about 4% more recently.”
But members are becoming more vocal about price increases. “When we did that one catch-up, which we felt was appropriate to the market and where the prices [stood], at that 10%, that’s significant with our pricing,” said Linn. “Our scores as it relates to our level of ‘Would you recommend this club?’ just started dropping. But no one canceled.”
That experience changed the relationship between price and expectations. Higher prices can work, but they raise the bar. “And then, in one of our whirlpools — I don’t know, it has like 10 jets — there was an issue with one of the lines,” said Linn. “So eight jets were working out of the 10, and all of a sudden those two jets became a huge issue, right? To the members, it’s like, ‘I’m paying all this money, and you have eight jets going out of 10.’ Okay, so we got to fix those jets immediately.”
Harrington Jr. agreed with Linn and added that the market has shifted from an era of aggressive price increases to one where clubs need to be more strategic. In the years immediately following COVID, his clubs could raise prices frequently with little member resistance. Today, members are more aware of what they’re paying, making annual, club-by-club increases a more measured approach.
While price increases aren’t necessarily driving significant cancellations or preventing new joins, Harrington Jr. expects more attrition from this year’s increase than last year’s. Still, that may be an intentional trade-off: higher prices could help offset capacity and crowding challenges, creating a better member experience heading into the new year.
Pricing power remains strong, but clubs can no longer assume members will accept increases without question. For Harrington Jr., the goal isn’t simply maximizing price — it’s using pricing strategically to balance revenue, retention and the overall member experience.
Operators are Reworking Space Around Demand
Changing member preferences are forcing operators to rethink not only what programs they offer, but how they allocate their square footage.
Linn’s club, for example, saw a decline in cycling participation. Rather than eliminate cycling entirely, the club converted its cycling studio into a flex space that could still accommodate cycling while also supporting group training and women’s-only hours.
McBee has taken a similar demand-driven approach, but on a larger scale. His club reduced the footprint of its indoor track to create more space for strength training after recognizing that resistance training was becoming a bigger priority for members.
Data from TrackMyGym confirmed that certain equipment, including cable machines, was consistently in high demand, prompting the club to add more units while removing equipment that wasn’t being used. The club also relocated its EGYM offering into a dedicated space and adjusted its group fitness schedule, reducing some cardio-focused classes in favor of more strength-oriented programming, including strength development, BodyPump, core and HYROX.
The lesson: space is no longer assigned to a specific use indefinitely. It has to evolve with member behavior.
The Best Operators Aren’t Chasing Everything
Perhaps the clearest lesson from these three conversations is that growth in 2026 requires discipline.
Operators have no shortage of things competing for their attention. AI, recovery, Pilates, medical wellness, youth programming, connected technology and countless other trends all promise new revenue and new ways to engage members. But more isn’t necessarily better.
Harrington Jr. is taking a deliberate approach, questioning whether each new initiative will actually deliver a return or simply add complexity to the business.
“I think the biggest thing which I’m really focusing on is to be true to who you are and be really thoughtful about overcomplicating your business,” said Harrington Jr. “I think there’s so much stuff out there that so many people are doing. And it all is so cool, but is it really going to have an ROI? And if you did fewer things better, you’re probably going to knock better than if you did everything a little bit.”
That mindset runs through all three operators’ approaches. None of them are chasing growth for its own sake — they’re becoming more selective about the growth they pursue.
Harrington Jr. is focused on creating rituals and experiences that keep fitness embedded in members’ lives. McBee is responding to what members actually want: expanding strength training, refining programming, using data to allocate space and leaning on technology to make the member journey easier. Linn is willing to cap membership when capacity becomes an issue, track member sentiment closely and reconfigure space as demand shifts.
Their strategies look different. Their markets may be different. But the underlying philosophy is the same: growth is only valuable if the business can deliver an experience that makes people want to stay.
That may be one of the defining lessons for operators heading into 2027. The industry’s next phase won’t necessarily be won by the clubs that add the most members, launch the most programs or adopt the most technology. It may be won by the clubs that are most disciplined about deciding what deserves their attention, their investment and their square footage — and then executing those things exceptionally well.
The question for operators is no longer simply how can we grow? It’s how can we grow while protecting the experience that made people choose us in the first place?
