The newly published UK Health & Fitness Market Report 2026 confirms something a lot of us in this industry have felt anecdotally for a while: the sector isn’t just recovering, it’s growing at a record pace. Gym penetration has hit an all-time high of 18% of over-16s, with a record 12.2 million members and club visits up 10% since 2024.
What’s more interesting than the headline number is why it’s happening. Industry commentary around the report points to fitness spaces becoming social hubs, not just places to train — wellness is increasingly part of personal identity rather than a bolt-on activity. There’s also a growing push from trade bodies globally to have physical activity prescribed as a genuine lifestyle intervention, on a par with clinical treatment, in tackling obesity.
Why this matters beyond the gym floor
A boom in gym membership is a boom in demand for everything that surrounds training — proper hydration, recovery, sleep, and supplementation people can actually trust. More people walking into a gym for the first time also means more people walking into a supplement aisle for the first time, often overwhelmed by proprietary blends, vague labelling and marketing dressed up as science.
That’s precisely the gap we built Ten Percent Club to close. We didn’t start as a supplement company chasing a trend — we started because the industry’s approach to transparency was broken, and we wanted every product on our shelf to be something we’d genuinely trust our own bodies with. Every product we make is Informed Sport-certified, with dosing you can actually see and verify, not hide behind a “proprietary blend.”
What growth like this should mean for the industry
As participation climbs, the responsibility on brands serving that audience climbs with it. More first-time gym-goers means more first-time supplement buyers, and they deserve honest products from day one — not marketing spend dressed up as substance.
If the numbers in this report are anything to go by, 2026 might be the year more people than ever start training seriously. We’d like that to also be the year more people start doing it with supplements they can actually trust.
