At any one time around 10.39 Million British people hold gym memberships. That’s substantially more than Spain, Ireland, France, Italy & Portugal on a per capita basis. So are British people in better shape than these countries (as you might expect)? Well life expectancy is lower in the UK than all five of those European nations. The UK also has the highest obesity rate of all of those nations with 27.8% of UK adults being obese which is higher than Italy (19.9%), France (21.6%), Spain (21.6%), Portugal (22.8%) & Ireland (25.3%). So more gym memberships doesn’t mean better health. Why?
The gym industry isn’t about health or fitness its about profits – with an annual turnover of north of £5 billion a year the sector needs a churn of overweight and obese people to support the 191,000 people it employs.
Most people don’t have a clue what they’re doing at the gym. Gym inductions are not even a legal requirement anymore. Not that those offer anything more than general “this is where the treadmills are, this is where the weights are” sort of information. The “industry” is failing on a societal level and the results speak for themselves. The personal trainer market makes up £684.1 million or 13.7% of the UK fitness industry total.
