September 2026
By Al Noone · Last updated September 13, 2026
About five years ago, I biked to an office that had the nicest gym I've ever had access to: free weights, racks, plates, various weight and cardio machines, all new and clean. I knew that I should be doing some kind of strength training on top of my cycling. But I didn't know what exactly, or how much, or in what order, or when to change it. So I didn't lift weights at all. Months went by, then years. I used the locker room to change a few times a week and walked past the equipment on my way in and out.
Since I had a gym, the idea of paying for a membership to access another gym seemed silly. But paying for a gym is something people do partly in hopes of forcing themselves to go. For me, already having a good, free gym pushed me to ignore the issue that would have been at the root of a decision to pay for a gym membership: the need and desire for strength training. It wasn't laziness that kept me from using the gym so much as the lack of guidance. I could have used someone or something to tell me what to do at the gym, a few times a week, in a way that adjusted as I went. Missing guidance may be what keeps office gyms mostly empty almost all of the time.
At the low and high ends of the commercial gym business spectrum, optimizing for business performance doesn't equate to closing the gap between gym access and gym use. After all, the standard model for gym membership is a flat monthly rate for unlimited access. At the low end, like Planet Fitness, the existence of the gap between gym membership and gym use is critical for the business model: the cheapest gyms sign up far more members than their floor space could hold at once, banking on most of them mostly not showing up. A monthly fee at a cheap gym is low enough that it's not worth cancelling the membership. Members who rarely go have the option of going anytime. The option is worth something. And they may also be telling themselves that maybe next month is the month when they'll get into it.
Equinox is at the other end of the spectrum, where the high price means a more rarified clientele; the exclusivity is part of the product. Equinox members are buying an elite identity as much as they're buying gym access. I don't have evidence that Equinox members go to the gym with any more regularity than Planet Fitness subscribers. But for any gym's business performance, retaining paying members who don't actually visit is an obvious win.
One thing that would shrink the gap between gym membership and gym usage at commercial gyms is the same thing that would have made a difference in my use of the free gym at the office: guidance, a plan, knowledge. That guidance could come from a personal trainer. At office gyms, you don't see personal trainers. An office building could have multiple tenants who value the gym as an amenity of the facility, but lack the mechanism to pay a personal trainer or arrange for a trainer's access to the building. Commercial gyms aren't well-incentivized to include personal training in the membership. That guidance would drive usage and associated operating costs, without bringing in more revenue. So a commercial gym has no reason to close the knowledge gaps of its members for free. The ideal gym member from a commercial gym owner's perspective may be a long-time member who never actually visits the gym. Next best is a member who recognizes their knowledge gap and is happy to pay extra for personal training, through the gym, to close it. They'll visit more often, but they also pay more, and they may refer other new members.
The cost of coaching is separate from the cost of gym membership, but coaching is not separate from the gym facility.
A trainer is normally tied to a specific gym. They work for, or under contract with, that gym, which controls who's allowed to train whom on its floor, for reasons of liability and revenue. You can't show up with a trainer you found on your own; a guest pass gets you in as company, not as a working professional. And a trainer's schedule is subject to the gym's calendar. Equinox's own personal training terms require sessions to be booked ahead of time. They charge the full price of the session for any cancellation inside 24 hours, whether or not anything came up. Some Equinox locations let members into the building at any hour with a key fob. But 24/7 access doesn't include coaching. You can't book a trainer at 11 PM for a session at midnight. The gym might open all night. A person to guide you isn't available without prior coordination.
Some newer training business models are challenging the norm of the relationship between the gym and the trainer, enabling trainers to have more direct relationships with their customers. A private studio can rent space directly to independent trainers, no big-box gym required, letting them set their rates and keep what they charge instead of working under someone else's brand for a cut. The trainer isn't tied to any one gym's floor anymore. But with that model, you as the customer still travel to that studio, at a scheduled time, because a person is still the one who has to be there. A human personal trainer can only train, in-person, at one place at a time.
Both of those constraints, the physical gym access and the scheduling, disappear once the coaching itself isn't delivered in person by a human. An AI coach comes in with you as an invisible stowaway, at any gym tier: the fanciest club, a bare-bones commercial gym, or free gym in your office building. And an AI coach is truly available any time, with no need for scheduling in advance and no penalty for shifting plans at the last second. The gym business isn't an intermediary in the relationship between you and the AI coach in the sense of money, time, or physical access. If you use more than one gym, you can still have the same coach at each one.
With AI fitness coaching now a good option and the decoupling of the gym/coach relationship, visits to gyms of every tier may grow. The growth in visits probably won't be so dramatic as to break the business model of commercial gyms. But at the cheaper tier, there may be more crowding, driving some to move to higher-tier gyms, and leading to higher subscription rates across all tiers. A person visiting their gym more is getting more value out of their gym subscription, so may be willing to pay more for it.
Demand for services from human personal trainers could grow with the adoption of AI coaches as well: people who start strength training with an AI coach may want a human personal trainer's opinion of an AI-generated program, or close supervision of their form. These are people who may not have gone to a gym at all if it wasn't for an AI coach.
Switching gym memberships probably will become more common as AI coaching grows. A steady AI coach eases the transition from one gym to another, and an AI coach may program exercise that makes people realize a gap in their gym's equipment. Instead of your workout plan being limited by the equipment available, it's limited by your goals and needs, plus whatever rules are written for the AI coach. Also, if you're working out more often, you'll be more motivated to find a gym that you like more.
If the growth of AI coaching creates losers in the fitness industry, it would be those whose value proposition is most easily disrupted by AI: businesses offering remote human personal training, or “virtual coaching” as it's also called. Remote coaches will have to get back in physical contact with customers to distinguish themselves from AI.
Now, I actually use the nice gym at my office. I also have a membership at a gym I like, about thirty minutes away if there's no traffic. My AI coach (Casey) works at either one, or at home, or wherever I travel; where I am only matters to Casey insofar as the equipment available may vary. So on a day I drove to work, if it's 5 PM and I want to get some strength training in, I'll go to the office gym. No need to deal with traffic to go to a different gym for the same workout. (On the days I bike instead of drive, I still might use the office gym, but rush hour traffic wouldn't factor into the decision, one of the things I love about riding my bike to work.)
I didn't need a commercial gym subscription to start strength training. With Casey's guidance, my office gym works perfectly well for me now.
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