Fitness Equipment Market 2026: Strength Won, and Gyms Are Buying Again

The full report · 11 min read

The story everyone tells about fitness equipment goes like this: a pandemic boom, then a crash. The wholesale data says otherwise. There was a boom. There was no crash. And the real winner was not the connected bike. It was the humble dumbbell.

Strength took the market

US wholesale sales of home free weights rose from $201M in 2019 to $561M in 2023, up 179% (SFIA via Statista). Exercise bikes more than doubled, from $472M to $1,028M. Home gyms went from $221M to $463M.

Meanwhile, elliptical sales fell from $904M to $807M, down 11%. The machine that defined the 2000s home gym is shrinking.

The pattern is clear: people bought tools for strength and simple, intense cardio. They did not buy more of the old, single-purpose cardio machines.

Home reset higher, then started to cool

Total US home fitness equipment sales hit a record $6.56bn in 2023, up 65% on 2019 ($3.98bn). Sales jumped to $5.59bn in 2020 and $6.42bn in 2021, dipped to $6.08bn in 2022, then set a new high. That is not a crash. It is a new, higher floor.

But the newest data shows the turn. SFIA’s 2026 report, covering 2025, says parts of the consumer/home segment declined, while institutional equipment saw broad-based growth. Overall US sporting goods wholesale sales reached $130bn in 2025, up 3.7% on the year and 34.7% since 2020.

Gyms are buying again

Gym and club equipment had the harder pandemic. Institutional wholesale sales fell 17% in 2020, from $1,566M to $1,302M. By 2023 they had climbed to a record $1,693M, 8% above the pre-pandemic peak.

In 2025, SFIA describes that growth as broad-based, driven by continued investment in gyms, health clubs and commercial facilities. Read together: the home boom built the habit, and facilities are now spending to win those people back.

The long-range picture is steady rather than explosive. Statista Market Insights forecasts global exercise equipment revenue to rise from $46.7bn in 2024 to $59.5bn in 2028, roughly 6% a year. In the US, exercise equipment revenue is forecast to grow from $5.7bn to $6.8bn over the same period.

What operators and coaches should take from this

Your client probably owns weights. Plan for it. Hybrid programs that use their home kit keep the relationship alive between sessions and make your coaching part of their week, not just your floor.

Build floor space around strength. The demand data points one way: racks, benches, dumbbells and plates over rows of ellipticals.

Equipment is no longer the reason to show up. When home strength gear sells at record levels, access alone does not sell. Coaching, privacy, atmosphere and community do. That is why a private, fully equipped training room with a coach is a stronger offer than a membership to a room full of machines.

Watch your costs. SFIA highlights trade and tariff pressure across the industry. If new equipment is on your plan for 2027, get quotes early and compare buying with leasing.

A living Sqwod Intelligence report. 2007 to 2023 figures are SFIA wholesale (manufacturer) sales as published in Statista’s “Fitness equipment market in the United States” study; the 2025 trend comes from SFIA’s 2026 Manufacturers’ Sales by Category release, which does not publish fitness-category dollar figures publicly. Wholesale sales measure what manufacturers sell, not retail prices. We refresh the numbers as new data lands; see the update log.