A survey found that about 70 percent of gym members in the United States haven’t returned to their gym since facilities across the country shut down in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A global RunRepeat survey, conducted from Aug. 1 through Aug. 13, found that 30.98% of the 5,055 gym members that responded to the online survey have returned to the gym. Australia was the outlier, with 52.8 percent of members reporting they’ve returned to the gym while that number was 32.14 percent in the United Kingdom, 30.77 percent in Canada and 29.28 percent in the United States.
The situation could seemingly still be resolved, as most of the respondents have yet to cancel their memberships. The study found that 40.44 percent of United States respondents are keeping their memberships, 39.0 percent are considering canceling and 20.56 percent have already canceled. That’s on par with the rest of the countries surveyed, as 21.76 percent of UK respondents, 21.15 percent of Canada respondents and 15.2 percent of Australia respondents have already canceled their memberships.
RunRepeat broke down the U.S. data by state. The highest return rate was in Tennessee, where 52.11 percent of respondents said they’ve returned to the gym. Ohio (48.86) and Missouri (46.30) are also atop the list, while Michigan (10.34), Arizona (11.27) and California (18.01) had the lowest return rate. The states with the highest percentage of respondents that have already canceled their memberships are Massachusetts (29.17), Minnesota (26.87) and California (25.29), while Ohio (11.36), New York (12.68) and Arizona (14.08) have the fewest.
Each state has worked under a different set of guidelines since the pandemic began, which has led to uncertainty.
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Gym members have returned at a lower rate than predicted in a May RunRepeat study that found that 46.67 percent of respondents said they weren’t going to return to their gym.
The numbers increased when that question was asked in August. The latest survey found that 55.29 percent of respondents said they won’t return to the gym moving forward, including 57.15 percent in the U.S., 53.46 percent in Canada, 50.31 percent in the UK and 45.60 percent in Australia.
