Here’s a number that should make every gym owner angry:
$33.40.
That’s the median effective hourly rate for a gym owner in 2026.
The median gym pays a coach $35 to run a personal training session.
Read that again: The typical owner, the person who signed the lease, took on the debt and stays up at night worrying about payroll, earns less per hour than the coach on the floor.
That’s one finding from the seventh edition of Two-Brain’s “State of the Industry” report, released this week. And it’s not the most surprising one.
A New Way to Measure
For six years, Chris Cooper opened this report. This year, he handed it to me.
I went through the Two-Brain mentorship program in 2017. Then I joined the team, became our Chief Marketing Officer and now lead the company. So I’ve seen these numbers from both sides: as an owner trying to figure out where I stood, and as the person helping thousands of owners figure out where they stand.
Coop has always said business is a science. You wouldn’t guess at a client’s program. You’d assess, test, measure and adjust. Your business deserves the same care.
This year, the measurements had to change, because the industry did.
In past years, we sorted every gym into one bucket: Big Group, Small Group, 1:1 or Other. That doesn’t work anymore.
87% of gyms now run two or more service models.
More gyms now offer 1:1 personal training (83%) than Big Group classes (78.3%).
And the gyms that give clients more ways to buy are earning more:
- Median monthly revenue for gyms with one service model: $12,307.
- Median monthly revenue for gyms with four: $33,678.
That’s nearly three times as much.
But don’t race to bolt on three new programs tomorrow. Every new model means new pricing, new schedules, new staff and new sales conversations.
Done well, it raises your revenue per member. Done badly, it adds hours to your week and cash to nobody’s pocket.
More Than One in Four Owners Almost Quit
27.3% of gym owners told us they seriously considered selling or closing their gym in the past year because of burnout.
When we compared them with the owners who didn’t, the gap was stark:
- They earned about $13,000 less per year.
- They worked about 12 more hours per week.
- Their gyms brought in about $7,200 less per month.
Burnout is a sign that the business isn’t built to support the person running it.
And a business can be fixed.
The Problem Owners Aren’t Seeing
When we asked about pain points, only 19.2% of owners named retention.
But Wodify data shows retention slipped in every region this year. The typical gym is losing about seven of every 100 clients every month. That’s 87 clients a year you have to replace just to stay even.
Compare that with Brian Foley at Activate in Ireland. Brian has about 360 members and a length of engagement of 27 months, well above the global median of 20.7. His secret? He builds his retention systems for the gym he wants to have, not the gym he has. At 200 members, he was already planning for 350.
Improve retention by just one point, from 92.7% to 93.7%, and a gym with 100 clients keeps 12 more clients a year. At $179 a month, that’s about $26,000 a year without a single new lead.
HYROX: Lead Magnet or Money-Maker?
For the first time, we asked owners about HYROX. About one in four gyms in our survey is now affiliated, and 70% of those are also CrossFit affiliates.
The median HYROX gym earns about $1,000 a month from its HYROX offerings.
Lauren DiSessa at Shelton Athletics earns about three times that. She relaunched HYROX training with a free open house timed to catch the buzz around the NYC and Boston races, sold 13 packages on the spot via QR code, and generated about $6,000 in 60 days from a single Saturday class and a few simulation events.
Same affiliation. Same fee. Very different results.
The report shows how HYROX gyms compare with everyone else on client count, retention and attendance, and when HYROX classes are fullest.
What Else Is Inside
I’ve barely scratched the surface. In the full report, you’ll find:
- Benchmarks for key metrics like revenue, client count, average revenue per member, so you can see exactly where you stand.
- Median pricing for Big Group, Small Group, 1:1 and Open Access.
- Where seven out of 10 leads disappear.
- Whether discounting actually helps revenue.
- How current and former CrossFit affiliates feel about the brand’s future, and how that’s changed since 2023.
- And much more.
This is the largest set of gym data in the world, built with our partners at Kilo and Wodify plus our own dashboards and survey.
Here’s what I’d do: Grab some sticky notes. Set a timer for one hour. Go through the report page by page and write down every number where you’re in the red.
Then pick the one that would change your business the most and make it your first CEO project.
