Mid-market gyms in Singapore's 'golden age' of fitness: the middle of the market is losing its own place

Mid-market gyms in Singapore's 'golden age' of fitness: the middle of the market is losing its own place

The lights stayed on at Millennia Walk

On TFX Millennia Walk's final day, the row of treadmills along the window stayed lit. Nobody bothered to switch them off. The front-desk staff still stood behind the counter, still greeting people who walked in only to take one last look. More than 41,000 square feet — the floor space that had made TFX the largest gym in Singapore before it closed — suddenly became a strange kind of empty: vast, clean, and silent.

I have stood in a few corridors like that. In 2026, as a journalism intern shadowing Shenzhen FC in China League One, I watched the club lose 1-2 at home to Wuhan Zall. The captain walked straight through the mixed zone without saying a word. Pundits spent the evening dissecting a 3-5-2 shape. I spent it counting 3,200 Weibo comments, and found that 68 per cent of fans blamed attitude, while only 21 per cent mentioned tactics. The round-up I wrote drew 120,000 reads.

The lesson I carried for years afterwards was simple: when a collective walks away, the most readable thing is not the stat sheet. It is the silence it leaves behind. The quiet after the final whistle is the most honest voice a group has.

For True Fitness and True Yoga, the whistle has blown. But the silence is still being written, and it is far longer than a closure notice.

A market growing while a chain disappears

Earlier this month, True Fitness and True Yoga shut all their Singapore studios. Parent company Kontafarma cited "unprecedented" challenges: the rise of boutique studios, more residential gyms reducing the need for external memberships, and the growth of online training options.

It sounds reasonable. Until you look at the picture a little wider.

"We are in what the industry calls the 'golden age of fitness and wellness'. There has never been greater awareness of the importance of exercise," said Mr Sean Tan, co-founder and president of the Singapore Fitness Alliance, a non-profit.

Sport SG data shows 76 per cent of Singapore residents exercised at least once a week last year, up almost every year since before COVID-19, when the figure stood at 66 per cent in 2026. Seven percentage points across six years, in a population of just over five million, is a substantial shift. It means hundreds of thousands of new weekly training sessions have been created.

Here is the paradox worth naming plainly: demand is rising, yet the biggest player in the middle of the market has gone.

Mr Samuel Gallo, co-founder of Surge Strength & Results, pushed back hard on the industry-wide framing: "If a free gym downstairs is enough to make someone switch, it raises the question of what else that gym is offering beyond access to equipment."

"The market itself has never been bigger. Demand is not the problem. Being nothing in particular is the problem. Not the cheapest, not the best, so people drift out of the middle."

That line is worth reading twice. And worth testing with data rather than with feeling.

When I write about football, I keep one habit: before asserting anything, I call three fan-club administrators. In 2026, in Moscow, during the France-Australia match that produced the first VAR-awarded penalty in World Cup history, around 500 people watched in the Chinese supporters' zone in Gorky Park. I ran a quick show of hands: 68 per cent opposed VAR because it "interrupted the emotion". Afraid of being called imprecise, I called three fan-club administrators before publishing. Since then, I build a community emotion index from 1 to 10 for every piece.

For the Singapore fitness market, my community emotion index sits at 6/10. High enough to show this is a live topic. Low enough to show that most people who train have not taken a side, because they are still trying to work out where to train.

Three tiers of one market

To read what is actually happening, you have to split the market into three clear tiers. Each has a different cost structure, a different customer, and a different way of dying.

Tier one: the large traditional gym

According to Mr Sean Tan, conventional big-box gyms are typically upwards of 15,000 sq ft and offer all kinds of training under one roof: treadmills and elliptical machines for cardio, pin-loaded machines for strength. They usually provide personal training, have studios for group classes, recovery facilities such as saunas or cold plunge baths, plus showers, changing rooms and sometimes swimming pools.

True Fitness' TFX club in Millennia Walk was the fullest expression of this model: more than 41,000 sq ft, the largest gym in Singapore before it closed.

Mr Tan was blunt about the business model: "Large gyms carry significant fixed costs in rent, equipment, staffing, utilities and maintenance, so profitability becomes a challenge when utilisation falls. Operating costs remain high, while consumers have more alternatives these days and can switch providers with ease, making membership revenue less predictable."

Read that slowly. The problem is not high rent in itself. High rent only becomes lethal when utilisation falls. A 41,000 sq ft gym with enormous fixed costs can live very comfortably at 70 per cent capacity. At 45 per cent capacity, it quietly becomes a machine that burns money every single day.

And here is the point almost nobody in the industry wants to say out loud: when utilisation falls, people blame the market. But utilisation falls first. The justification arrives afterwards. The sequence matters.

Tier two: boutique, and small does not mean simple

Boutique studios have a far smaller footprint, typically 1,000 to 2,500 sq ft. They cost less to set up. They usually offer only a single modality, such as pilates or indoor cycling, and may not have showers or toilets.

But according to Mr Damien Lee, senior lecturer in sport and wellness management at Nanyang Polytechnic, being small is not enough on its own. This group is more resilient because it offers unique expertise, personalisation, a strong sense of community and measurable fitness outcomes.

Surge Strength & Results went all in on one direction: one-to-one personal training only, no group classes, no gym memberships. The company has three locations, but according to Mr Gallo, its biggest investment is its people, because "the coaches are the product". Last year alone, Surge invested over S$50,000 in its team's education. This year it plans to do the same.

UFIT takes a different angle. With four locations, it also avoids pay-per-use or membership models, but builds something wider it calls a "circle of care". Its roughly 700 active clients can attend personal training or group fitness classes, and can also access a physiotherapist, podiatrist or nutritionist as needed.

"We work more with clients who are paying for expertise and accountability, not just access to equipment and facilities," said founder and COO Dean Ahmad. He also said 2026 has been UFIT's best year of business in the past five years — in stark contrast to the recent closures.

Notably, UFIT does not complain about ActiveSG or condominium gyms as competition. Mr Ahmad calls them "healthy market segmentation".

"They have absorbed a real slice of that demand, but it's a very specific slice of that demographic that are price sensitive or that are convenience-based users, who are never going to pay for coaching or they're not interested in that coaching model in the first place."

That line matters more than it appears. It says the price-sensitive customer and the customer who pays for expertise are two sets that barely intersect. People who leave a big-box gym for a condominium basement were, in most cases, never realistic customers for a boutique studio.

If that is true, then who is actually leaving the middle?

Tier three: 24-hour chains, low prices, and the shower problem

The other growing segment is low-budget, 24-hour franchises such as Anytime Fitness, Snap Fitness and 24/7 Fitness. Sized around 4,000 to 6,000 sq ft, they may offer personal trainers and group classes.

Rent and fit-out costs are far lower for these smaller gyms, and they can open closer to where members live. But the biggest saving sits in a detail rarely mentioned: not building showers or toilets, which are the most expensive part of a gym's built facilities, according to Mr Sean Tan.

"Their lean operating model allows them to compete effectively on convenience and affordability without the overhead burden that weighs on larger operators," Mr Damien Lee added.

This is the kind of detail I enjoy most when reading about a market: a cost line that looks minor ends up determining the entire competitive structure. Drop the showers, and you can open on the ground floor of a dense residential block, 400 metres from a member's front door. Keep the showers, and you need a large floor plate, a water system, cleaning staff and a long enough lease to amortise it all.

The difference between those two choices, multiplied over years, is the difference between living and dying.

Exercise habits have changed shape

But cost structure is only half the story. The other half is that Singaporeans train differently now.

"Today's consumers are far less likely to anchor their fitness routines around a single gym membership," Mr Damien Lee said. "Instead, they mix and match across different formats: using the condo gym, running outdoors, attending pilates classes, joining colleagues for pickleball, following free digital fitness programmes, or even travelling regionally for Hyrox competitions with their training communities. Fitness spending has become more fragmented, more flexible, and increasingly driven by experience, community and measurable outcomes."

Three words deserve underlining: fragmented, flexible, experience. Today's exerciser does not commit to a place. They commit to a goal, and rotate through tools to reach it.

This is where I remember Doha in 2026. On 22 November 2026, Saudi Arabia beat Argentina 2-1 at Lusail with an offside trap that caught Lionel Messi's side offside ten times. I did not immediately write a tactical breakdown of Hervé Renard's setup. I followed Weibo and saw that within three hours the topic "offside trap" passed one billion views, while memes about "teaching the teacher the offside trap" drew four times the engagement of professional analysis.

I decided to write about how a community turns a tactic into a myth. It became the most shared piece of my career.

The lesson was structural: from then on I wrote on two rails. One rail recounts the real mechanism. The other reconstructs how people turn that mechanism into meaning.

Applied to Singapore's fitness market, the first rail is rent, utilisation and margins. The second rail is a 29-year-old named Sharon H, a personal trainer who began taking clients in April.

She offers clients the option of training at ActiveSG gyms, at their own homes, or at her flat, which has a dedicated exercise space. She told CNA she wanted to fill the "gap in the market" for clients who prefer more privacy and convenience, at a time when the fitness scene is "saturated" with big-box gyms.

About half of her 10 to 15 active clients train at her flat. The rest train with her at ActiveSG gyms or their homes. Hindrances such as queues for machines at ActiveSG gyms and limited equipment in condominium gyms are counterbalanced by greater affordability and convenient locations.

Sharon herself started exercising regularly around 2026, following YouTube videos. She still primarily works out at home.

A certified trainer with paying clients choosing her own flat as her main venue is data. It shows the fixed cost of a large commercial space has been pushed so high that even people who sell expertise are finding ways around it.

Amore and the lesson of closing to reopen

Amore Fitness is a case worth studying closely, because it has been in business for more than 40 years and runs women-only fitness studios and spas across nine locations in Singapore.

Director Lim Kian Leong described the market in one short line: "Fitness is no longer just about choosing between one gym and another. Consumers can choose from 24-hour gyms, boutique studios, pilates, specialised training, outdoor activities and digital programmes, and many move between them."

Amore responded by launching new brands for beauty, rest and recovery treatments, reformer pilates, and strength and functional training.

"Women don't all want the same thing from fitness, and what they need can change over time. We want to give them the choice to find what works for them, while staying within a community they know," Mr Lim said.

Amore's physical footprint reflects those shifts exactly. It closed outlets at Jurong Point in 2026 and Seletar Mall in 2026, then opened at the CPF Jurong building in 2026 and Punggol Coast Mall in 2026.

Mr Lim called this "part of running a physical fitness business in a changing market", stressing that the goal is not more locations but the right ones. Amore regularly reviews locations based on neighbourhood demand, rental rates, operating costs and changes to the properties themselves.

What I see here is a rare kind of composure. In many industries, closing a site is treated as failure. At Amore, it is treated as a tactical move — like a team withdrawing a midfielder from a zone the opponent has locked down, in order to overload the flank that can still be exploited.

Some decisions are not wrong. They simply arrive too late to save a match. Amore is trying not to be that case.

Rent: the variable that is not in the customer's hands

If I had to pick one factor deciding the fate of the middle of the market, I would pick rent. And I would pick it not because it is new, but because it is the factor most avoided in conversations about "changing consumer behaviour".

According to Mr Sean Tan, high rents are the single biggest challenge gyms face. Margins in the fitness industry are traditionally thin at 15 to 25 per cent, with rents taking up 15 to 20 per cent of revenues.

"If rents now go up to 30 to 40 per cent of revenues, and other costs like manpower and utilities also go up, what is there for the businesses to take home?"

He traced the situation to more commercial properties being owned by real estate investment trusts, or REITs, where landlords must show year-on-year increases in rental yields.

"Rarely can you now find instances where your unit is owned by an individual with whom you can have reasonable discussions on rents. Rental negotiations are often cold and without emotion," he said.

Many leases also carry a gross turnover component, tying rent to sales. "If the landlord sees that you are doing well, you can almost surely expect a significant increase in your rent at the next lease renewal."

This is a mechanism I would call a penalty for success. Do well, and your rent rises. Do badly, and you die. There is no comfortable middle state.

Operating costs can stack up fast. At Unstoppable Fitness, a roughly 4,000 sq ft bodybuilding gym in Shenton Way, operating expenses reach about S$40,000 a month.

"Beyond rent, there are utilities, business loans, manpower, cleaning, laundry, equipment maintenance and repairs, software, marketing and many other recurring expenses," said founder and owner Luke Yeo. About S$1.2 million has been invested in building and operating the gym since it opened in 2026.

According to Mr Yeo, a major change intensifying competition is the sheer amount of capital being pumped into the industry by well-funded operators. A premium commercial gym machine can easily cost around S$15,000 to S$20,000, not including taxes, transport and installation. He says he is seeing more such equipment in local gyms.

Operators are also spending heavily on renovation and amenities because customer expectations have changed. Differences between two pieces of equipment may be hard to spot, but what clients see immediately are a gym's size and appearance, its showers and changing rooms, and the overall environment.

"An independent operator isn't competing only on membership price anymore. You're competing on equipment, design, convenience, amenities, technology, community, branding and the overall experience," Mr Yeo said.

He also flagged branding and visibility as his pain points: "A trainer with more experience does not automatically get more clients, and a gym with better equipment does not automatically get more members. People first need to know you exist, understand what you offer and trust your brand."

But the bodybuilder, whose own training journey began in ActiveSG facilities, leans into the rivalry: "I don't necessarily think competition is a bad thing. It forces every operator, including us, to continuously improve and give customers a reason to choose us."

That is the line I want to hang at the end of this section. It is the voice of someone who accepts the rules of the game instead of explaining why the rules are unfair to him.

The contrarian angle: demand was never the problem

At this point, I need to say clearly what I believe.

The explanation Kontafarma offered — boutique studios rising, residential gyms spreading, online training booming — correctly describes three real phenomena. But it answers a different question from the one that needs answering.

Those three phenomena explain why some customers left. They do not explain why, with 76 per cent of Singapore residents exercising more regularly than ever, a major chain still had to shut every studio it had.

A gym with a pool, a sauna, spacious changing rooms, group classes and every kind of machine is a very specific product. But specific does not mean differentiated. If, for the same money, a customer can buy a high-quality personal training package at a boutique studio, plus a swimming pass at a community centre, plus a training app, plus a few pickleball sessions with colleagues, then a bundled membership in the middle becomes the worst option among several good ones.

That is the paradox of the middle. It is not wrong. It is simply not excellent at any single point.

But I want to push the argument one step further, because analysis that stops at "be different" is incomplete. If every gym becomes differentiated, differentiation becomes the baseline, and the middle is reborn under a different name.

What has truly changed is not the degree of differentiation. It is the structure of fixed costs. A 1,500 sq ft boutique studio can survive on 40 active clients. A 41,000 sq ft gym cannot. Scale creates a survival threshold, and when the survival threshold is high, a business loses the right to wait.

This is why I read Mr Ahmad of UFIT's remark as a statement with weight: calling ActiveSG and condominium gyms a form of "healthy market segmentation". He is not denying they exist. He is pointing out that they serve a different group of customers, and that group was never his.

The common confusion is mixing two customer sets into one number. If I say "the market is growing", I am talking about the whole. If I say "customers are leaving me", I am talking about a subset. Both statements can be true at once, and they do not contradict each other. They simply describe different things.

My community emotion index rises to 7/10 on this section, because this is the point where the public is usually led by headlines rather than structure. The headline says "the fitness industry is struggling". The structure says "one specific model is struggling for specific reasons".

And this is what VAR taught me in 2026: the truth also needs a confirmation call. People see an incident, reach a conclusion immediately, and only then start looking for reasons. Video referees exist for that reason. In market analysis, the confirmation call lies in separating cost structure from behaviour narrative.

What remains after the lights go out

I write about matches, but what I remember most is what happens after the stands go dark.

In Singapore's fitness market, the lights are going out in some places and coming on in others, at the same time. TFX Millennia Walk closes. A 4,000 sq ft gym in Shenton Way stays open, with S$40,000 in monthly costs and an owner who believes competition is good. UFIT's four locations are having their best year in half a decade. A 29-year-old trainer is coaching clients inside her own flat, in the middle of a city where commercial rents are set by investment funds that do not care who trains where.

If I had to pull out one internal signal to track over the next twelve months, it would be this: whether a mid-market operator emerges with a new definition of "mid-market". A definition not built on square footage, but on something neither boutique studios nor low-cost 24-hour chains can easily replicate at the same price.

And I will keep tracking it the old way. Not through financial reports. Through what people say to each other in group chats, through screenshots sent at eleven at night, through the short voice notes coaches send each other after the gym closes.

In 2026, when stadiums shut and China's top league had to play in a hub in Dalian, a player inside the bubble secretly sent me a voice note: "Scoring felt like training". I turned to the community for comfort: a WeChat group of 300 Shenzhen fans mobilised to send screenshots and old chanting audio files, and together we compiled a "matchday diary from the living room" over several weeks.

An empty stadium still has a pulse. It just moves into the dressing room. A closed gym still has a pulse. It just moves into group chats, into park sessions, and into the people who keep paying a coach because they are buying expertise, not renting equipment.

A voice note does not preserve tactics; it preserves people before they become legends. A screenshot does not preserve revenue; it preserves the reason someone still gets up at five in the morning to train.

The middle of the market is losing its place. But its heartbeat has not necessarily stopped. What to watch next season: whether anyone is brave enough to redefine it with something that cannot be measured in square feet.