How working out at the gym replaced the home improvement project

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN

New York (CNN) — I knew when I emailed the Equinox manager complaining about the hulking, rarely used Nautilus machine that my gym obsession had gotten out of hand.

“Since most people use that floor space for functional and strength training, would you guys be able to find another home for the machine, preferably on a different floor?” I wrote.

The machine is still in the same spot three years later. And so am I.

I throw Equinox way more money than a 33-year-old journalist in New York City should and spend an unhealthy amount of time planning my gym schedule every week. But it dawned on me recently when I saw a parade of 20-and 30-somethings in their uniforms of Alo tank tops and On sneakers that the ranks of gym-obsessed young adults were everywhere.

Gym and fitness studio memberships for people under 35 grew faster than older groups from 2019 to 2025, according to analysis by Anton Severin, the vice president of research at the industry trade group Health and Fitness Association. Roughly 36% of people ages 18-24 belonged to a gym, an all-time high rate for any age group, he found.

Gen Z and Millennials also spend more on their monthly gym dues than older generations.

How did going to the gym come to dominate my generation’s life? Why do we walk around with weighted vests to increase the burden on ourselves?

Social media, the decline of drinking and organized religion, and a craving for in-person interactions are usually among the reasons offered to explain the boom. “A $300-a-Month Gym Is Gen Z’s Social Club,” Bloomberg declared in May.

These are all important factors, but the big economic and demographic changes driving the craze have been overlooked: People like me are delaying or forgoing marriage, children and homeownership.

The old American Dream was a home to improve and kids to fill it. Those milestones consumed previous generations’ resources and attention. But for a growing share of Gen Z and Millennials priced out or postponing traditional markers of adulthood, working on our bodies at the gym has become the home fixer-upper project.

My thesis is a hard one to prove because there’s no single explanation for the trend. But the share of younger, unmarried gym members without kids is growing.

A decade ago, half of gym members between 20 and 40 were married. Last year, only one-third were, Severin found. And 36% had kids, an eight percentage point drop from a decade ago.

Making gains at the gym is something that Gen Z and Millennials feel is attainable, said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a historian at The New School and the author of “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession,” which traces the rise of gym culture from Jack LaLanne to Muscle Beach to CrossFit. Petrzela is also a fitness instructor who taught classes at Equinox. (She’s ripped.)

“In a world where so much is uncertain and homeownership is more inaccessible, the job market is crazy, AI is changing everything, and do we even believe college degrees mean anything, nothing is more reliable than the fact that working on your own body will yield some sort of improved result,” she said.

Americo Rodrigues, who works in finance in New York City, belongs to Equinox, Barry’s and the Program, a workout group in the city started by the ultra-fit entertainment mogul Strauss Zelnick. (I train with the Program occasionally.)

By the time Rodrigues’ parents were his age, 28, they had kids. But for now, he’s focused on work, his girlfriend and his exercise routine.

“It’s hard for young people to imagine growing into something larger than yourself,” he said. “The gym is something that’s easily in your control and you know you can work on yourself.”

Evolution of the gym

My mother has an outdated view of what I do at the gym. She calls it “bodybuilding” and complains about my “muscle tees.”

But the current gym craze is an outgrowth of her and her parents’ generations. Before the 1970s, relatively few Americans exercised routinely.

Title IX and the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s helped drive women to aerobics classes and Jane Fonda workout videos. Once taboo, exercise became a form of empowerment for women.

My mom joined the running phenomenon during the late 1970s and 1980s. She was part of a new class of young professionals in cities who took jobs in finance, law and media and turned their leisure time into work.

Dylan Gottlieb, a historian at Bentley University, sheds lights on the explosion of marathons and road races among this breed in his book “Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York.”

Long-distance running “offered yuppies a sense of quantifiable accomplishment that echoed the rigorous metrics they were assessed on at work,” Gottlieb told me.

My mom stopped running as much after she got married and started going to the gym in the 1990s. It was around the time fitness clubs began to shake their reputations as seedy places.

But she wasn’t spending $300 a month at a luxury gym in her thirties. And her generation didn’t have the giant “health and wellness” economy of peptides, testosterone replacement therapy and Oura rings.

The way younger adults work out has changed, too. Everyone is lifting weights. Today, I often see more women lifting at Equinox than men.

I don’t even bother trying to keep up with my girlfriend. She does HIIT workouts at boutique gym F45.

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