October 28, 2026
by Kelsey DeSanctis

Strength Training Is Growing. Coaching Needs to Catch Up.

October 28, 2026
by Kelsey DeSanctis

Everywhere you look, someone is predicting the future of the fitness industry.

Artificial intelligence is going to replace personal trainers. GLP-1 medications are transforming weight loss. Technology is going to make coaching faster, cheaper, and more accessible. There seems to be a constant conversation about what the industry is going to look like in five or ten years, and whether the people working in it should be concerned.

Meanwhile, something pretty significant is happening right in front of us.

Strength training is growing. People are finally beginning to recognize its importance. And the research supporting its benefits continues to accumulate.

For those of us who have spent years believing in the value of developing physical strength, this should be incredibly encouraging.

I also think it presents an enormous opportunity for strength coaches and personal trainers, provided we're prepared to take our profession seriously.

Because despite the growing popularity of resistance training, spend enough time in a commercial gym, or simply have a conversation with your friends and family about how they train, and you'll realize just how much confusion still exists.

We have a long way to go.

Strength Training Is Gaining Ground

According to the Health & Fitness Association's 2026 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report, 81 million Americans held fitness facility memberships in 2025, representing an all-time high and a 5.2% increase over the previous year.

When non-member visitors are included, more than 100 million Americans used a fitness facility throughout the year, accounting for nearly 7 billion visits.

Free weights, including barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells, have been the fastest-growing equipment category since 2021.

Perhaps equally encouraging is the growth among older adults. Membership among individuals aged 65 and older increased 8.6% year over year.

And it's not just facility memberships and equipment usage that are increasing.

Personal training participation reached an all-time high in 2025, with 26.2% of U.S. fitness facility members using the service, up from 22.6% in 2024. Small-group training participation also reached a record 34.7%.

More people are seeking professional coaching.

Interestingly, the same association reported that personal training participants averaged 21 sessions annually in 2024, compared with 28 in 2019.

So we're seeing growing participation in coaching services, alongside an earlier decline in the frequency with which people used them. We don't yet have comparable 2025 session-frequency data to know whether that trend has continued.

I think that's worth paying attention to.

There is a growing audience interested in professional guidance. Whether coaches can deliver enough value to earn their continued investment is something our industry should take seriously.

More broadly, strength training is becoming a familiar part of the conversation surrounding health, longevity, body composition, and quality of life.

And it's about fucking time.

For years, resistance training was associated primarily with bodybuilding, competitive strength sports, and athletic performance. Its role in supporting health across the lifespan received considerably less public attention.

Today, the conversation increasingly includes preserving muscle mass as we age, maintaining bone density, improving metabolic health, reducing physical limitations, and supporting long-term independence.

The research has been building for decades.

A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine examined 16 prospective cohort studies and found that muscle-strengthening activities were associated with a 10–17% lower risk of all-cause mortality and several major chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

These findings are observational and do not establish causation, although they contribute to an extensive body of evidence supporting the health benefits of muscle-strengthening activity.

Research involving more than 500,000 UK Biobank participants, published in The BMJ in 2018, also found that lower grip strength was associated with higher risks of mortality and several major diseases. Grip strength was studied as a marker of physical capacity, rather than as an intervention.

We are talking about a physical quality that contributes to how people move, perform, function, and age.

The growing recognition of strength training represents significant progress.

There's a lot to be optimistic about.

The Opportunity Is Much Bigger Than the Gym Membership Numbers

The popularity of fitness facilities tells us people are interested.

Participation data gives us another perspective.

According to the U.S. government's Healthy People 2030 initiative, only 32.9% of American adults reported performing muscle-strengthening activities on at least two days per week in 2024.

The situation is remarkably similar in Australia.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that, in 2022, 73% of adults aged 18–64 were not meeting the recommendation for muscle-strengthening activity at least twice weekly.

Among those failing to meet the recommendation, 91% reported performing no muscle-strengthening activity during the preceding week.

Research across Europe paints a similar picture.

In 2020, researchers published an analysis of 280,605 adults across 28 European countries in PLOS ONE. Using data collected during the 2013–14 European Health Interview Survey, they found that just 17.3% of adults reported muscle-strengthening exercise on two or more days per week.

Participation varied considerably by country, with substantially higher rates in Nordic nations than in several Southern and Eastern European countries.

These surveys involved different populations, years, and methodologies, so their percentages shouldn't be compared as equivalent measures of current participation. Collectively, however, they demonstrate how widespread insufficient muscle-strengthening activity has been.

And we're talking about minimum activity guidelines.

They tell us very little about the quality of someone's training program, the progression they've achieved, or whether their exercise selection and training variables are appropriate for their goals.

When I look at these numbers, I see tremendous opportunity.

There are millions of people who could benefit from beginning a structured resistance training program. There are millions more who are already exercising and could benefit from better programming and coaching.

Think about how many people we could help become stronger, healthier, and more physically independent.

It's an incredible position for this profession to be in.

We're Still Massively Misunderstanding Strength Training

Anyone who has spent enough time around commercial gyms knows exactly what I'm talking about.

People are showing up consistently, working hard (well, some of them), and spending hours every week training with very little understanding of what they're actually trying to accomplish.

Exercises change constantly.

Loads are selected arbitrarily.

Training volume increases without much consideration for recovery or adaptation.

Rep schemes are followed because someone saw them online.

Fatigue becomes the measure of a successful session.

And earned progression, arguably one of the most fundamental principles of training, is often an afterthought.

I've had conversations with people who have been lifting weights for years and couldn't tell me whether they've become significantly stronger over that time.

People who genuinely care about their health, enjoy being active, and are willing to commit several hours a week to exercise.

They have the effort. They have the consistency.

Imagine what they could accomplish with a well-designed program, appropriate progression, and someone who understands how to guide them.

That's what frustrates me about the current state of strength training.

There is so much time, energy, and potential being left on the table.

We have access to an extraordinary amount of training information. There are endless resources covering anatomy, biomechanics, exercise technique, programming, periodization, nutrition, and recovery.

Yet the application of that information remains remarkably inconsistent.

A person can understand the definition of progressive overload and still have no idea how to implement it. They can memorize a dozen periodization models and struggle to construct a coherent training cycle. They can watch hundreds of exercise demonstrations and have difficulty identifying why someone's movement needs to change.

Developing that level of understanding takes time. It takes reps.

It requires education, practice, observation, critical thinking, and experience working with actual people.

And I think that process deserves considerably more respect than it currently receives.

The Research Shows What Properly Applied Strength Training Can Accomplish

One of my favorite examples comes from Australia.

The LIFTMOR randomized controlled trial, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research in 2018, examined the effects of high-intensity resistance and impact training in 101 postmenopausal women with low bone mass.

Participants were assigned to either a supervised resistance and impact training program or a home-based, low-intensity exercise program.

The supervised group trained twice weekly for eight months, completing 30-minute sessions that included resistance exercises performed at high relative intensities.

At the end of the intervention, the supervised group had increased lumbar spine bone mineral density by an average of 2.9%, while the comparison group experienced an average decline of 1.2%.

The supervised group also demonstrated superior improvements in several measures of physical function.

This was a carefully controlled intervention involving screened participants and highly supervised training. Its safety and effectiveness cannot simply be generalized to unsupervised high-intensity exercise for everyone with low bone density.

But the findings are fascinating.

Consider the population being studied.

These were postmenopausal women with osteopenia or osteoporosis, and a properly structured, closely supervised training intervention produced meaningful improvements in outcomes directly relevant to their health and physical function.

This is the kind of work coaches should be incredibly proud of.

The principles we spend so much time studying have applications far beyond the weight room. Understanding how to apply them to different populations, objectives, and physical capabilities is an important professional skill.

Good Coaching Can Make a Measurable Difference

A 2025 randomized controlled trial conducted by researchers in Germany examined the effects of supervised, app-guided, and self-guided resistance training.

The study included 79 trained men and women completing a 10-week, three-day-per-week resistance training program.

All three groups improved their strength. The supervised group, however, achieved significantly greater improvements in squat strength.

The average increases in squat one-repetition maximum were:

26.6 kg in the supervised group
19.2 kg in the app-guided group
19.4 kg in the self-guided group

Training adherence was also highest in the supervised group at 88.2%, followed by 81.2% in the app-guided group and 52.2% in the self-guided group.

A single 10-week study cannot establish the superiority of every coaching model, but the findings demonstrate the potential value of supervision in resistance training.

Good coaches observe movement, provide feedback, support adherence, interpret performance, manage training variables, recognize limitations, and make decisions based on the individual in front of them.

They're responsible for the programming strategy and how that strategy evolves. They understand the relationship between training stress, recovery, and adaptation, and know how to evaluate whether the training is producing the desired response.

Those decisions accumulate over weeks, months, and years.

And they can make a tremendous difference in someone's progress.

AI, GLP-1 Medications, and the Changing Fitness Industry

Now, let's return to the conversation everyone seems to be having.

Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly. Fitness applications are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Consumer access to programming tools, exercise information, and performance tracking continues to expand.

I think this is exciting.

AI can help organize and analyze data, streamline administrative processes, summarize research, and assist with various aspects of program development.

I'd encourage coaches to become familiar with these tools and understand how they can support their work.

At the same time, their growing capabilities should encourage us to examine our own knowledge.

When technology generates a training program, can you evaluate the decisions behind it? Can you identify inappropriate exercise selections, questionable loading strategies, or programming variables that don't align with the client's needs?

Can you explain what you would change and why?

The value of your expertise becomes evident in the quality of the decisions you make.

GLP-1 medications are another interesting example of how health and fitness are evolving.

Their increasing use is changing conversations surrounding obesity, weight management, and body composition. These medications have legitimate medical applications and have demonstrated substantial effectiveness in reducing body weight.

But weight loss brings questions about changes in body composition and physical function.

A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism examined 20 randomized controlled trials involving 15,782 participants.

The researchers found that lean mass accounted for approximately 25–39% of weight lost with the incretin-based medications studied, depending on the medication. The proportion was broadly comparable to that observed in lifestyle interventions without resistance training.

Lifestyle interventions incorporating resistance training showed a more favorable lean-mass preservation profile in the pooled analysis. These comparisons involved different trials and interventions, so they should not be interpreted as direct evidence of the same effect in every person taking GLP-1 medications.

Importantly, lean mass includes tissues other than skeletal muscle, and changes in lean mass alone cannot tell us what happened to someone's muscular strength or physical function.

The research reinforces the importance of considering body composition and physical performance throughout weight management.

Resistance training has a valuable role in developing and maintaining muscular strength, supporting muscle mass, and improving physical function.

As healthcare continues to evolve, I believe knowledgeable strength coaches have an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to people's long-term health, working within their scope of practice and alongside qualified healthcare professionals when appropriate.

The applications of strength training continue to expand. So does our responsibility to understand them.

There Has Never Been a Better Reason to Become Excellent at This Profession

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment for fitness trainers and instructors will grow 7% between 2025 and 2035, compared with 3% for occupations overall.

Of course, employment projections can't guarantee the future of any individual coach or business. But they offer another reason to feel optimistic about the demand for fitness professionals.

When I look at the research, the growing public awareness, and the increasing participation in professional coaching, I see a tremendous opportunity.

I also see a profession that needs to hold itself to a higher standard.

For too long, our industry has accepted an enormous range of knowledge and competency under the same general professional titles.

Personal trainer. Strength coach. Performance coach. Exercise specialist.

Call yourself whatever you want.

What do you actually know, and what can you do with it?

Can you assess the person standing in front of you, identify their strengths and limitations, and select exercises that reflect their individual needs?

Can you organize training volume, intensity, frequency, and progression in a way that produces the adaptations you're trying to achieve?

Can you explain your programming decisions, recognize when a program is working, and reevaluate your approach when the results aren't there?

These are questions every coach should be asking themselves.

Because there is always more to learn, and there's always room to get better.

Be Proud of What You Do

I hope coaches recognize how exciting this moment is for our profession.

We have decades of research supporting the benefits of strength training. We have greater public awareness, better technology, more opportunities to work with different populations, and an extraordinary amount of educational information available to us.

We also have millions of people who could be getting significantly more out of the time and energy they're investing in their training.

That should motivate the hell out of us.

Learn anatomy and biomechanics. Understand exercise technique. Study programming and periodization. Develop your ability to assess, plan, coach, and evaluate.

Spend time on the gym floor. Work with different populations. Pay attention to the response you're getting from your training programs. Question the things you think you know.

Read research critically, continue your education, and learn from people who have spent years doing this work.

Then take everything you've learned and figure out how to apply it.

Because ultimately, the quality of our work is reflected in the people we help.

The client who has spent years struggling to make progress and finally begins getting stronger.

The older adult who regains confidence in their physical abilities.

The athlete who becomes better prepared for the demands of their sport.

The person who begins to understand their own training and develops an entirely different relationship with physical activity.

These are meaningful outcomes.

And there is a tremendous amount of satisfaction in knowing that your knowledge and your work contributed to them.

We should be incredibly proud of what properly applied strength training can accomplish.

The industry has enough people who know how to make someone tired.

We need more people who truly understand how to make someone stronger.

People who take their craft seriously, who understand the science behind their decisions, and who take responsibility for the quality of their programming and coaching.

I hope that encourages you. I hope it makes you excited about the work you do and the people you have the opportunity to help.

Keep learning. Keep questioning. Keep refining your craft.

Be proud to be a strength coach.

Be proud to be a personal trainer.

And be damn good at it.