This Week on The Run Rate - Issue #14
Weekly Roundup · October 6–11, 2026
Profitable Gyms Spend 32.4% of Revenue on Payroll. The Rest Spend 42.5%.
The Health and Fitness Association pooled confidential financials from 244 operators running nearly 27,000 facilities, and the gap between the profitable half and everyone else comes down to ten points of payroll.
The obvious response is to cut staff. The report’s own data says that is the wrong move: high-profit operators generate about 21% more revenue per employee, so they are getting more out of each person rather than employing fewer.
If that arithmetic feels familiar, it is the same sum from the other end as our August Take on growing revenue in double digits on single-digit member growth.
JD Just Put 500,000 Gym Members Inside Its Retail Rewards Scheme.
JD Sports launched JD Gyms Rewards on October 7, linking its gym members to JD STATUS, which has four million UK users and has handed out more than £120 million in credit.
We covered Bilt doing something similar to Equinox in August. The difference here is ownership. JD owns the shops and the gyms, so it can fund the perk out of retail margin and never has to negotiate for anything.
Apple Health App Movement Assessments: What Gyms Should Do
Apple’s redesigned Health app will use the iPhone camera to test flexibility, strength, balance and movement mechanics, then hand the member an exercise plan. That is the first half of a personal training intake, given away.
It has not shipped yet, which makes this a good week to decide what your own assessment is actually for. If the honest answer is “to measure them”, you have a problem coming.
LA Fitness Hit 200 Pilates Studios. Reformers Are Now a $79 Gym Perk.
LA Fitness opened its 200th reformer studio in about two and a half years. At the club we checked, the classes sit inside a $79 membership rather than above it as a paid add-on.
That makes the reformer a hook for selling a gym membership, which is a product no boutique studio can sell back at them.
1,848 Gym Members’ Data Leaked. Someone Used a Staff Password.
A hacker posted names, dates of birth, payment histories and unpaid balances for 1,848 members. The software firm says its platform was not breached, and it is probably right. The access used a real administrator username and password.
Nobody broke in. Someone logged in. Four fixes in the piece, none of them need a budget.
Read This Week
What to do when another studio moves in down the street — Holly Swanson, Pilates Field Guide
Read this straight after our LA Fitness piece, because a big chain dropping reformers into a $79 tier is exactly the scenario she is writing about.
Her advice is to gather the bare minimum on the newcomer, write your ideas down, and then change nothing for a few weeks. She expects their opening surge to plateau around the two or three year mark. The line that stuck with us: “you won’t be able to effectively strategize if you’re constantly watching their next move.”
Before you go
The Run Rate is free, and it stays free. If you want the paid half, The Take goes deeper twice a month on one question, with the numbers worked through: $8 a month, or $80 a year.
Forward this to the operator who needs to see the payroll number.