It’s been an eventful year for the local fitness industry in terms of new gyms opening up. We have more choice than ever before when it comes to choosing a club that meets our needs.

It is a mouth-watering prospect for enthusiasts like myself to envisage a country sporting ample high-quality, fully-equipped and well-attended fitness centres.

Indeed, the growth we’ve seen over the last couple of years alone indicates that awareness about physically active living finally seems to be on the rise.

The current setting therefore begs the question: What does the future hold for the fitness industry in Malta and Gozo?

Since we don’t have any hard statistics to go by, it is quite difficult to measure and therefore forecast what might lay on the horizon. Nevertheless, I simply cannot resist speculating. What will the scene be like in five or even 10 years from now?

While the numbers are lacking, we can nevertheless make some educated guesses based on what has happened elsewhere in the world. Reports have suggested the international fitness industry continues to grow each year, and such growth resonates here too. The amount of people who are likely to take the plunge into a healthier and more active lifestyle and, more specifically, immerse themselves in the fitness club environment, could be down predominantly to a question of culture.

Most local sport or fitness enthusiasts, upon conversing with, say, northern Europeans or Brits, will most likely have noticed that attending a gym tends to be more of a mainstream activity in those countries than it is here. Indeed, it could even be considered as somewhat of a norm.

In Malta, this is as yet simply not the case. Localities in Malta with a significant presence of foreigners, be they tourists or employees of foreign companies, tend to demonstrate this phenomenon. Walk into a gym in any of these areas and note the ratio of foreign to Maltese members working out.

Having said that, things are changing. More Maltese coming from an ever more vast range of ages and backgrounds are starting to take the plunge.

Gym instructors and personal trainers in Malta who have been in the game for a while would most likely agree that the standard ‘profile’ of Maltese clients requesting their services has changed over the years.

It is a mouth-watering prospect for enthusiasts to envisage a country sporting ample high-quality, fully-equipped and well-attended fitness centres

While 10 years ago clients may have been mostly younger people, nowadays our clients are aged anywhere from 16 to well past retirement age.

It is no longer the reserve of the fit and healthy either. People with conditions or special requirements now form a healthy percentage of clients we see and help with fitness-related goals.

So while our fitness culture appears to be changing, we can safely assume that our industry per capita is not as big as it is in, say, the UK or the US. But what would happen if it were to become so? How big could it possibly get?

The number of people who are members of a gym in the UK is estimated at anywhere between 4.4 and 7.6 million adults, depending on the studies you read. There are around 64 million people in Britain, which puts the percentage of the total population that are actually members of a gym somewhere around 10 per cent. The US paints a far richer picture for the industry, where it is estimated that approximately 54 million people out of a population of 318 million, are gym users. That would be an even greater percentage than in the UK, closer to 16 per cent.

Now here’s an intriguing prospect. What would happen if we applied these percentages here? Our own population stands at a little over 423,000 people. If we applied the British statistic to our populace, then Maltese gym members could theoretically one day number in the region of 42,300.

How many gyms would that equate to, I wonder? Well, while the smallest membership gyms in Malta and Gozo would struggle to survive with any less than 200 members, the largest clubs on the island would be pushing on, or just surpassing the 1,000 members-mark. That’s quite a large range, so let’s take an average of 600. This is still quite generous, as I would suspect the real average gym membership level across all gyms in Malta, cumulatively, would actually be lower than this.

This figure would put us at around 70 gyms dotted around our fair islands. Given that there are 68 towns and villages in Malta with local councils, it doesn’t seem all that unrealistic. Naturally, smaller villages would sport smaller gyms and membership numbers, while larger localities might make up for the remainder. If we take the situation in the US as a benchmark instead, we’re talking about considerably more gyms sprouting up across Malta and Gozo, possibly even more than a hundred.

What sort of growth would this represent in relation to the our current situation? While there are many studios and group fitness providers across the Maltese islands already, if you consider fully-equipped gyms that actually fall within the bracket of having at least 200 members, it could be estimated our total tally of gyms currently stands at around 35.

Comparing ourselves to the UK therefore, assuming our culture for fitness will continue to move in a more active direction, it would not be unrealistic to envisage an industry of the foreseeable future of double its current size.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt