For decades, fitness marketing focused on individual transformation: your body, your discipline, your result. A growing part of movement culture is now organized around a different promise—belonging.
THE SIGNAL
Strava’s 2025 Year in Sport report analyzed activity data from a global community of more than 180 million users alongside survey insights from more than 30,000 people. New clubs on the platform nearly quadrupled during the year, reaching one million total clubs. Running clubs grew 3.5 times, while club-organized events rose 1.5 times year over year.
Survey data also points toward the social function of movement: 37% of respondents viewed run clubs as a good place to meet people, and Gen Z respondents were substantially more likely than Gen X to say they use fitness to meet people with shared interests.
Why New York amplifies the trend
New York is unusually compatible with ritualized group movement. Density makes repeated encounters possible. Parks, waterfront paths, bridges and neighborhood routes give groups recognizable meeting points. Coffee shops and wellness businesses can extend an hour of exercise into a longer social experience.
This means the run club is not simply a workout format. It can function as what urban sociologists might call a low-friction social layer: a reason for people who do not know one another to be in the same place at the same time with an immediate shared activity.
NEW YORK REPORT — KEY SIGNALS
- One million clubs were on Strava by the end of the 2025 reporting period.
- Running clubs grew 3.5x on the platform during the year.
- Group movement is increasingly doing social work that once belonged to nightlife or traditional clubs.
THE PALM POINT OF VIEW
For lifestyle brands, community cannot be reduced to a follower count. The more interesting opportunity is to create useful reasons for people to meet in real life: a walk, a workout, a dog-friendly event, a recovery session, a neighborhood route. Product can be present, but participation should still make sense without a purchase.