The teardown
Life Time, Garmin, Peloton, and the rest of the public market, broken down to the numbers that actually matter.
Quarterly report
The State of Fitness: Q1 2026
The fitness industry's public earnings, decoded. Every quarter, Eric Malzone sits down with operator Alex Alimanestianu and The Ready State's Juliet Starrett to tear down the numbers and tell you what they actually mean.
Get the Q1 2026 report.
The complete PDF, with linked audio breakdowns. Free to read and keep.
Brands covered
The companies behind the numbers.
Life Time Group Holdings · Garmin Ltd. · Peloton Interactive
Guests and brands featured on the show
WHOOP · Peloton · Equinox · Oura · Eight Sleep · Life Time · Barry's · F45 · Tonal · Strava · Planet Fitness · Technogym · Centr · TRX · Crunch · The Ready State · Asensei · Garmin · Hyperice · Forward · ABC Fitness
What's in the report
The audio breakdowns
Every company links straight to the moment in the episode. Hear Alex and Juliet make the call in their own words.
The so-what
Not just what happened. What it means for how you build, operate, or invest this year.
Industry Overview
The Big Picture
Five signals showed up in every report we looked at this quarter, and each one has real implications for how you build from here.
- 01
The K-shaped economy has arrived in fitness
High-income consumers are spending more, not less. Life Time raised dues and barely moved churn. Planet Fitness added over a million members. The pressure sits in the middle: mid-tier boutiques and mid-priced franchises without a clear value proposition at either end.
- 02
Wearable tech is worth more than most gym chains
Garmin's market cap is $46 billion. Life Time, one of the best-run gym businesses in the country, sits near $7 billion. The market is telling you where it thinks long-term value is being created.
- 03
Fitness and healthcare are converging
The bridge between facilities and the medical system is being built right now: GLP-1 integration, longevity programming, clinical partnerships. Not niche plays anymore. The operators who move early get a real head start.
- 04
AI is becoming infrastructure
Peloton deployed AI personalization to its entire member base this quarter. Strava is building AI into post-workout reporting. Companies treating AI as an add-on will lose to the ones building it into the core product.
- 05
The IPO pipeline is worth watching
Strava filed confidentially. Oura is being tracked closely. After years of fitness companies struggling as public entities, the next wave of listings will tell us a lot about how Wall Street values health and wellness now.
Company teardowns
Behind the headline numbers.
Figures and commentary from the original The State of Fitness: Q1 2026 report. Fiscal periods are shown for each company.
| Company | Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Life Time Group Holdings | Q1 Revenue | $788.7M | +12% YoY |
| Life Time Group Holdings | Adj. EBITDA | $226M | +18% YoY |
| Life Time Group Holdings | Rev / Member / Qtr | $930 | +10.2% YoY |
| Garmin Ltd. | Market cap | $46B | vs. Life Time near $7B |
| Garmin Ltd. | Fitness segment | +42% | Market growing ~18% |
| Garmin Ltd. | Outdoor segment | -5% | The one soft spot |
| Peloton Interactive | Revenue | $663M | +1% YoY, first growth in a year |
| Peloton Interactive | Adj. EBITDA | $126M | +41% |
| Peloton Interactive | Paid subs | 2.66M | -7.6% YoY |
NYSE: LTH . Q1 2026
Life Time Group Holdings
- Q1 Revenue
- $788.7M +12% YoY
- Adj. EBITDA
- $226M +18% YoY
- Rev / Member / Qtr
- $930 +10.2% YoY
- 837,900 memberships, up 1.4%, against 12% revenue growth. Getting more out of each member, not chasing volume.
- Lower-revenue insurance-administered memberships down 14.9% on purpose. Quality over quantity, and it is working.
- Net leverage down to 1.6x and a first-ever $500M buyback. Capital allocation has replaced survival mode.
- 12 to 14 new clubs under construction, all in affluent markets. The test is whether the formula travels to new zip codes.
Hear the discussion in the quarterly episode →“In affluent areas, the last thing people cut when they are trying to save money is their gym membership, especially at this level of experience.”
Juliet Starrett
NASDAQ: GRMN . Q1 2026
Garmin Ltd.
- Market cap
- $46B vs. Life Time near $7B
- Fitness segment
- +42% Market growing ~18%
- Outdoor segment
- -5% The one soft spot
- Fitness grew 42% in a market expanding near 18%. Taking share from a neglected Fitbit and a shrinking Samsung.
- Apple Watch holds 23% of global smartwatch share. Garmin is not fighting Apple, it is winning everything else.
- The Truemed partnership makes devices HSA/FSA eligible, moving the product into healthcare spend.
- A screenless, no-subscription band is coming straight at Whoop, and Garmin has barely started monetizing its data.
Hear the discussion in the quarterly episode →“You can get sleep data, GPS, nutrition tracking, workout tracking, all with no subscription. At some point you are like, why am I paying for Whoop AND Oura AND this?”
Juliet Starrett
NASDAQ: PTON . Q3 FY2026 (quarter ended March 2026)
Peloton Interactive
- Revenue
- $663M +1% YoY, first growth in a year
- Adj. EBITDA
- $126M +41%
- Paid subs
- 2.66M -7.6% YoY
- Net income $26M, free cash flow $151M (up 59%), net debt down 70% to $173M. The turnaround is real.
- Churn is low at 1.2% a month. People who own the bike are not leaving. New subscriber acquisition is the problem.
- German and Spanish content dubbing just launched, an international lever that sat unused too long.
- Commercial sales (hotels, universities, corporate) are a credible path. TechnoGym does roughly $1B a year there.
Hear the discussion in the quarterly episode →“They have done a good job righting the ship and plugging holes. Now they have to figure out growth, and that is the harder problem.”
Eric Malzone
Peek inside
The full company breakdowns.
Every company gets the teardown treatment: revenue, margins, segment trends and the number that tells the story.
- Public-company financials decoded
- Segment-by-segment trend analysis
- Linked audio breakdowns from the show
What comes next
On the horizon.
IPO Watch
Strava
Filed confidentially, targeting a 2026 listing with Goldman leading. 180M users, profitable, growing. Does Wall Street price it as a fitness app or a social network? The multiple swings on the answer.
IPO Watch
Oura
Watched at an $11B-plus target. The thesis is not the hardware, it is years of sleep, HRV, and recovery data across millions of users.
Trend
Who wins the AI layer
Peloton has Peloton IQ, Strava has AI reports, eGym builds it into the hardware. Building AI into the hardware experience, not an app on top, is the advantage.
Trend
Fitness meets preventative healthcare
The most important long-term trend in the industry. The distribution is already there in tens of thousands of gyms. Who builds the bridge that makes it work at scale?
One more signal
Aescape
The robotic massage company declared insolvency in April 2026 after raising $157M. The product worked (Alex tried one and came away impressed). The problem was unit economics: capital-intensive hardware, long commercial sales cycles, and venture timelines that do not match.
Cool technology and a viable business are different things. The category is not dead, it has been repriced. Aescape showed everyone what does not work.
Who's behind the numbers
Eric Malzone
Host of Future of Fitness. Conversations with founders, operators, investors and experts across fitness, health and wellness.
Juliet Starrett
Co-founder of The Ready State. Ran a CrossFit affiliate for years. Sees the operator and human-performance side.
Alex Alimanestianu
Former CEO of Town Sports International. Knows capital markets and operator economics cold.
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