From Insight to Action and Ongoing Optimisation

Total Fitness is one of the UK’s leading mid-market gym chains, operating 15 large-format clubs across north England and Wales with a strong focus on premium facilities, high-quality equipment, and member experience.

 “As a business, we’re continually reinvesting in our clubs to make sure they reflect how our members actually want to train.”

Graeme Dick, Head of Property, Total Fitness

The Challenge: Making High-Value Capex Decisions with Limited Insight

When Total Fitness complete any level of investment they always make sure they ask the right questions, one of the most important ones being what will support their members to train more effectively. This was no different when they were planning investment works at their largest club in Wilmslow. The way their members train is always evolving, and Total Fitness need to help them make their workouts as seamless as possible.

As Graeme put it: 

“We had a view that areas of the club were not serving the needs of our members.
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We know that congested areas make for intimidating environments, but weren’t sure how to use the space more effectively.
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We had a suspicion that we were over-provisioned with treadmills.

But we had no substantial data or evidence to support our intuitions.”

Key challenges included:

• A large, complex gym layout with multiple equipment zones spread over 2 floors
• No objective way to measure true peak utilisation of equipment
• No visibility into where under-utilisation was occurring, not just what
• Making sure they invested in the areas where the members would most benefit

“We had a feeling that some areas of the gym weren’t being used as effectively as they could be, it was important to us as a team we invested in the right areas for our members”‍

Graeme Dick, Head of Property, Total Fitness

The TwinLabs Solution: A Live 3D Digital Twin of the Gym Floor

Total Fitness implemented the TwinLabs platform at the Wilmslow gym, creating a fully interactive 3D digital twin of the space. Unlike traditional CCTV analytics or manual audits, TwinLabs provided:

• Objective, continuous utilisation data across all equipment and spaces
• A spatially accurate 3D view, not just counts, charts or heatmaps
• Insight into what was used, when it was used, and where it was located
• Coverage of free weights, functional areas, and pin-selected equipment - not just connected cardio machines

“The twin didn’t just show Total Fitness their numbers -  it showed behaviour. Seeing usage mapped into a 3D model of the gym was a real lightbulb moment.”

Tim Wade, CEO, TwinLabs

What the Data Revealed: Challenging Long-Held Assumptions

The TwinLabs data quickly confirmed - and refined - Total Fitness’ assumptions:

1. Treadmills Were Over-Provisioned

Even at peak demand, not all treadmills were in use simultaneously. This created a clear opportunity to reduce the number of treadmills without negatively impacting member experience.

Crucially, the insight went deeper:

• Under-utilisation was not uniform across the gym
• Some treadmill zones were consistently less valued than others

This enabled a targeted reconfiguration, rather than a blunt percentage reduction.

“It wasn’t just ‘remove 10% of treadmills’. We could see exactly which treadmills, in which locations, weren’t delivering value to our members .”

Graeme Dick, Head of Property, Total Fitness

2. Demand Was Stronger for Strength and Cable Equipment

The platform showed consistently high utilisation of:

• Free weights
• Pin-selected equipment, in particular cable stations.

Armed with this data, Total Fitness chose to reallocate space freed up from treadmills into the areas members clearly valued most, including investment in specialist cable stations.

3. Functional Space Was Underserved - and Understood for the First Time

For the first time, Total Fitness had objective data on how its functional training areas were being used.

This revealed unmet demand for:

• Open, flexible space
• Individual strength, mobility, stretching, and calisthenics training

The result was the creation of bookable functional zones, allowing members to reserve space and train with confidence during busy periods.

“Understanding how functional space was actually being used unlocked a whole new way of thinking about that part of the gym experience.”

Tim Wade, CEO, TwinLabs

From Insight to Action and Ongoing Optimisation

Following the reconfiguration:

• Floor space allocated to treadmills was reduced
• Strength and cable equipment capacity was increased
• Functional space was expanded and formalised

Critically, TwinLabs didn’t stop being useful once the changes were made.

Total Fitness now uses the platform to:

• Monitor the impact of the new layout
• Validate that changes are delivering the intended outcomes
• Fine-tune the equipment mix, based on real behaviour

“With the TwinLabs platform we have been able to continually optimise layouts and analyse the data to see what is actually working”

Graeme Dick, Head of Property, Total Fitness

Strategic Impact: From Single Club to Estate-Wide Rollout

The success of the Wilmslow deployment has led Total Fitness to begin a phased rollout of TwinLabs across its gym portfolio.

The next phase focuses on fleet-wide insight, enabling Total Fitness to:

• Compare utilisation patterns across clubs
• Understand how different demographics use equipment and space
• Analyse preferences by equipment type, exercise style, and manufacturer across the clubs
• Leverage scale to improve procurement, layout design, and member experience

“Learning from the data at Wilmslow has enabled us to build an organisational dashboard across the estate so we can continue to make the best decisions for our members”

Graeme Dick, Head of Property, Total Fitness

Summary

By implementing the TwinLabs platform at its Wilmslow gym, Total Fitness transformed a high-risk, intuition-led capex decision into a data-driven, spatially informed strategy.

The result:

• Smarter equipment investment
• Better use of fixed floor space
• Improved alignment with member behaviour
• A foundation for continuous, portfolio-wide optimisation

“TwinLabs has changed how Total Fitness think about their gyms - not as static spaces, but as environments they can actively understand and improve.”

Tim Wade, CEO, TwinLabs