When Arcana opened to a small group of members in June, we weren’t sure what to expect. We hoped people would try different types of workouts, but we didn’t have a way to know for sure.
Turns out, our hypothesis was right. People were booking on average 3.4 different modalities a month.
What we didn’t expect? Strength to take the top spot.
From July to October, Arcana members completed 295 classes across the city. Strength led the way with 66 completed bookings, just ahead of sculpt at 65, cycle at 55, and reformer at 53.
It’s a tiny margin. But we love a close race—especially when the winner is a category long mistaken for a room full of sweaty men with barbells who don’t know how to keep their breathing to themselves.
Strength, it turns out, is the main character. The Carrie Bradshaw of workout modalities, one might say.
The numbers, in their strongest form
Strength accounted for 22.4% of all completed Arcana bookings in our early-access period. It also led the initial booking board, with 141 strength booking records.
Among the members who completed a strength class, the workouts they paired with strength varied.
61 sculpt bookings
53 cycle bookings
49 reformer bookings
31 dance bookings
31 HIIT/bootcamp bookings
In other words: Arcana members are not choosing between cardio and strength. They are building the kind of movement ritual that actually fits their real life. One with variety, energy, music, recovery, friends, and maybe even a class that makes it hard to walk up the Subway stairs on the way home.
Strength has entered the group chat
The broader fitness conversation is moving in the same direction. ACSM’s 2026 trends place Balance, Flow and Core Strength in the top five, while exercise for weight management climbed to its highest ranking yet, reflecting the growing context around GLP-1 medications. ACSM’s 2026 fitness trends
That context matters. As conversations around GLP-1s increasingly focus on long-term health, resistance training has become less of a niche performance pursuit and more of an essential part of the full wellness picture. A clinical review notes that resistance training can help minimize loss of muscle mass and function during weight-reduction therapy. Review in Obesity Reviews
Note: This is not medical advice, and Arcana is not here to prescribe anyone’s workout plan. It is simply a reminder that “strong” is becoming a more expansive, more useful goal.
And no, strength does not have to mean heavy
At Arcana, we do not subscribe to strength being synonymous with lifting the heaviest thing in the room.
It can mean a loaded carry. A deep controlled squat. A reformer spring. It can mean bodyweight work, resistance bands, Pilates, sculpt, a slow isometric hold, or enough time under tension that you feel that hate-to-love-it shake in your muscles.
The point is not a particular piece of equipment. The point is resistance, intention, and giving your body a reason to adapt, and grow.
Ahead of the curve, by design
Arcana was built for the reality that fitness is no longer one-size-fits-all, and neither is strength.
Our early members are already showing us what the next era of movement looks like: not “cardio versus weights,” but a more flexible, joyful, strength-forward ecosystem. One where cycle can sit beside reformer, dance can sit beside HIIT, and getting stronger feels less like a burden and more like a habit.
Strength did not win because we told people it should.
It won because people found their own way there.