Vuks, a personal trainer based in Nkowankowa near Tzaneen, has watched his client base shrink month by month. The reason is not a lack of interest in fitness. It is the rising cost of living, which is pushing gym memberships and personal training services beyond the reach of households already stretched thin by groceries, school fees and household bills.
Across South Africa, families are making a stark calculation: food on the table or fitness fees. For many, the gym has become a luxury they can no longer justify. Fitness professionals working in communities where the financial squeeze is most acute say the withdrawal from structured exercise is widespread and accelerating.
The public health consequences are real. Vuks points to a troubling pattern in his community: rising obesity rates, mounting stress and anxiety, and deteriorating mental health. These are precisely the conditions that regular physical activity helps address. At the moment when exercise matters most for population wellbeing, fewer people can afford access to it.
Vuks understands the mental health dimension personally. After losing a close friend, he turned to fitness during a period of severe emotional struggle. Exercise became his pathway through grief, offering purpose and healing when he needed it most. That experience shaped his career and his conviction that fitness serves a purpose far beyond appearance.
As his traditional client base contracted, he adapted. Vuks now organizes hiking trips around Tzaneen, leads aerobics classes and speaks at community events about healthy living. He has also become involved in substance abuse prevention, organizing awareness campaigns and fun walks for young people. Having watched drugs devastate lives in his area, he sees physical activity as a counterforce, a healthier choice that can redirect young people away from addiction.
By contrast, the structured gym model, built on monthly membership fees, is struggling to serve communities under financial pressure. Vuks has responded by diversifying into group and community-based activities that remain accessible to people with limited means. His hiking trips and aerobics sessions offer pathways to fitness that require no membership card.
His message to South Africans squeezed out of formal fitness programs is practical rather than aspirational. He acknowledges that gym fees are out of reach for most right now, but he encourages people not to abandon physical activity altogether. A walk, a home-based routine, or participation in a community event costs nothing and delivers genuine health benefits.
Vuks expresses cautious optimism that economic conditions will eventually improve and allow more South Africans to return to structured fitness. The question, as communities continue to absorb the cost of living crisis, is how much ground will be lost in population health before that happens.