It feels a little weird to be writing this article, because just a month ago I experienced what was hands down my unhealthiest weekend of the year…in Nashville, Tennessee.
I visited for a bachelor party, as one does, and did precisely what was asked of me: drank beers in an Airbnb, ate fried things in orange sauces, drank beers on a pontoon, slept a nightly average of three hours on a couch, drank beers up and down Broadway. Maybe I’ve lost my fastball, because I got home Sunday and didn’t really recover until Thursday. I’m not saying it wasn’t a big bag of fun — but I don’t see myself returning for a few years.
And yet, the city is more than a den of iniquity for thirsty transients. People — my Millennial and Gen Z peers — are willingly moving there, fueling a regional boom. From 2020 to 2024, the Nashville metro area saw a 6.4% population gain (well outpacing the national average of 2.6%).
What’s fueling the rapid growth? Jobs, of course — and specifically tech jobs. There was a 17% increase in available tech jobs from 2017 to 2022, according to a report by the Great Nashville Technology Council and Middle Tennessee State University. The trend speaks to a larger movement across the South, as cities like Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Raleigh have leveraged affordable housing, lower taxes and university promiximity to swipe talent away from New York and the Bay Area.
Nashville’s tech scene now contributes over $7 billion to the local economy, with behemoths like Amazon and Oracle building or leasing literal millions of square feet in its downtown, while local startups in fintech, healthcare and AI start their operations from scratch.
The Tennessee capital’s transformation has had a fascinating consequence: Nashville is going to be America’s next fitness-crazed city. It’s all but a guarantee. Take a look at McKinsey’s wellness spending pies. Young professionals “tend to purchase across a wider range of discretionary products, including health-tracking devices, massage tools, IV drips, and beauty and mindfulness apps.”
As younger cohorts relocate to Nashville — for those well-paid tech jobs — they’ll certainly have more to spend online. But they’ll increasingly have more wellness options right in front of them, too, as the city trains itself to cater to a certain kind of health-focused (perhaps even optimization-obsessed?) employee.
Equinox announced it will open its first Nashville location in the Gulch — the city’s upscale development hub — then said, screw it, we’re going to open a luxury fitness hotel as well. Padel Haus, purveyor of an alternative racquet sport for elites, just opened eight state-of-the-art courts — and this outpost includes that robo-massage you’ve likely seen online, from Aescape.
What else? Just: a modern Pilates studio, studios proffering lymphatic drainage massage, six different places to try “cold therapy,” an F45 Training gym every two miles, HYROX-approved training clubs and a gargantuan run club presence. And this is to say nothing of the fast-casual salad spots, markets and smoothie counters that will continue to open in the coming years, too.
This growth isn’t going anywhere, and not just on account of spending habits. It’s a shift in mindset. Nashville is still going to be a top-three bachelor and bachelorette destination. Its downtown won’t look any less debaucherous on a Saturday night. But the people who still live there on Monday morning will steer the city towards its work hard, play hard, workout hard future.
Is this a good thing? Don’t look at me. I’m just a guy who drank too many Bud Lights in Nashville a month ago.
But I can offer this: at the individual level, reorienting your life around wellness can be life-changing. It can fuel you with daily purpose, introduce you to vibrant communities and compel you to look at your immediate world in an entirely new way. For instance: Nashvillians have over one-hundred miles of bike trails within spitting distance of downtown.
Still, I’d be wary of the ways in which a local focus on wellness can cultivate yet another hyper-competitive, capitalist arena. Consider: that same McKinsey report pointed out that younger professionals report higher levels of burnout and worse overall health. Wellness should be an escape for exhausted employees, but instead turns into a compulsion, just another opportunity to prove that you can keep up. This is so brutally obvious in New York City, which has served as a modern fitness capital since well before the pandemic.
Finally, an explosion like this can hurt other, smaller sectors of Nashville’s economy — and twist locals’ understanding of what wellness even means (or should look like). Ironically, a movement catalyzed by the city’s newcomers can ostracize its newest newcomers. As Bella Zavala wrote for The Vanderbilt Hustler: “College students…do not have the funds or are unwilling to spend the money it takes to keep up with this lifestyle.”
Zavala also pointed out that many weekend party groups squeeze locals like herself out of workout classes, by booking all the morning slots in an attempt to sweat out the toxins. I’m proud (I guess?) to report that we did no such thing. But at the same time, it’s possible that a good workout was just what we needed.
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