“Yoga should be a habit like brushing your teeth,” said Suzie Newcome, who was born in Bend and is the owner of Namaspa Yoga Community, Bend’s first yoga studio founded in 2006. She welcomes the recent influx of yoga studios. “You should practice every day for mental and physical health. Meditation is like showering for your brain,” she said. [Photo above by Kylen Camille | Groove Yoga]
“One day I hope there are more yoga studios than fast food restaurants.”
Central Oregon, especially Bend, is inching toward Newcome’s dream. Especially in recent years, new fitness studios have popped up—whether they be for yoga, spin, pilates or barre. This is in sync with a national trend. Fitness studio membership levels are growing, according to the Health and Fitness Association. In Deschutes County alone, there are 65 registered businesses in the category and even more classes offered as part of community centers or in private groups making the number hard to quantify.
“COVID-19 destroyed all of us,” said Tate Metcalf, board member of the Oregon Health & Fitness Alliance and owner of Sisters Athletic Club.
“Studios were the most affected; around 30% permanently closed.”
But the fitness studio picture is much more rosy in Central Oregon. According to employment numbers from Deschutes County, fitness studios have not only made it back to pre-pandemic levels but have surpassed them. Nicole Ramos, a regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department, who specializes in regions east of the Cascades, reported 2024 employment numbers in the fitness studio industry were around 10% higher than in 2019.
In part, that may be attributed to population growth, but also that Bend’s median household income is about 10% higher than Oregon’s average—the number for Deschutes County as a whole is almost the same. But the area was intriguing even in 2008, when Portlanders Sadie and Chris Lincoln founded barre3, a workout system inspired by ballet-barre exercises. They presciently saw Bend’s potential and opened one of barre3’s first franchises in Bend in 2009. Today, barre3 has national locations with 200 studios across 41 states, Canada and the Philippines.
The active, outdoor-oriented culture of the region lays a heavy finger on the scale. Rachel Day moved to Bend from Salt Lake City in 2022 and opened Form Pilates in the Discovery West neighborhood in 2025. Her studio specializes in cross-training, injury prevention, performance improvement and building endurance, especially for people who do repetitive motion sports like running and cycling.
Day recognized the crossover from what much of the population enjoys: hiking, biking, paddling, skiing and running, among other sports. “People want to go outside to work out, but it’s really cool to see people coming into class because they value the three-dimensional fitness you get from pilates, which improves both their performance outside and their overall health.”
Studios for Strength and Community
“Studios can be people’s ‘third places,’ like church, where they get to hang out with like-minded people and feel like they are part of something,” said Metcalf. This sense of community is a way to create bonds between people as a different type of “core” strength. Then there’s the health benefit: “[The interest in] yoga is growing because it works,” said Namaspa’s Newcome. “It’s not a fad. It’s entering the zeitgeist that yoga helps with joints, inflammation and imbalances in the body. Practicing yoga extends longevity in the outdoor sports that people love. People are understanding that.”
Amber Hayes has owned Groove Yoga in Northwest Bend since 2013, and agrees. “There’s plenty of room for all of us,” Hayes said.
“There’s not one kind of class for everybody. It’s awesome that studios are each offering their own spin. The commonality is we all want to make a difference.”
