For the eighth year in a row, Arlington has been named the fittest city in the country by the 2025 Fitness Index, a ranking developed by the American College of Sports Medicine. DC also held on to its runner-up status for the third year in a row.
The index scores cities in two different categories: “Personal Health,” which considers factors such as smoking and exercise frequency, and “Community + Environment,” which looks at walkability and the number of park and recreation facilities. In both categories Arlington ranks first, making it the fittest a city in the nation—though the jurisdiction is actually an urban county. DC held onto its second-place ranking thanks to scoring fifth and fourth in the “Personal Health” and“Community + Environment” categories, respectively.
The immediate past president of the ACSM, Dr. Stella Volpe, attributes the DMV’s fitness dominance to resources in the area such as well-maintained parks and other recreation facilities. “The walkability of the DMV area is excellent. So even if you’re going to go walk to go out to get a cup of coffee or eat, it’s easy to do,” she says.
This year the index included two new indicators: the number of trail miles and the availability of splash pads, for measuring the overall fitness of a community. DC blew away the competition on that first measure, with 235.3 trail miles for every 100,000 residents. (The next most trail-endowed city is Irvine, California, with 187.9 trail miles per 100,000 residents.) Volpe said that this metric likely helped DC maintain its rank. The ACSM also updated the indicator for tennis courts to include pickleball and mixed-used courts—and there is clearly a lot of interest in pickleball in Arlington, as proponents and opponents of the sport know well.
Across the board, most cities scored better this year on a number of key indicators. The index found that most people are exercising more and smoking less, but other indicators, including those related to air quality and food insecurity, changed in an unhealthy direction. The ACSM attributes these changes to environmental events like droughts and wildfires as well as the of end Covid-era programs that supported access to healthy food.
If other cities want to catch up to Arlington, Volpe recommends they consider even small changes, such as cleaning up a local trail or park to prompt people to get moving. “If you think of Arlington and the DC area, you see so many people walking all the time, right? And that can beget more people to walk,” she says. “Exercise is medicine, but it doesn’t have to be a marathon—any little activity every day people can do it is really, really important for their health.”
This story has been updated to correct Stella Volpe’s title.
