6 FL Cities Named To 'America's Fittest City' List

ST. PETE, FL — Six Florida cities are ranked among the top 100 for “America’s Fittest City” in the annual American Fitness Index rankings published by the American College of Sports Medicine and the Elevance Health Foundation.

ACSM and Elevance Health looked at more than 30 indicators for the 100 of America's largest cities to determine the Fitness Index results. This year's rankings show that 94 percent of the cities and their residents reported an increase in their overall aerobic activity levels.

The 10 fittest cities on America's Fittest City list are:

1. Arlington, Virginia
2. Washington, DC
3. Seattle, Washington
4. San Francisco, California
5. Denver, Colorado
6. Minneapolis, Minnesota
7. Madison, Wisconsin
8. Atlanta, Georgia
9. Sacramento, CA
10. San Diego, CA

Those Florida cities named to the 2025 Fitness Index are:

• No. 34 St. Petersburg
• No. 39 Miami
• No. 41 Tampa
• No. 45 Orlando
• No. 68 Jacksonville
• No. 93 Port St. Lucie

The full rankings and scores on the 2025 Fitness Index are available online.

In 2025, the Fitness Index Advisory Board added two indicators, trail miles and splashpads, and updated the indicator for tennis courts to include pickleball courts and dual-use courts. Tampa ranked No. 9 nationally for trail miles its residents can use.

These new indicators reflect the importance of community assets that meet the evolving needs and demands of residents, the report said. Splashpads and pickleball courts expand physical activity opportunities across the lifespan and may be lower cost to build and operate than alternatives like swimming pools and additional courts. Trail miles represent not just recreational activity opportunities, but also a community’s ability to engage in active transportation like walking or biking to work or school.

The report's authors said of a decline in some health factors: "Of the 10 indicators that the Fitness Index highlighted last year, three changed in an unhealthy direction — air quality, food insecurity, and reports of excellent or very good health — each getting slightly worse. Declines in air quality can be attributed to wildfires and droughts.

"In addition to U.S. wildfires, smoke from wildfires across several Canadian provinces traveled south and impacted millions of people in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions in 2024. All but one city in the Fitness Index had an increase in their food insecurity percentage. While food insecurity has many causal factors, this may be a result of the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit and the end of other COVID-era programs supporting access to food. This led to an increase in food insufficiency among families with children."

“The Fitness Index has become a trusted and powerful tool to help us better understand and address the physical, behavioral and social drivers of health in communities, while providing the data and expertise that empower advocates and city officials to take action,” said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, chief health officer at Elevance Health.

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