As many of you may know, I’ve had my share of gym-related escapes. The entire reason I joined my local PF (PlanetFitness) gym was because I had recently had my membership terminated at my previous long-term gym. PF was a cheap, close and relatively accessible alternative; although it did lack certain crucial needs of mine (most notably any sort of cardiovascular equipment). In the time since I’d joined PF, I had found another gym with that cardio equipment but since PF was so cheap AND since certain equipment there worked better with my body than at my other gym; I decided to just keep the PF membership as well.
So I’ve been working out there a couple times a week for little over a year now. And in that time I’ve become very familiar with PF and their “philosophies” that are basically marketing gimmicks used to attract customers. They have rules, or policies that one must agree to when joining as a member. These include no excessive “grunting” or making other loud noises when lifting weights; as well as no “slamming” of the weights when done, or otherwise dropping them in a noisy or careless manner. There are other rules as well; these are all done in order to foster what they believe is an “unintimidating environment” that would be conducive for “regular” people to exercise in and get in shape in. They even have a “Lunk Alarm”; which is an ear-splittingly loud siren that the employees sound whenever they determine that someone has broken one (or more) of these rules.
Now these sound like great ideas; if you are sitting in a corporate boardroom, cooking up ideas on how to make your gym unique. But when these concepts are applied to the real world, they make for terrible conditions. First off, let’s discuss this “Lunk Alarm”. This is the stupidest thing I have EVER seen in a gym; the potential for disaster seems ridiculously high. Let’s say that someone is in the middle of a heavy, strenuous lift when this deafening alarm is sounded with no forewarning. This person, who is concentrating on the lift and has over 100lbs of iron over their head, has that concentration totally broken by the alarm and ends up in the hospital with an injury. I am just waiting for this to happen at a PF; if it hasn’t happened already. I know I have had my concentration disrupted by this maddeningly loud siren; thankfully I never happened to be in a position where I could hurt myself when it happened.
Let’s also examine the “no grunting” policy. Again, I understand where the concept comes from-a desire to foster an unintimidating gym environment for everyday people-but when that rule is put in place it leaves it up to the individual employees to make the decisions of whether or not a member has made a sound that qualifies as “excessive”. Sometimes, in the midst of an intense set where the trainer is giving ever single ounce of his/her soul to that set, a (loud? to who?) grunt may be very well what is needed to get over that hurdle and complete the set. By telling members, “No grunting”, PF is basically telling their members to never work 100%; to never dig down deep and find that spark within themselves that they can do it too.
And finally, let’s look at my favorite: No dropping weights. This one is the real head-scratcher here. “Yes, I just barely finished this set with 85lb dumbbells-I reached total muscular failure-but I will make sure I gently and delicately set them down ever so lightly back on the floor in order to ensure that it makes no noise.” Yea, cause that’s possible. :dubious: Again, PF is telling their members to never work to 100%; you go ahead and do that set, but make sure you save enough energy at the end to slowly control and lower the weights back to the ground-dropping isn’t allowed! Whomever created these policies never spent much time in a gym themselves. If they had, they would realize that such policies run totally counter to what a successful, science-driven fitness center should hold.
Today I had my PF membership revoked, without warning, for what was called “slamming weights”. I had never been spoken to (personally) before regarding this issue, yet I was kicked out nonetheless. I was NOT slamming weights; rather I had a unique exercise set up in order to do incline-dumbbell rows (since all rowing exercises are basically off-limits for me). I have an incline bench put up on four 45lb plate-weights underneath each end of the bench. This is done in order to lift the bench up high enough so that I can have a full range-of-motion with the dumbbell-rows. Anything less than 4 plates under each end and the dumbbells hit the floor before I get full ROM. When I’m done with the set, I necessarily must drop the weights back to the floor, since I purposely put myself up high enough that I could fully extend my arms without the dumbbells hitting the floor. :smack: But it’s only like an inch or two.
So I was in the middle of doing this exercise (which I’ve been doing my entire time at PF and nothing has ever been said to me) when this employee whom I’ve never seen before approaches me. He was very smug so I had the feeling he wasn’t just a new employee but some “higher up” from another PF. He starts with the usual PF talking points about how they don’t allow slamming weights, etc. I was confused, I wasn’t slamming weights at all. I told him that I didn’t know what he wanted me to do differently.?
He told me to follow him to the front desk. I still didn’t know what exactly was going on. It turned out that he was indeed terminating my membership! For that! WTF!? He tells me that there have been “a few warnings” on my account about “the slamming of weights”, so this was my final offense and my membership was now cancelled. Huh? I told him I had NEVER been warned before; I said the “Lunk Alarm” had gone off numerous times when I had been there but I never knew if I was responsible for it’s deployment or not. When I asked to see the “official” warnings on my account, he said he couldn’t “right now” but he’d “get back to me”. Um, then how did he get the information that I had been warned? I smelled BS.
Bottom line: PlanetFitness is a business, run by businessmen who don’t know-or care-anything about physical fitness and helping people really achieve it. No, they are concerned with maximizing their membership and they believe this is best achieved by appealing to all the people who, before PF, never considered going to a gym or being “one of those people”.
Fuck em. I relish the day they get sued and they go belly-up.
Oh yeah, and there hypocrisy: “No judgment Zone”…Where their signs are full of judgmental bullshit about bodybuilders and weightlifters; from stereotypes that they always wear tank-tops and carry around gallon jugs of water to other crap that i can’t remember. They don’t judge anyone…except those that they don’t want in their gym.
