Jamie, what happened with that charity fitness place you were suing? Did you decide to let it go or did you go ahead with it?
And then they’ll turf you for being too buff.
The issue with Vibrams is not that someone else won’t be able to handle them. They are “barefoot running” shoes and some gyms may consider wearers at higher risk for injury.
Bad pub from who?? You? No dude.. you are an outlier my friend.. On your side in one aspect (6’4 245) but let’s be real.. your average this is the year I’m gonna get into shape gymgoer doesn’t want to share a bench press with you.. They just opened a PF down the street and me and the lady were thinking of hittin it together.. LA Fitness has a reputation as a meat market.. If PF is offering fitness lite.. hell that’s more than most people are doing.
Very few are using the 120lb dbells..
Or a “weight loss clinic” / pizza and ice cream buffet that prohibits scales, mirrors, and BMIs under 30. STRING BEAN ALERT!
That’s really true of any business. They make rules and they make judgement calls to make you leave. There’s no objective standard to measure someone being disruptive/inconsiderate/dangerous in many situations.
For example, my (non-PF) gym has an owner who has explicitly told me that he’s asked people not to return because of a) being really loud during weightlifting sets and b) dropping weights loudly. He’s a trainer with many years of experience and a degree in his field, and he just doesn’t think this is appropriate for a small gym that he intends on using largely as a personal training studio. There are other places more appropriate for such workouts but he wants a small, quiet gym and expresses this when you sign up; the rules are largely about being sensitive to others (e.g. don’t play music out loud, use headphones on the TVs, put away weights), safety, and not destroying equipment. If someone drops things as a safety issue, it can be determined on a case-by-case basis – just like if someone trips and falls on the treadmill. These things happen. But there are things that increase risk – for example, he found a lot of falls were caused by people doing weights and weird calisthenics and stuff on the treadmill - so finally he made a rule, no weights on the treadmill, just use them for walking or jogging and that’s it. I’m sure someone was put out by that, but it’s his business. For this reason he also chooses the type of weight equipment he makes available – I know, for example, he puts away the Olympic bars to be used only with supervision, and that’s because of his insurance in large part. He is focusing on a particular market and doesn’t need to increase his liability to attract 1 or 2 powerlifters, who tend to also work out at the expense of 10 or 15 casual gymgoers who basically just want a place to run out of the rain or go use some weight machines for 20 minutes, because the latter feel disrupted and occasionally intimidated.
You seem to be under the impression that there is no way to be fit without being really loud and potentially disruptive, and that somehow anyone who wants to maintain a reasonably quiet and unjarring environment for their customers is anti-fitness. That’s just not true. I won’t say that there aren’t reasons to drop weights, you’d know better than I would, but certainly that isn’t needed for all workouts at all skill levels. If you truly need to do that, pick an appropriate venue.
…Seriously? The rep that always comes to mind with LA Fitness is that it’s a women’s gym, or at the very least a white-collar gym.
Neither is true, though. The LA Fitnesses I’ve worked out at have all been a good mix of casual exercisers and heavier bodybuilders. I never felt out of place there, and nobody cared about what I did. I’d place it smack dab in the middle of the continuum defined by Planet Fitness and a stereotypical meathead gym.
Maybe its an Atlanta thing.. the one in dunwoody.. tucker etc.. i mean.. hot chicks wearing makeup lifting bars with no plates on them.. yeah.. okay.. right.. lol
Well, PF isn’t publicly traded, so we don’t know what their books look like. And even if their books are great, we don’t know what share of their revenue comes from people who very rarely use their facilities, but get $10 deducted out of their bank account every month. For those folks, PF isn’t adding a lot of value.
I agree that their idea of expelling lunkheads has its advantages, though it makes me squeemish.
The lunk alarm sounds like a good way to irritate people sufficiently so that they stay out of the gym, but keep paying lucre. I would be curious to know what olive thinks about PF in another year’s time and whether in practice she’s been able to overcome inertia and maintain a solid fitness regime.
Fear Itself:
“Sounds like an ingenious business model to me.”
Well known in the industry, IIRC. PF is just taking it to the next level, perhaps.
Really?! That is the impression I"ve been giving off?? 
Because that is most certainly not what I have been trying to say. No gym should allow disruptive behavior; and the excessive grunting found in many dumb-ass, ego-inflated men lifting weights is not needed anywhere. Neither is reckless dropping or slamming of weights; typically the two behaviors (grunting and dropping) are found together in the type of person who is likely to commit them.
What I am saying is that PF has taken this concept-which sounds great on paper-and made it into such a draconian policy that any one who uses the facility in an attempt to get into the best shape of his/her life is, by default, risking their very membership to the facility.
I’ll admit; from a purely financial standpoint of selling as many cheap-ass monthly memberships as possible (with the hope being that the membership will be renewed as long as possible and used as little as possible), PF has quite an ingeneous little plot hatched. They are looking at the entire population (damn near) as their potential customer-base; with the relatively tiny subset of people who are serious about fitness as ‘expendable’. Even further, since they ultimately don’t really even want anyone in their gym (at least not regularly), they look at anyone even interested in fitness as expendable. They want the money of the people who have no real desire to get in shape; who will ultimately rarely, if ever, use their membership; and when/if they do, will do so half-heartedly.
When or if that ‘half-hearted’ member actually starts seeing results and begins to get motivated about his/her fitness and health and becomes a more regular visitor of the gym, with more intense workouts; well, then it’s time to let that member go. PF isn’t the place for them. Besides, it’s just one lousy $10/month membership; the next “regular person” will fill that void.
Bad PR from word-of-mouth from all the (deservedly) disgruntled people kicked out; or the Bad PR from the former employees; and the bad PR that is spread out all over the internet.
Oh, and you are right: VERY few in PF are using the 120lb dumbbells; considering they would have to bring them from home and PF probably wouldn’t look too kindly on that. 
nm
You also have use of your legs and lower body; this allows you to position yourself up against the bench at a higher point than someone who must position their chest against the inclined bench while on the bench’s seat. From the starting point of the seat (as opposed to using your legs to raise your body up and making that starting point higher up on the bench), there is not enough room to fully extend one’s arms. And you call rows goofy? Ok. And since I don’t have any control of my lower body, I must tightly strap it in by my waist around the bench. When I am finished with the set, the “dropping” is silent, and it’s virtually motionless once it hits the ground. Being strapped in, I can’t move any way at all until I let go of the dumbbells.
Letting go of a dumbbell as your hand hovers an inch over the floor is NOT akin to “slamming weights” or dropping a dumbbell from waist-high. Give me a freakin’ break. What I did with that exercise was NOT outside the bounds of their rules; just because I used the word “dropped” when I described the exercise is not reason to cry foul and determine me guilty.
See, I could have written this post myself: I feel exactly the way you do and would agree that it wouldn’t be bad policy for a gym to have if it actually worked that way! But it doesn’t. They (PF) have a zero-tolerance policy for these things. Their use of the term “excessive” is misleading, evidently, because if my actions qualified as “dropping weights” then just about anything can be slapped with that charge.
Insightful. I’m sure you pierced many a bubbles with that dagger.
“I’m not touching him, my hand is clearly hovering 1/4 inch away”. Never worked in childhood, either: “no dropping” means place the weights, not “only drop them a little”.
I’m unfamiliar with PF, is there no rubberized floor in that area? My local gym has most of the free weight area covered in rubberized flooring. Really cuts down on the noise. Anywhere there are free weights there will be drops intentional or unintentional.
Yes, all of the flooring is either rubber matting or carpeting; either way it makes for a shock-absorbing surface. The free-weight area in front of the dumbbell racks have the rubber-matted floors.
That’s true of all gyms.
Sort of. That and your posting history in general. When all of the facts of an incident eventually bubble up to the surface you hand wave away or deny. You have a strong personality. Nothing to be ashamed of mind you but a bit much for PF, imo, and I still think you should have known it after your tour, your need of that particular equipment not withstanding.
Take this gem (get it!? ha ha)for example:
Way to take something totally out of context. That was humor. Humor.