A Gym Owners Response to Planet Fitness Celebrating Members Who Don’t Show Up.

-Mat Frankel

As a gym owner, the article titled “Planet Fitness Celebrates Members Who Pay for Its Product But Don’t Use It” caught my attention. 

After reading, there were multiple things that stood out:

“The best kind of customer a gym can have is one who buys a lot of personal training, but the second-best kind it can have is one who dutifully pays his monthly fees but rarely or never visits.”

“The gym for regular people, not gym-obsessed ‘lunks.’”

Their position and “business model” is quite clear. With free pizza and bagels every month and commercials that try to make other gym members look dumb and a literal alarm sound for when people work hard, the message is, don’t make your health a priority or seriously. 

The first statement is exactly the opposite of the way we started at CrossFit City Line. Before we opened in 2011, someone said to us, “are you hoping no one shows up?” We literally smacked our own forehead. We love coaching. We love seeing athletes get better every day. We just love seeing the athletes here! Without showing up, it’s not only our loss in not getting to coach them, share our knowledge and allow then to improve their lives (and others that may be watching them as you change theirs) but it’s been our goal since day 1 to have an engaged, committed community that values their own health and place in a fitness community much more than just having a key tag on their key chain.

Apparently, people who eat healthy and care about their body composition are “gym-obsessed lunks”. If that’s the name, I’m happy to be one. I used to be the other type of person, and I didn’t care much to know what I didn’t know. I was “healthy” right? I wasn’t eating McDonalds every day and candy bars so I didn’t eat that bad right?

I didn’t care to know that excess body fat is extremely harmful and can lead to major health issues. I didn’t care to know that I could, by my own actions, expose myself to increased risk of type 2 diabetes. I didn’t know just how easily I could have derailed my own health and set myself up for issues later in life. But now I do. And if being a “gym-obsessed lunk”  in their eyes, means that I care about my health, I’m proud to be one. But it’s not ok, in my eyes, to be told that it is a bad thing. I hope you’re as proud as I am to be one of the lunks. 

There is a great part about Planet Fitness. Someone can get started there, begin their journey. Through continued effort and education, albeit on their own, could realize that there’s something better and begin trying to find a place that will encourage and lead them to their success, not try and tamp it down. They could realize that putting in time, focus and working hard on their health is worth it and even come to enjoy it.

They could realize that on their own they can make progress but with support and the right environment with a community and highly educated and trained coaches, they could soar. That there’s an efficient, effective and safe way to train that is fun, challenging and rewarding. 

We’ve already found that out. But for others who haven’t, it’s all of our responsibilities as those who choose not to become burdens of the obesity epidemic and astronomical health care spending on easily preventable diseases (via nutrition and exercise) to continue to encourage, support and most of all share what you’ve found so that they may one day choose to find it too.