Planet Health Is Not a Gymnasium

On January 7, a Class 2 shitstorm exploded on Reddit when a Planet Health member complained that his native membership had eliminated its solely squat rack. By the use of clarification, an worker informed him “a buyer complained that it was intimidating.”

As of Friday morning, the publish had generated greater than 1,400 feedback, and hyperlinks to the rant confirmed up throughout my Fb feed. When my New Guidelines of Lifting coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove wrote about it, his publish received 70 shares and greater than 300 likes.

However you recognize what the weirdest a part of the story is? {That a} Planet Health franchise nonetheless had a squat rack to take away.

“That’s not a typical Planet Health,” says McCall Gosselin, the corporate’s director of public relations. “Our golf equipment don’t have tools like squat racks and Olympic benches. Our dumbbells solely go as much as 80 kilos.”

Perceive that Gosselin isn’t apologizing for any of this. That is the corporate whose commercials make enjoyable of bodybuilders and health club bunnies, the individuals most devoted to critical coaching. That is the place with “lunk alarms” that go off when somebody grunts whereas lifting.

Planet Health isn’t embarrassed to be often called the wimpiest health club on the town. It’s the enterprise mannequin, and it really works. Gosselin says the chain has tripled in dimension previously 5 years, from 242 golf equipment to greater than 750 by the tip of 2013. They’re in 47 states and Puerto Rico, with greater than 4.5 million members.

Gosselin can be candid about why it really works: “The health club {industry} was constructed on bodybuilders, individuals who work out a number of instances per week. Planet Health was based as a spot for the opposite 85 p.c.”

Or, to be exact, the opposite 82.5 p.c.

In keeping with IHRSA, the commerce affiliation for the health-club {industry}, health club membership within the U.S. peaked in 2011 at simply over 51 million, or 18 p.c of the inhabitants. It declined to 17.5 p.c in 2012. However on the identical time, Planet Health grew.

That’s partly due to the value. “Gyms that charged $10 a month actually thrived in the course of the recession,” says Stuart Goldman, government editor of the commerce journal Membership Business. One other increase was the corporate’s sponsorship of The Greatest Loser. However there’s additionally no getting across the broad attraction of its distinctive branding.

“Lots of people aren’t ‘lunkheads,’” Goldman says. “They only wish to get in, get on the treadmill for half-hour, and get out. They don’t wish to be bothered by the rest.”
Thomas Plummer, a fitness-industry advisor based mostly in Cape Cod, sees Planet Health as a advertising success however a failure in each different means. “I personally assume they’re horrible golf equipment that do an amazing disservice to the members and the {industry} as an entire,” he says. “I feel they had been proper for the market 10 years in the past, however the health world is rising previous that mannequin.”

Latest information helps his level. In keeping with IHRSA, using most varieties of tools present in Planet Health has declined previously a number of years. That features stationary bikes, treadmills, ellipticals, and even weight machines.

What hasn’t declined? Free weights, and train programs based mostly on free weights, like CrossFit.

None of that makes a damned little bit of distinction to Planet Health. The corporate shouldn’t be solely recession-proof, it’s satire-proof. The Each day Present spoofs its lunk alarm, and Planet Health grows. Slate asks why a health club chain desires to intimidate individuals who like to work out, lifters rant on social media about being made to really feel unwelcome on what they thought was their house turf, and Planet Health simply will increase its market share.

I’ve a idea about why it really works. I’ve been a member of well being golf equipment nearly regularly since 1980. For 20-some years I belonged to franchise gyms – first Vic Tanny, then Vacation Spa, then Bally Whole Health. Every January, I noticed precisely what you’re seeing in your health club this month: a flood of latest members, most of whom won’t ever be seen after Valentine’s Day.

However not like my fellow health club rats, I didn’t resent these individuals. I understood that their charges paid for the true price of my membership. Massive-box gyms lose cash on individuals such as you and me, who pay the identical low worth because the ghost members however truly use the tools three or 4 days per week.

And never solely can we use it. We put on it out. We stress cables and pulleys, trample carpets, crack the vinyl on the load benches. We create additional work for the health club employees – tightening screws, changing components, and sometimes eradicating traces of epidermal tissue from a barbell.

If each member educated like us, the health club’s homeowners would both should multiply charges or exit of enterprise.

At Planet Health, it’s all the time January. They drive away the lifters who could be costly to accommodate, in favor of those that’re least prone to swipe their playing cards quite a lot of instances a month. Many, I believe, don’t swipe their playing cards in any respect; the $10 month-to-month cost appears a small worth to maintain alive the dream of getting in form.

It could be the most effective enterprise mannequin within the historical past of well being golf equipment: a facility individuals pay for however barely use. And the corporate is pleased with that. “We are saying we’re not a health club, we’re Planet Health,” says Gosselin, the corporate’s PR director.

The issue isn’t Planet Health. The corporate is completely clear about what it’s. The issue is individuals who count on it to be one thing it isn’t: a spot the place critical lifters get critical exercises. You aren’t prone to get that for simply $10 a month.

Lou Schuler, C.S.C.S., is an award-winning journalist and the coauthor (with Alwyn Cosgrove) of  The New Guidelines of Lifting Supercharged.