Why Gym Memberships are a SCAM

every single year there's a predictable surge of gym memberships as people resolve to become the best version of themselves just for those people to drop off the face of Planet Fitness after just a couple of weeks but what if I told you that this New Year's phenomenon wasn't just about human weakness but the result of a deliberately manipulative industry that capitalizes on failed goals foreign [Music] now to understand the fitness industry mess we first have to acknowledge how unbelievably difficult it is to run a gym these days their whole business model relies on people being willing to pay for something they don't like doing so it makes sense that 8 in 10 gyms fail within the first year meanwhile to survive in a competitive market Jim owners have to rent or buy spacious Prime real estate in high traffic areas our full staff of Fitness professionals and purchase and maintain a fleet of pricey equipment this is not the sort of business you can just run Dirt Cheap out of your mom's garage but perhaps the biggest challenge is that a lot lot of people who start gyms have a genuine passion for Fitness they know about the health side of things but they don't always know much about the business and marketing side of things the unfortunate reality is that it is incredibly difficult to make a living off a gym and that usually means that things are going to get sketchy if you do water her no matter where a gym falls on the ethical Shady spectrum they have to make a profit they can do this through personal trainers advertising selling products which are really just periphery income streams to the most important source of Revenue which is you guessed it absolutely membership everything is a membership nowadays of course but gyms are one of the originals now before we get into this juicy subject I need to let you know that we are actually launching another future proof YouTube channel called future proof Health the channel is live right now we haven't posted any content over there because we're still kind of getting our [ __ ] together honestly but if you go and subscribe to it right now you'll be the first to know when it goes live on this channel we're going to be talking about the trends and the products and the companies that spend billions of dollars trying to sell you stuff to make you feel better about yourself it is a very strange industry that honestly we felt just didn't fully fit here on future proof so that dedicated space is going to be where we explore those things okay you can kind of cut that together now before we dive into things I should acknowledge that our writers had a pretty hard time finding any conclusive details on gym World stuff which is a little suspicious in my opinion but what we did find however was a mountain of Internet horror stories about bad gym experiences it is not clear how widespread many of these practices are and how many of these horror stories are not just people trying to get upvotes on Reddit we did our best however to piece together a likely scenario from every wonderful Reddit anecdote that we found and a handful of articles that do discuss this topic but not everyone is going to have the same experience with that disclaimer in mind let's break it down the New Year's Rush is a cash cow for gyms as you might expect but gyms do not need a one-time flood of keeners they need long-term commitments in order to survive that's why basically every single gym on Earth operates some kind of subscription basis and in some cases like Planet Fitness they don't even seem to offer a drop-in option with these subscriptions you pay every month or every year and are able to use their facilities during that time you don't always have to commit to a lengthy period of time but there's typically some kind of financial incentive for you to sign that 12-month contract which is just a good business move that doesn't have to be Shady at all of course but unfortunately it is open for a lot of not so innocent tactics to understand just how sketchy these businesses can be I'm going to take you on a hypothetical yet 100 possible Journey it starts with the advertising as the holidays wind down and you're recovering from your turkey hangover Fitness ads start popping up reminding you of just how far you are away from that bikini bot which is a problematic notion in its own right the underlying message is clear to come to our gym and you will look like a sexier version of yourself don't do that and you'll be a hideous mess that no one will ever love you understand that this is just marketing and it's just a trick but you know what you say hey it's a new year it's a new me it's a me a Mario and you sign not because hey it's only one dollar to get started so you head down to a nearby gym or even easier you click on the ad you just watched turns out that the one dollar deal is only valid for the first month if you commit to a year-long contract you're a little unsure about the full year but the guy at the front desk tells you that he'll waive the Initiation fee if you go for it you don't know that the Initiation fee was literally put there to be waived so it feels like a sweet deal of course there's still the annual fees and the maintenance fees to worry about but you've already come this far so what the heck let's do this let's pump some weight you know what I mean so you start going to the gym right after work which just so happens to be when everyone else is going to the gym it's crowded it's noisy and there's a lineup for the elliptical everyone else seems to know what they're doing and you don't so instead of making it awkward you just run on the treadmill because that's the easiest thing you can think of so you plot along in the same hellishly boring treadmill routine that you've done the last three times you were there and you're sweaty and you're sore and you still don't look like any of the influencers on Tick Tock as the year goes on you start finding excuses to avoid the gym the Gym's algorithms have also noticed that you don't frequent their facilities anymore and they've stopped sending you emails by February you've completely stopped going to the gym but canceling your membership feels a little like the feet so you just hold on to it by March you've completely forgotten about your dailyance with the heavy lifting lifestyle and you've moved on blissfully to a gym free life then sometime in the next year you take a closer look at your bank statements and you realize that you've been paying to not work out for months you try and get out of it but your contract Auto renews so you're going to have to pay the cancellation fee you don't see a cancellation option online so then you got to go in person to the guy at the front desk who starts asking you pretty weird questions about why you are going to quit sort of implying that you don't want to be healthy and attractive which is really on and then after that it turns out that you actually have to send them a physical piece of mail if you want to get out of it but then the guy says listen if you stick around we'll give you free pizza all of those pieces are real stories from people that we have heard from on the internet trying to cancel gym memberships see here's the thing gyms are financially incentivized to have many subscribers and few actual gym users according to USA Today 67 percent of gym memberships end up totally unused gyms literally build their business model around the people who don't show up on average Planet Fitness Gyms have 6 500 members and they can only accommodate 300 at once they have to attract no shows it's why a lot of gyms are designed to look more like cafes or high-end hotels they shove all the high intensity equipment in the back so that the building itself attracts the kind of person who doesn't actually like going to gyms I.E the kind of person that will just keep paying for absolutely nothing the reality is it is in a Gym's best interest to hook people with tempting deals then trap them in a contract that they don't read that make it painfully difficult for them to get out of it how they do this might change depending from gym to gym but here is a few tactics that you might see out there in the real world forcing you to give them your bank information just to sign up giving them direct access to your funds and making it harder for you to challenge a payment giving you a free month that Auto renews with said Bank information not reminding you when your subscription is about to Auto renew body shaming you or providing some sort of really excruciating workout to make you feel embarrassed and out of shape and motivated to sign on with a personal trainer and weird cancellation fees and startup fees that make it actually cheaper just to stay with the gym than to cancel and sign back up and those are actually the less Shady tactics in an older survey of Canadian gym members 39 said that they were overcharged by a gym often in sneaky ways that many people don't even notice on their bank statements one guy had to go to court 20 times to get back his two thousand dollars the Premier Fitness kept charging for years after he canceled 12 years ago it was estimated that gym companies had scammed half a billion dollars just by overcharging and that's in Canada there's the same number of people living in California alone so you can imagine the scam potential that's happening South of the Border we just couldn't find those numbers for whatever reason and if you think that you are safe by canceling your entire bank account to avoid payments which is I kid you not a common thing they might just come after you with a collections agency demanding that you pay even if you leave multiple messages on their answering machine during covet lockdowns now of course these are the horror stories none of this will happen to the Savvy gym goer if you read your contract you're careful about who you sign up with and you know what you're getting into and you pay with a credit card or better yet in cash and you keep on top of your subscription renewals you will probably have no problem at canceling when you need to I like to think that amidst the highly competitive market and huge backlash from Angry customers gyms are slowly getting better in this regard but don't let that fool you into thinking that you're not getting scammed in some other way turns out Fitness in the United States is a fairly unregulated industry God damn right when you visit say a hospital you know that the doctors nurses and surgeons that you encounter there have had to go through a pretty specific and rigorous amount of training to get where they are you can go into surgery with relative confidence knowing that the person slicing you up is not Edward Scissorhands it is easy to make those kinds of assumptions when you go into another health-centered environment like say a gym but that sadly does not hold water while things seem to be changing a little state by state there is actually no national standards certificate or training that personal trainers have to take in order to start giving you life advice unlike your favorite YouTuber or workout Guru or Peloton coach there isn't any social validation either like likes and subscribers to tell you if that person is legit they also probably won't have as colorful a commentary Outback Steakhouse Round low it's okay the people in these gyms are not necessarily acting in your best interest this can be legit intimately dangerous and lead to injuries and it gets even worse considering that gyms may be legally incentivized to not ask you for your medical history because if you injure yourself doing something you shouldn't the gym is then able to claim that they had no idea you had a special condition and that you shouldn't be doing 50 burpees with a fractured spine although if you had a fractured spine you should probably be like proactive with telling people that you have a fractured spine while the better gyms will require trainers to be certified by a reputable organization a worse gym may just take an excellent sales person give them a couple days training and hand him a Hardy commission and then set him loose on the clients with the primary objective to sell sell in general this is something you have to watch out for staff don't necessarily care about your health at the top of their priority list you got to be weary is the woman at the front desk being totally upfront about their contract details or is she just trying to sell you on the most expensive plan is your train trainer recommending a supplement because it's actually beneficial for you or because he gets a kickback from the juice bar we made a whole video about supplements uh it is so spoiler alert you probably don't need them we'll leave a link to that one down in the description below now please don't take this to say that all gyms are bad of course not all gyms are like this many gym owners and personal trainers have a genuine desire to help you reach your health goals but it's on you to know your needs and to do your research and find something that works for you a good place to start is probably not the big gyms if you're serious about your health consider a local gym that's going to cost more but will cater more to what you actually need rather than their profits and if you go for a personal trainer find out what their certifications are and make sure they ask you about your medical history read through the contracts before you sign everything and don't commit to a lengthy period of time if you don't have to but here's a hot take that you're probably not not going to like either gyms are probably only a good idea for a slim set of the population I feel like there's this weird mentality out there no doubt fostered by advertisers that gyms are just kind of the way to go you gotta pump that iron if you don't want to die alone like a flimsy sack of potatoes not only is this an extremely damaging mentality and rhetoric but you know who really enjoys the jimbro lifestyle probably not as many people as your news feed would make you think now I'll let you in on a little secret one tip that will actually transform your life and help you achieve your health goals in a Monumental and transformative way um it is more important to build an active lifestyle that you can sustain than to buy into what everyone else is doing I hate lifting weights but I like yoga and Hiking I'm riding my bike and I've been able to maintain those things and I don't really have to pay much for any of them you can get exercise and a ton of enjoyable and inexpensive ways you got a yoga mat you can do yoga you got a pair of running shoes you can run you got access to YouTube and you can follow a bunch of different influencers who will guide you in what they like but no matter where you are on your health Journey thank you for spending some time with us and if you like this video remember to like it and if you like this kind of content go and check out our other channel and make sure you subscribe to that to see when we start publishing content over there bye everyone foreign [Music]

Channel: Future Proof

Views: 579,774

Keywords: gym, gym membership, fitness, gyms, workout, healthy, excercise, gym workout, planet fitness, woo fit, 24 hour fitness, golds gym, equinox gym, anytime fitness, steve nash fitness world, fitness world, gym equipment, gym review, working out, gym plan, gym excercise, education, review, future proof

Id: 4Y0dMPk-u50

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022