On January 7, a Category 2 shitstorm exploded on Reddit when a Planet Fitness member complained that his local club had removed its only squat rack. By way of explanation, an employee told him "a customer complained that it was intimidating."
As of Friday morning, the post had generated more than 1,400 comments, and links to the rant showed up all over my Facebook feed. When my New Rules of Lifting coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove wrote about it, his post got 70 shares and more than 300 likes.
But you know what the weirdest part of the story is? That a Planet Fitness franchise still had a squat rack to remove.
"That's not a typical Planet Fitness," says McCall Gosselin, the company's director of public relations. "Our clubs don't have equipment like squat racks and Olympic benches. Our dumbbells only go up to 80 pounds."
Understand that Gosselin isn't apologizing for any of this. This is the company whose commercials make fun of bodybuilders and gym bunnies, the people most dedicated to serious training. This is the place with "lunk alarms" that go off when someone grunts while lifting.
Planet Fitness isn't embarrassed to be known as the wimpiest gym in town. It's the business model, and it works. Gosselin says the chain has tripled in size in the past five years, from 242 clubs to more than 750 by the end of 2013. They're in 47 states and Puerto Rico, with more than 4.5 million members.
Gosselin is also candid about why it works: "The gym industry was built on bodybuilders, people who work out multiple times a week. Planet Fitness was founded as a place for the other 85 percent."
Or, to be precise, the other 82.5 percent.
According to IHRSA, the trade association for the health-club industry, gym membership in the U.S. peaked in 2011 at just over 51 million, or 18 percent of the population. It declined to 17.5 percent in 2012. But at the same time, Planet Fitness grew.
That's partly because of the price. "Gyms that charged $10 a month really thrived during the recession," says Stuart Goldman, executive editor of the trade magazine Club Industry. Another boost was the company's sponsorship of The Biggest Loser. But there's also no getting around the broad appeal of its unique branding.
"A lot of people are not lunkheads," Goldman says. "They just want to get in, get on the treadmill for 30 minutes, and get out. They don't want to be bothered by anything else."
Still, Goldman wonders how much longer the business model can continue to work. "If I'm a club owner, I'm going to keep that 15 percent happy," he says. "There are a lot more options than there were 20 years ago."
Thomas Plummer, a fitness-industry consultant based in Cape Cod, sees Planet Fitness as a marketing success but a fa ilure in every other way. "I personally think they are horrible clubs that do a great disservice to the members and the industry as a whole," he says. "I think they were right for the market 10 years ago, but the fitness world is growing past that model."
Recent data supports his point. According to IHRSA, the use of most types of equipment found in Planet Fitness has declined in the past several years. That includes stationary bikes, treadmills, ellipticals, and even weight machines.
What hasn't declined? Free weights, and exercise systems based on free weights, like CrossFit.
None of that makes a damned bit of difference to Planet Fitness. The company is not only recession-proof, it's satire-proof. The Daily Show spoofs its lunk alarm, and Planet Fitness grows. Slate asks why a gym chain wants to intimidate people who love to work out, lifters rant on social media about being made to feel unwelcome on what they thought was their hom e turf, and Planet Fitness just increases its market share.
I have a theory about why it works. I've been a member of health clubs almost continually since 1980. For 20-some years I belonged to franchise gyms -- first Vic Tanny, then Holiday Spa, then Bally Total Fitness. Each January, I saw exactly what you're seeing in your gym this month: a flood of new members, most of whom will never be seen after Valentine's Day.
But unlike my fellow gym rats, I didn't resent those people. I understood that their fees paid for the true cost of my membership. Big-box gyms lose money on people like you and me, who pay the same low price as the ghost members but actually use the equipment three or four days a week.
And not only do we use it. We wear it out. We stress cables and pulleys, trample carpets, crack the vinyl on the weight benches. We create extra work for the gym staff -- tightening screws, replacing parts, and occasionally removing traces of ep idermal tissue from a barbell.
If every member trained like us, the gym's owners would either have to multiply fees or go out of business.
At Planet Fitness, it's always January. They drive away the lifters who would be expensive to accommodate, in favor of those who're least likely to swipe their cards more than a few times a month. Many, I suspect, don't swipe their cards at all; the $10 monthly charge seems a small price to keep alive the dream of getting in shape.
It may be the best business model in the history of health clubs: a facility people pay for but barely use. And the company is proud of that. "We say we're not a gym, we're Planet Fitness," says Gosselin, the company's PR director.
The problem isn't Planet Fitness. The company is perfectly clear about what it is. The problem is people who expect it to be something it isn't: a place where serious lifters get serious workouts. You aren't likely to get that for just $10 a month.
Lou Schuler, C.S.C.S., is an award-winning journalist and the coauthor (with Alwyn Cosgrove) of The New Rules of Lifting Supercharged.
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