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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Any gym owners can chime in? My local gym seemed pretty normal this January so far (but I am in Australia where many people book their holidays during forced shutdown periods).

Also the gym seems to have the same pricing whenever except sometimes there is “no joining fee” which is a weird thing to me but hey?

My gym is independent.

A famous world brand of gym I used to belong to seemed to make their money by making it very hard to leave (contract, and when the contract runs out hard to get through to the right person, and combined with uncancelable direct debits in Australia) it was a pain to quit. It that might be the DD that made me just close the bank account.

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A personal trainer I had at a very low rate (about $35/month in 2015) Manhattan gym confided in me that the place had something like 10X more active memberships than they could ever fit into the gym, even if everyone came at a uniform time distribution once every other day. They knew empirically that they could basically get away with overselling a service (adequate time and space to use the facility) than they could actually provide, because as the article says, most people just come 3 or4 times and then give up, but they've already signed up for a yearly rate.

That is a crazy low rate. Which gym is it?

Alan Thrall (owner of Untamed Strength in Sacramento) has discussed this a few times (most recently in this video[0]), but basically independent gyms don't really see this effect. In fact January can still be a pretty slow month for independent gyms as members over spend during the holidays (and cancel memberships) or don't want to go out in the cold weather.

Personally as a member of an independent gym for a few years now, I have also not seen an increase in activity at the beginning of the year. Most of the members tend to be pretty consistent and I've been now 5 days this new year at different peak times and seen only one new face. Good independent gyms are very expensive to run.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XyjXXnkc7oo

I go to an independent gym, it's definitely more crowded in January but pretty much back to normal by mid-late February. If history repeats, they will close to new memberships sometime in the next few weeks until the crowds abate.

A lot of new year resolvers won't be so keen on training untamed and will find their way to the nearest Planet Fitness. Squat racks can be pretty intimidating, and learning how to use them takes some guidance.

> or don't want to go out in the cold weather

January in Australia is Summer

Depending on which Aussie state you are in, there are consumer protections which allow you to exit these contracts with a simple email. At least this is was the case for me in WA.

NSW here, I quit mine a few months back by email after being a member for 5 years. The reason being they increased the monthly fee from $65 in 2020 to $100 in 2023.

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