Planet Fitness Is Not a Gym

And it’s stupid to keep pretending it is
By Lou Schuler





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.”