Gyms jampacked now — luckily, not for long

I stopped by my gym the other day, just to confirm that we are still in the thick of New Year’s resolutions season. We are. In principle, I have nothing against the hordes that flood my gym, your gym, everyone’s gym during the month of January.

I make resolutions every year, too, even though mine are usually more of the moderately achievable “organize the hall closet” variety than the overly ambitious “lose 20 pounds” type. Besides, what kind of miserable person would poohpooh anyone’s attempt at selfimprovement?

But, as a regular exerciser, I find the month of January to be a disheartening time. I know I’m not alone.

The New York Times is publishing articles with headlines that read, “How to Deal with January Crowds at the Gym.”

My Facebook news feed is full of complaints about newcomers hogging all the treadmills and screwing up the arrangement of the free weight racks.

My casual eavesdropping in the locker room has turned up nothing but bellyaching about oversubscribed group classes, waiting lists for the bike machines and crowded swim lanes (OK, so I might have been chiming in on that last conversation).

In any month other than January, none of us would be so unwelcoming to new gymgoers. Something about the resolutions crowd erases our selfawareness. We forget that we were all gym beginners once. Some of us even manage to maintain our exercise habits not because of our natural superiority but because we made a longago resolution that somehow stuck.

Horrified by the newcomers’ slow pace and lack of gym etiquette (why do so many people “forget” to wipe the machines after they’ve finished using them?), we become just as insufferable as the newbies.

This year, I’ve chosen to direct my ire not at the newcomers but the gyms themselves. After all, it’s the economics of the gym industry that make us all so miserable during these early weeks of January.

Gyms sign up way more people than they can reasonably accommodate. Planet Fitness, one of the nation’s largest gym chains, came in for a public lashing a few years ago when NPR reported that they have an average of 6,500 members per gym — while most of their gyms can accommodate only about 300 people.

The reason they do this, other than pure greed? Because they know most of those people will herd into those gyms for only a few weeks at the beginning of the year. Then, the usual realities of life will conspire to force most of them to drop their workout routine and begin the year’s descent into sloth.

It’s cynical, but it’s also true: More than a decade ago, economists Stefano DellaVigne and Ulrike Malmendier published a paper with a wonderful title, “Paying Not to Go the Gym.” They found that gym members who paid monthly fees went to the gym just 4.3 times per month, paying $17 for each visit when they could have paid $10 per visit as a nonmember.

Their research should be reconfirmed and updated. But I have no reason to believe their upshot explanation for this personal finance debacle — “overconfidence about future selfcontrol or about future efficiency” — has changed since 2006.

It’s a shame that the fitness industry has chosen this economic model — it basically amounts to a baitandswitch. To get you to sign the contract, they lure you in with shiny brochures and ampedup talk about all the weight you’ll lose and the muscles you’ll gain. But as soon as you’ve given them permission to directly debit your bank account every month, they don’t want to see you anymore. They make their money when you

don’t show up. On the other hand, this gives those of us who regularly go to the gym another way to regard those newcomers. They’re not annoyances; they’re doing their best to beat the Man! Just as you are. From this perspective, every hogged machine, every used towel and every overbooked class slot is a victory for the little guy and a blow to an insulting business model. By working hand in hand, gym regulars and clueless New Year’s resolutioners can improve their health and get one over on late capitalism. What’s not to love? Or, at the very least — if you’re waiting an extra 20 minutes while some newbie keeps screwing up the settings on the elliptical machine — what’s not to smile about?

“But Caille,” you say, “that 20 minutes has extended to 25. My philosophical mindset has failed me.”

The last, and maybe most important, truism of January at the gym? You’ll have it all to yourself again by Valentine’s Day.

It’s the economics of the gym industry that make us all so miserable during these early weeks of January.