PERSONAL TRAINING | QUEENS

My brother Shahed’s told me about his new gym, and it’s a story too strange to believe. He’s talking about the Planet Fitness in Binghamton New York, which has over 100 locations across the country.

The motto of the gym is the “Judgement Free Zone”, and I think what they mean is they’ve used no good judgment in creating their rules. For one thing, they don’t allow any noise or grunting of any kind. I’m like most people and find most moaning and grunting during exercise very annoying, but every now and then, we all do make some noise on the last rep of our hardest set.

But if you do that here, the most unbelievable thing happens; they have a huge alarm on the front wall of the gym, called the lunk alarm. Under it is the definition of lunk, which they’ve defined as “anyone who grunts, drops weights or judges (whatever that means)” - if you do any of that, the alarm immediately goes off for the whole gym to hear and a staff member comes over and gives you a warning.

Here’s a news story about a Planet Fitness in our area:

That lunk alarm is ridiculous, but not the end of the strange practices at this place. Unbelievably, the gym hosts a “pizza day” the first Monday of the month, where they offer free, unlimited pizza to their members. Shahed actually told me that he was trying real hard to stay on his diet, but when he saw all the free pizza in front of him, he had to have some. When he asked the front desk employee why they were serving pizza in a gym, he was chastised and ridiculed. There’s also a bagel morning the first Tuesday of every month and an ever present bowl of tootsie roles at the front desk.

I’m not the first to blog about this place - a search on the web will find you many other reviews talking about the strange practices here. In Shahed’s opinion, the staff is also rude and grossly out of shape and it’s really hard to find a positive review. If judgement free means that you’re not encouraged to set goals, push yourself, or make any progress at all, then why bother to go?

It’s really something out of a sci-fi movie - it can’t be real that this level of behavior control and mediocrity is enforced in America. Shahed’s never seen personal trainer at the gym, and I think it would probably be against the rules of the place for someone to push you harder and give you a good exercise routine - that would be considered “judgment”.

I can understand having a no loud grunting rule, or rules against unruly behavior or dropping weights; those are the rules of the gym where I train, the Evolution Fitness Club in Astoria. In cases where I have dropped weights or forgot to return them to the racks, the owner or manager has politely reminded me, and I didn’t do it again. But if an alarm went off every time I did it, or if they were serving pizza in the gym, that’s just criminal.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of Planet Fitness is the Powerhouse Gym in Bayside. I think the rules of Planet Fitness were created with the members at Powerhouse in mind, many of whom yell for really no reason at all and love to get into staring contests. Funny enough, Powerhouse was shut down last week in a steroid raid and deemed a public nuisance. I’m not surprised at all because that gym had a toxic vibe and enforced a different kind of mediocrity, one of self-absorption and mindless ritual.

But most other gyms where I’ve been in my life fall in the middle zone of sanity where the rest of us in society live. Where we can accept our differences and respect our boundaries. There are always some people that cross the line and they need to be reminded, but I think the rest of us don’t need that kind of constant, heavy policing when we train.