If it makes you feel better: most gyms are a scam. The whole business model is about selling as much memberships as possible, and making it hard to cancel. Most

If it makes you feel better: most gyms are a scam. The whole business model is about selling as much memberships as possible, and making it hard to cancel. Most gyms sell much more memberships than they could even remotely facilitate, because they know ~80% of the members never return after the first month or so. I used to work at a small gym that could handle maybe 100 visitors a day, I think they had over 8000 paying members. You could only cancel by letter 1 month in advance of the renewal date. The only exception was a doctor's letter for some medical reason you could no longer go to the gym. The owner drove a Ferrari (albeit second hand). Every year on January, after people had been over-consuming food and had ambitious new year resolutions, they'd do all sorts of promotions, and they would sell for about a years worth of new subscriptions in a day. I'd estimate 90% of those 'januaries' (as they'd call them) no longer returned after the first month. About 75% forgot to cancel in December, so they would be charged again for a full year, though they hadn't visited in 11 months. This is a common 'exploit' of human behaviour. People feel good about taking the first step in weight loss by buying the membership. But when you think about it, it makes no sense at all why you'd need a 'membership' the gain access to a gym. This is also why home training devices are a big business, and why they usually come with terrible return policies.