Planet Fitness - A Celebration of Mediocrity

Planet Fitness claims to be a gym that is a “judgment free zone” and also free of the “irritations” they believe to be commonplace in hard core gyms like grunting, heavy breathing, and the sounds of heavy weights making contact with the ground. I assert that this ideology is a front for their real intentions, which is a profit making venture based upon the celebration of mediocrity.

Planet Fitness purports to have a “judgment free zone”. The policies that Planet Fitness sets to create this “judgment free zone” are to ban certain activities. These activities range from the banning of large compound exercises like squats and deadlifts, to the banning of grunting, heavy breathing, and other activities that a lifter may do to get psyched up. They do this for the reason that a novice lifter might feel intimidated by this behavior. If these activities intimidate a novice lifter it is only based upon his or her insecurity. Intense lifting does not equate to the degrading and insulting of novice lifters. The opposite is actually the case. From my experience, serious lifters have the mindset of wanting to give their knowledge and expertise to novice lifters, thus helping them. They see it as an affirmation of their accomplishments. The problem is that the policies to protect members from being judged by serious lifters are based upon a spurious assessment of the behavior of the serious lifter. The irony is that Planet Fitness is judging serious lifters based upon ridiculous stereotypes, and they claim to create a judgment free zone. Just go to their site, and listen to the commercials they have. These are silly parodies of the serious lifter (http://www.planetfitness.com/pffun.asp).

Planet Fitness also creates these policies with the supposed intent of removing irritations that are detrimental to exercise. One of the methods that they use is to sound an alarm that sounds like a siren during an air raid (http://www.planetfitness.com/lunk.htm). The reality is that a gym is not a library; the sound of heavy breathing is in no way detrimental to the other people performing their exercises properly. If this activity was a detriment, then serious lifters would not have achieved the physique that they did, considering they exercise in conditions of other people breathing heavy. I cannot say the same of an alarm that sounds like an air raid siren, that would be extremely distracting.

I have shown the policies of Planet Fitness to be absurd. Planet Fitness attempts to create a “judgment free zone”, by using means that portray ridiculous stereotypes of serious lifters, thus being horribly judgmental. Planet Fitness also creates a circus atmosphere by sounding an alarm that sounds like a siren. I and others will question what their real agenda is. I believe it is a profit making venture based upon the celebration of mediocrity. For this consumerist society that we live in, a good deal of people will want a gym that is more of a social outlet that will not challenge them, and will promote their mediocrity by making their insecurities look like virtues. A perfect example of this is the commercial that caricatures a serious lifter by stating that he spends an inordinate amount of money on supplements (http://www.planetfitness.com/sound/Pf1.mp3). This is a clear distortion of the truth. To put this in a more realistic perspective, the need for supplements is very important. Supplements will both facilitate weightlifting goals and allow one to cross physical barriers through the promotion of muscle recovery, fat loss, post workout nutrition, pre workout boosts, etc.. I know people who will spend 300 - 400 dollars on a Friday or Saturday night. By going to less expensive places on the weekends you can easily afford the costs of supplements. It is all a matter of priorities, and to excel at something, you must set activities around that as a higher priority. To ridicule the choices of those that excel is clearly a celebration of mediocrity, a vice that Planet Fitness has capitalized upon for profit.