Working Out

An unanticipated stress of my life has been keeping tabs on (and ensuring I don’t miss) all the workout classes I’ve signed up for and paid for that have expiration dates. It sounds ridiculous (because it is) but it has caused me so much unneeded and unwarranted anxiety to know either I, or one of my well-intentioned family members have purchased a series of workout classes for me in good faith and that I will use them to better my life, only for them to go unredeemed. 

The one that sticks out in my head the most is when my mom bought me yoga classes from Groupon which weren’t close to my office or my apartment and which required you to register for a subscription with the gym they were held at to redeem them. I tried to sign up online but after reading the fine print on the Groupon email, I realized I’d have to go to the gym and sign up with someone there instead. Because I’m bad at planning, I showed up right after work knowing the next yoga class wasn’t for another two hours so I had to go inside and fill out a personal intake form, tour the gym I would only be able to access for the two months that I had to take five yoga classes in and leave after I had signed the papers. After leaving the gym, I lamented over the fact I likely wouldn’t get my act together enough to return to this area that wasn’t accessible via public transit. And I didn’t. I forgot to mention it to my mom and we never spoke about it again. I guess I could have just used the gym in this time but that is neither here nor there.

I’m obsessed with intro offers to boutique gyms, spin, and pilates studios. I believe I have tried most free intro classes that exist in my city. Unfortunately, some intro offers allow unlimited classes for 2–4 weeks requiring the discipline to, again, get your act together enough to attend for the $50 to be worth it. Often, for these intro offers, I will go twice, maybe three times, and feel I’ve accomplished enough to satisfy the weird, workout obsessed version of myself. But at least these offers expire after a short enough period of time, ending my guilt swiftly. 

What does me in are the longer terms we’re allotted to buy and use your workout classes starting either from the date of purchase or the date of the first class you attend. To extend this waiting period, I will occasionally, delay my first class which alleviates my guilt until the clocks start running again. I’m fundamentally against the idea that you can pay for something once and have it expire and no longer hold any value. The provincial government made it illegal to have gift cards expire because so many had gone unclaimed and they realized it was all a big scam. 

Charging people huge sums of money to work out at your fancy gym should not have an expiration date. It’s hard enough as it is to leave your house or workplace to flail yourself around a room in front of strangers, that the prospect of potentially losing money in your quest to do this feels especially cruel. I’m trying. I have no self-discipline when it comes to eating food that is good for me so I need to do something else to maintain a reasonably healthy body. Also, I’m not convinced spending money should be your primary motivation for working out. This is limiting. To spend so much money on a gym membership you feel guilted into attending its classes is sad to me and defeats the purpose. Working out can be fun like once every three months.

I have woken up so many times in the middle of the night, wondering if I had any remaining classes leftover on the three studios I have attended this past year (pilates, spin class, and boxing). I have an online account for each of these studios I can easily log into to check what remaining credits I have. These credits expire after either three or six months. These studios offer discounted prices the more classes you buy at once. However, the expiration date doesn’t change for any number of classes you get so you either have to cram them all in one month when you realize you’ve missed your weekly class or be an organized, thoughtful person who remembers to book a weekly class. 

Another flaw in this system is a lot of the classes fill up ahead of time and you’re forced out of the desired time slot or instructor or Rihanna themed bike ride you had planned to attend weeks ago. Sometimes, you only have one shot at the beginning of the week to book your class and it’s annoying to have to always be online to get this chance. A pilates studio I liked shut down one of their locations so it became almost impossible to book a 6 p.m. weekday class unless you logged onto their website at 5 a.m. the week prior when the classes were posted for sign ups. I ended up going to this one meditation class repeatedly because it was right after work and every other class had a waitlist. Which is another bullshit system. You sign up for the waitlist and only know if you get the spot the day before and you only get a couple of hours to cancel your spot and if you don’t, you lose it and are charged? A conspiracy. I still enjoyed this meditation but it was glorified napping with the instructor occasionally putting a crystal on your forehead or chest or stomach. Which felt amazing. 

A way I attempted to cheat the system was to invite friends and my dad to classes and have this trick use up an additional credit in my limited time frame. This worked most of the time until most of the places I went to implemented a policy where purchased classes couldn’t be transferred to other people. This seemed mean. The money was still spent. The class was still attended. This felt like a way for the studios to squeeze more money out of my friends instead of only me. When I tried to make up an elaborate story about how my dad needed to take pilates classes for his back and he couldn’t do them alone but didn’t want to invest any money so it would be great if I could just dip into my account’s classes for him to attend a class with me, the studio person responded to my email by inquiring about my dad’s physical capabilities and suggesting I purchase him one on one classes with a pilates instructor to teach him the basics for $400 an hour. I could, of course, attend with him if I wanted to so he didn’t feel weird or alone. That……wasn’t what I wanted, no. Thanks. Consequently, I had to make up an elaborate story about how he was going out of town so maybe I would reach back out in the new year. Either way, I still had four classes to use in four weeks and I was running out of spare time. 

After making a friend impersonate me for a few of them, I decided to attend the classes myself. At one point I got up early enough to notice an abs and butt class that was almost always waitlisted and I logged into my account thinking I would finally be able to redeem my last class and never have to worry about buying more group classes again. I would only buy single classes and pay a stupidly high premium for it from now on. This would be my cross to bear. When I logged into my account to book, a notification popped up: You are out of credits. Please purchase more to attend this class. I was free. The relief I felt overwhelmed me. I went back to sleep.