A Wallet “Workout”

I’m a gym rat, pure and simple.

Since the mid-1970's I’ve belonged to one health club or another and once even had a brief stint selling memberships for the now-defunct European Health Spa chain of gyms.

Except for a landscaper, my membership to a local gym is the only luxury I afford myself. It’s expensive to be sure, but it’s less than a mile from my home which means I can access it multiple times in a day. It features all the equipment I need plus rows of modern torture devices that I don’t. If asked, the floor trainers will gladly give you a much-needed stretch following a workout.

The maintenance staff keeps the place immaculate and one member even joked that the locker rooms are sanitized more often than a hospital operating room.

And trust me, that’s only a slight exaggeration.

But like health clubs and most other businesses across the country, the place has been padlocked since March. So, I’ve been trying to keep in reasonable condition on my own.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel – sort of.

The club’s corporate office this week announced a preliminary opening schedule, but it was accompanied by a roster of conditions. Some I expected such as allowing a certain number of people to work out at one time, face masks when entering and leaving and even a mandatory reservation system.

But here’s the rub.

Members will only be allowed to use the club a maximum of three times per week. Since they keep a record each time you check in, I discovered I used the facility 341 times in 2019.

Now that would be 12 times a month under the post COVID-19 guidelines instead of last year’s average of 28. But the kicker is that my membership fees will not be reduced. In other words, going forward each workout will cost me an average of $14 instead of $5.50.

Now there are certain things I’ll let pass and others I’ll stubbornly dig in and fight. This falls into the latter category. It’s like paying a mortgage on your home but only being allowed to live there a few days a week. Ditto for limited trips in a car on a financing plan.

“But we still have all our overhead and expenses to pay,” was the response. Not to sound uncaring in a dismal time in our country’s history, but that’s not my problem. Each year when my membership dues increased, I quietly acquiesced. And now they want to charge full price for substantially reduced usage.

Uh uh.

Not this time. I need the workouts, not my wallet. It works up a sweat enough on its own.