Foreign Perspectives

It wasn’t that we’ve been putting off joining a gym for the last couple of months but rather that we’ve been both working up our exercise programme and checking out the prices/facilities on offer locally.

Our first thought was to head for Esporta which we’d been going to before. It’s an excellent choice for the long term committed gym goer in that it’s quite a large place with lots of free space around the equipment and it provides a very complete health club setting with everything including a pool, a wide range of exercise classes and quite a nice little restaurant. However, it’s 12 month contract at around £50/month (they have various offers so the price on offer varies) and we knew for sure that we’d be taking a two month break this summer.Besides, the £50/month is really only worth paying if you’re making full use of the facilities and we won’t be for a while. In a similar vein is David Lloyd although they currently offer a three month trial membership which we might take up in September.

At the other extreme are the small gyms run by private organisations and the local councils. These are generally run on a pay per visit basis which is a great way to start out an exercise programme as you can begin with a once a week visit and work up from there. The larger council places usually run classes too. However, the pay per visit approach can get very expensive. For example, a typical £3/visit with three visits a week amounts to around £40/month. Add on classes and you can easily be talking over £60/month at which point clearly somewhere like Esporta is a more sensible option.

Finally, there’s Fitness First which falls in the middle ground between the two extremes. Pricing for a membership cancellable at one months notice runs to around £30/month which includes gym access and classes ie it’s all-in; for a 12 month membership it’s around £20/month. This is essentially an Esporta cum David Lloyd place minus the pool, tennis court and restaurant and with the exercise machines packed quite close together. We’ve signed up for the one month notice version and will be cancelling next month seeing as we’re off in July.

And we’ve even started going, unlike the surprisingly large number of people who sign up for the gym but never actually go. Even more surprising is how well we’re doing already after just a few days. We reckon that we’re not quite fit enough for the classes but should be in a couple of weeks or so.