This Doesn’t Count As Fit­ness, Does It?

I hated PE at school (you could usu­ally find me in the locker room with a book), and had nat­u­rally assumed I was aller­gic to sports. But when I started yoga four years ago, I amazed myself: I imme­di­ately loved it.

Canada is a car coun­try, and win­ters are long and cold. It’s harder to exer­cise out­doors and it’s not often pos­si­ble to walk from point A to point B. I quickly under­stood that I had to make a con­scious effort to exer­cise in order to stay healthy.

Shortly after com­ing to Canada, I joined the YMCA. But I quickly got bored with the machines, half of them bear­ing cryp­tic instruc­tions. Then I found a yoga stu­dio and never looked back. In 2010, I started hot yoga. Sweat­ing like a pig in a very hot room full of strangers might not sound so fun but I found it lib­er­at­ing. Not to men­tion that yoga is a good work­out and it isn’t so much about med­i­ta­tion (phew!) but rather about build­ing flex­i­bil­ity, strength and balance.

Unfor­tu­nately, yoga has become pop­u­lar in Ottawa. Not as pop­u­lar as the Lul­ule­mon store at the Rideau Cen­tre where hip­sters pay $200 for sweat­pants, but pop­u­lar enough that classes are get­ting very crowded and very expensive.

Heart­bro­ken, I decided to look for a cheaper alternative.

My first thought was to join the YMCA again. But at $60 a month, the mem­ber­ship was more expen­sive than I remem­bered it to be, and the class sched­ule wasn’t too prac­ti­cal for me. I kept this option as a plan B.

My plan A was Goodlife Fit­ness, a gym with sev­eral loca­tions in Ottawa. The mem­ber­ship fee being one of my main cri­te­ria, I went online to see how much it was. Sur­prise sur­prise, the fees were nowhere to be found. Instead, those inter­ested in join­ing Goodlife where asked to pro­vide their info to be con­tacted about plan rates.

Not being the patient kind, I went to one of the Goodlife clubs (the one at the Rideau Cen­tre) to ask directly about mem­ber­ship fees.

“Take a sit, fill this out and some­one will be with you shortly,” instructed the woman at the front desk.

I looked at the paper she handed me. Full name, phone num­ber, email, address, sig­na­ture… I wrote down my name and signed, assum­ing the rest was optional.

The woman looked over my shoul­der and frowned. “You gotta fill out e-very-th-ing.”

I love when peo­ple treat me like an idiot.

“I just want to know the price of a mem­ber­ship,” I argued. “You don’t need my con­tact info for that.”

She sighed. Clearly, I wasn’t get­ting it.

“We are gonna give you a tour of the gym. This is a waiver. It’s com­pul­sory. By law.” She stressed the last word, as if to impress me. She failed. I wrote down I lived on Sun­set Blvd, Straw­berry Fields, ON. What? It sounded nice. Sue me.

Two min­utes later, the local male bodybuilder/personal trainer took a sit in front of me. Sub­tle. Sent a guy for a female “applicant.”

“How is your nutrition?”

“Great.”

He looked up at me, as if to guess when I last had French fries.

“What?” I protested. “I eat my broccoli!”

“Why do you want to join a gym?”

“I’m going to a yoga stu­dio but I’m look­ing for a cheaper alter­na­tive,” I answered honestly.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a freelancer.”

“Who are your clients?”

This is none of your fuck­ing busi­ness. “It depends,” I deflected.

I looked at the piece of paper on which he had actu­ally scrib­bled “it depends.”

He kept on ask­ing ques­tions, all more per­sonal than the next. Remem­ber that at this stage, I just wanted to know how much the mem­ber­ship was. Right there, I decided I did not want to get a mem­ber­ship there. If I had to take an entire sur­vey just to know the prices, I would prob­a­bly have to share my DNA to exer­cise there.

Even­tu­ally, the guy mum­bled some­thing about the price, quot­ing a bi-weekly rate. “The con­tract is here,” he added. “I just need your signature.”

“I don’t want to sign a con­tract,” I replied. “I just wanted to know the price of a mem­ber­ship. Thank you for the information.”

“Wait! You will never get that rate again!”

“That’s fine. I’m not ready to sign a one-year con­tract on the spot.”

“I just need your bank­ing information.”

“And I just needed to know the mem­ber­ship rate. I’m not sign­ing a con­tract today.”

“You are pass­ing on a great deal.”

“I’m tak­ing my chance.”

I left.

I later found this arti­cle when I did a quick search on Goodlife. Can’t say I’m surprised.

No related articles.