Don't go to the gym - it's a con!

[Wowbagger]

The gym is a genius con we should be ashamed to fall for | Zoe Williams | Comment is free | The Guardian

As someone who has never ever considered the possibility of joining a gym, I found that article both amusing and confirming.

One notable quote:

Some doctors happily bandy about the importance of rigorous exercise, but experts on the obesity "epidemic" have been questioning this advice for ages, and rarely recommend anything more demanding than walking and cycling.

What do others think?

[Kim]

I'm of the belief that gyms are for physiotherapy, athletes, for $uni_friend and people of his ilk to meet cute guys who are inevitably gay and have the hots for him and generally extracting money from the optimistic.

Sod, as they say, that.

Cycling is fun.  Walking is fun if your knees aren't going to strand you halfway up a mountain.  Gyms seem unlikely to be fun unless you're really into PE or cute guys who are inevitably gay and have the hots for you.

...Yeah.   

[border-rider]

To lose weight you need to exercise for a long time at a sufficiently low intensity that you're burning primarily fat. Short hard exercise may burn more calories, and even more fat, but you eat them back down again. The secret is to keep the heart rate sufficiently low to avoid depleting the carbo reserves.

A steady bike ride could do that; 20 minutes of circuit training is great for fitness but won't help much with weight loss.

[Adrian]

Swimming#, cycling and walking are superb. None of them occupy my mind enough to stop me drifting off and thinking about other stuff whilst I do them .

Gym is the opposite. It is just precisely mindless enough to require attention but not allow freedom to think or daydream.



# apart from the permanent earache and colds.

[Martin]

interestingly the last time I did the Poor Student I spent the train journey up to it with a gym trainer; he agreed that the 200km ride I was about to (slowly) do would probably lose more net calories than a month in the gym;

he also said he made most of his money in January, go figure...


edit; own up; who put the helmet comment in there? 

[Fab Foodie]

Cycling is fun.  Walking is fun if your knees aren't going to strand you halfway up a mountain.  Gyms seem unlikely to be fun unless you're really into PE or cute guys who are inevitably gay and have the hots for you.

...Yeah.   

There's certainly a narcicistic (sp?) and voyueristic angle to the Gym scene ... to see and be seen by the other fluffy gym-bunnies.  

[Fab Foodie]

he also said he made most of his money in January, go figure...

Mrs FF informs me that the local leisure centre is absolutely heaving right now...

[Manotea]

Yup, all the CV gym equipment should be binned.

I was rather struck by a different tack on the "gym's are useless" pulpit which ran something along the line that "It's a waste of time young people going to the gym because they look fabulous anyway because they are young, and it's a waste of time old people going to the gym because no matter how fit they get they'll still be old". The only consolation with that view is the knowledge that I looked fabulous once, long ago, in a far off galaxy. Sob.

[hellymedic]

Gyms are good for body-building, which is great if that floats your boat. David now has much equipment so he can work out every other day without queuing or listening to muzak.
He is certainly no thinner after a year's effort.
I reckon he'd lose weight if he cycled an hour  per day.

[Jakob]

Nonsense.
I'm fitter, faster, stronger now than I've been for years.
I haven't lost much weight, but I've replaced a fair chunk of fat with useful muscle-mass and I trashed my (previous) regular cycling partner up the local climb this summer, despite barely having been on the bike for 3 months, something I never thought I would.

We have no mirrors, no treadmills, bikes, stair-machines, etc and definitely no gym-bunnies (of either sex).

Short hard exercise may burn more calories, and even more fat, but you eat them back down again.

Not if you control your diet and the same thing could be said for cycling. I certainly had no problems eating back whatever calories I burned off from cycling.

The 'gym' is most certainly not a con, but you'll have to work for the results.

[Nightfly]

Back in the day I used to like Zoe William's columns finding her rather witty and occasionally slightly rebellious, but this article is just drivel. She seems to have sold out to medicocrity. Haranguing gyms and those who use them just because it is the season of the turkey which has finally just been finished, the mince pie with lashings of extra thick brandy cream and over endulgence is hardly novel. But, she doesn't cancel her gym membership preferring to keep it for the sauna - hypocrit. Well she has been well and truly conned. It is sad that she now seems to have caught Monbiosis.

[andygates]

Hey, it's the mandatory anti-new-year-resolution article.  Aren't these generated by a bot, automatically, based on the calendar?

Lack of physical activity is a key indicator in many health problems, not least the burgeoning fatness and diabetes epidemics. 

Do what physical activity you enjoy.  Try them all and see what floats your boat.  When you find what's fun, it's fun, so you'll keep doing it.  That's really all there is to it.

[Greenbank]

Average gym user doesn't get value for money from gym membership shocker...

The gym works for me as I have specific uses for it on top of my usual regular exercise, stuff (yes, mainly CV equipment) that's much easier in a gym than out in the real world:
* running at a constant controlled pace on a running machine
* intervals on a stationary bike that has a power output reading (trying to do this on the open road is dangerous and I can't have a turbo trainer at home)
* rowing is great exercise and it's much less hassle to use a gym machine than the real thing (even living in Putney)

It's also only £2 a week and I have a permanent locker there, and it is only a 5 minute walk from my desk, without needing to go outside.

[clarion]

Sounds like Zoe should have conferred with her co-columnist Aditya Chakraborty, who wrote a column about what a waste of money gyms are in the paper of 4 Jan

[border-rider]

Not if you control your diet and the same thing could be said for cycling. I certainly had no problems eating back whatever calories I burned off from cycling.

The comparison is between activities that rip through the glyco stores and those that burn mostly fat. The former will make you hungrier and it's harder (much harder) to limit your calorific intake whilst still leading a normal life if you're glycogen-depleted. If you burn mostly fat it's a hell of a lot easier to control your diet

Yes, if you don't limit your HR (eg on hills) you'll get just the same effect cycling and you won't lose weight when you restock with cake.

Gyms are good for losing weight if you do stuff in them that will lead to weight loss; good for fitness and strength if you push yourself. Just the same as cycling.

The fallacy is that going to the gym and having a hard work-out (or sprinting up a hill on a bike) will be a particularly effective way to lose weight.  There's nothing wrong with it for genera fitness etc - and for anyone with a sedentary lifestyle it'll likely be a Good Thing.

[mattc]

To lose weight you need to exercise for a long time at a sufficiently low intensity that you're burning primarily fat. Short hard exercise may burn more calories, and even more fat, but you eat them back down again. The secret is to keep the heart rate sufficiently low to avoid depleting the carbo reserves.

A steady bike ride could do that; 20 minutes of circuit training is great for fitness but won't help much with weight loss.

+1

The only thing I'd add is that I believe pure muscle-building work* (i.e. old-fashioned weight-lifting) is shown to increase your post-exercise calorie burn by a useful amount. This may not lose any weight, but should at least improve the muscle@fat ratio!

Even if this isn't a significant effect, I believe most of us sedentary 21stC westerners can benefit from a little more muscle strength to help prevent injury.


_{*which doesn't need enormous heart-rates.}

[toontra]

My gym session consists of:

1 hour - weights (mainly fixed with emphasis on quads)
1 hour - pilates class (core strength)
1 hour - intervals on bike trainer (determined by wattage)

So that's a 3-hour session.  I do that at least twice and usually 3 times a week.  I find it improves my general fitness a lot, specifically hill climbing on the bike.  

However I don't expect that to reduce my weight (muscle is heavier than fat).  To control my weight I control my diet!

This is at a local authority gym.  It's cheap - there are very few posers and only the occasional unwanted conversation in the changing room!

People may con themselves by thinking tootling along to a gym and breaking sweat for a few minutes will solve all their health issues, but that's very different from saying gyms are a con.

[vorsprung]

I did go to the gym 3 times a week for a couple of months.  It wasn't for me.  I enjoyed the bike ride there more than the tedium of the machines

The instructor gave me some good tips on stretching and it might have done me some good

I have lost weight with static exercise.  When I had a busted collar bone I was doing about an hour a day on a turbo, often at high heart rates

[simonp]

It's also shown that high intensity aerobic work-outs increase post-exercise calorie burn for up to 24h whereas low-intensity only does so for about 20 minutes.  I've never bothered with fat burning zones.  I try to avoid HR above 160 unless I'm doing interval training.  Moderate intensity (HR 150ish) does not seem to cause major glycogen depletion afaict, although a moderate amount of glycogen depletion causes fat-burning at rest to increase, which is in itself a useful outcome.

Of course, long term, I've not lost weight.  I eat it back in Autumn when I stop cycling so much, rather than after each workout*, though.

The other benefit of the gym is that cycling is very unbalanced for muscle development.  Going to the gym allows me to do some other things, such as the rowing machine, swimming, and a small amount of weights stuff.  I think being well-toned makes me look a bit younger too.  My physio in particular always says my hamstrings and glutes need more development.

* Edit: Actually, I plan for eating most of it back.  A typical gym visit will burn 1,000 calories or more.  I want to east back most of this, when I am trying to lose weight, for a daily deficit of around 250 calories.  After an Audax, I have to eat a lot the next couple of days to keep the average deficit sane.

[Euan Uzami]

I mainly use a gym for two things,
(1) to do specific muscle strengthening exercises and stretches for the purpose of avoiding injury. I do use the cardio machines but only for 5 minutes to get warmed up for (1).
(2) swimming.

[Euan Uzami]

I don't see how you can really say people don't get value for money from gym membership (unless you pay but literally don't go *at all*), because there isn't really anything to define what value for money you SHOULD be getting from it.
It's only a con if it deceives you. Has any gym *promised* a certain amount of weight loss?
Now the slimming industry - now that IS a con, because it is in their best interests for the fat to stay fat, and the slim to GET fat.  They don't actually want you to get slimmer at all (but hey, possibly a bit too controversial for non-P&OBI?)

[simonp]

VFM can only be decided by the user, not by someone pontificating in the Guardian.  My gym costs £1000 a year, but I'd only waste the money on something else otherwise.

[zigzag]

i went to a spinning class yesterday, after a looong break. it was bloody hard! (and i only averaged 186w during half an hour..) i hope i will use the gym quite a bit this year, as i need to train for london marathon (haven't started yet) and for pbp (i doubt that i could finish it at all with my current fitness). good thing that the gym has cutting edge equipment and is only 1min away from home. my plan is to go there at least twice a week for at least one hour. i'll find out if it's good vfm or a con in few months time.

[teethgrinder]

I joined a commercial gym a few years ago, purely for Spinning.
Cost me about £50 a month, I think. I went twice, then three times a week and sometimes did double sessions.
I can't really use a turbo in my flat. My heavy breathing would make a lot of noise. I'd also need to find a way to contain the large puddle of sweat that I used to create. I could saturate my T shirt in about 10 minutes and for the remaining 30 it would constantly drip.
The showers were good too and the gym was always kept tidy (unlike my flat)
I sometimes got very tempted to try other activities too, but never did.
Purely for the spinning classes, I thought it was perfectly good VFM. About 10 classes a month worked out at about £5 a go. I got to use a spin bike, had a good instructor and could sweat myself ino oblivion and rasp as loudly as I liked while I thrashed my lungs out. I quite like very loud music, I certainly prefer up-beat musak to deathly silence and anyway, if you're trying hard enough, you don't really notice it.
I'm very seriously considering re-joining this year.

Of course, if you just join, do a few classes and put no effort into them, then stop going or just use the sauna, then you don't get VFM. Same as if you buy a carbon bike and leave it to rot in the garage.
It's not for everyone, but that doesn't make them poor VFM. It just means that you bought a product that you never really wanted. I think that some people join a gym and think that weight falls off by magic.
It's not for Wowbagger. But then again, doing something like Tia Chi while listening to Bach isn't quite for me. Allthough having seen Wowbagger do some Tia Chi, I reckon there's a lot of worth in Tia Chi.

Using a cycle for transport and fun is king for staying trim.

[giropaul]

In my opinion a lot of the comments are missing the key point.

Gyms are commercial organisations where profit is key. All the effort goes into attracting new members, who typically go for a week or two, but are tied into long-term payments.

I've found them to generally be cynical "membership churning" organisations. Before you sign up - you're their best friend. Once joined you're ignored. Classes are overbooked, and those who pay the instructors a private coaching fee get priority.

If all the members went twice a week the gyms would be rammed. Get them in, then discourage attendance seems to be the business model in my experience. It's nothing to do with fitness at all!