Also, whatever savings you might accrue by driving further for a better deal, evaporate very easily against the current fuel prices. When laziness bites, the closer the gym is, the easier it is to shrug it off and get busy. Convenience is critical to maintaining a regular gym routine. Many smaller gyms don’t maintain a pool, due to space or budgetary constraints.Īlso don’t forget, where you might save R200 a month driving across town to a cheaper gym, it’s false economy. This way, you suffer no compromise in your training, except usually the pool, of course. If function is more important to you than form, and assuming the gym and its equipment is in a decent condition and comprehensive, you might actually favour a smaller gym, so that speed and access in training isn’t hampered. If glitz and glamour are important to you, then the closest branch of one of the chains is going to be your logical choice. Just as the smaller gyms’ ability to undercut the chains’ prices has prompted the big guns to pitch an entry-level membership, so too has the standard presented at those big chains made demands of the smaller gyms to keep up. Smaller gyms today have been forced to maintain a certain standard, set by the bigger chains. Pretty much gone are the dingy gyms stuck in a corner downtown, with broken benches and the smell of socks. Their premises are glitzier and more modern perhaps (and there are often heated pools at the fancier gyms) but the dedicated fitness practitioner will note that smaller gyms still in the game typically apply the same standards to maintenance and presentation nowadays, within reason.
So Planet Fitness, for example, like Virgin Active, has an entry-level membership that goes head to head with any local smaller gym. No one gym presents as outrageously more expensive than any other. Savings are never substantial enough to flout convenience as your prime consideration when choosing a gym.Īlongside this, the reality that has emerged from our research is that all South African gyms are fairly competitive and tied into one another’s pricing. No matter how much we want to see and be seen at some busy and seemingly more glamorous gyms, the regularity and consistency gym demands means that location (that equals convenience) is never beaten as the prime consideration. Gym is something that is ideally close by, and regular. Firstly, everyone has the same apples to compare as we discovered and, secondly, no such comparison will point to a greater imperative than your convenience. We’re not going to sketch a detailed comparative table of gyms, depicting prices and comparing them apples for apples. And of course, even at the smaller gyms, fees will increase if you regularly commission an in-house personal trainer or a coach of some kind in your routine. They’ll rise further if you want provincial or national membership, where you can access any branch in the country.
Fees start rising at the bigger gyms if you want access to led classes, as well as the weights area, for example.
Membership fees typically cap out at around R450 on all but the national chains, where fees can go up to R1,000 a month or more, if you want wholesale access and access to any branch in the country.įor the average fitness or gym nut – someone who might occasionally swim or not at all, or occasionally fiddle elsewhere around the gym – gym fees should not exceed around R350 a month in Pretoria. Well, the good news is that almost all gyms in the country kick off at around R200 – R300 for entry-level membership.
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