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January is the only month of the year when perfectly rational adults decide that the solution to an overconsumption of mince pies, fizz and industrial quantities of Celebrations is a direct debit. Not therapy. Not sleep. Not fewer crisps. A gym membership.
This decision is usually made somewhere between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, while wearing elasticated trousers and promising, with the sincerity of a politician before an election, that this time will be different. Spoiler alert: it will not.
You are doomed to fail. Statistically, economically and spiritually, January is the worst possible time to join a gym unless you genuinely intend to use it regularly past Valentine’s Day.
Industry figures suggest that well over half of January joiners stop going within six to eight weeks. Many don’t even make it to February. By March, the treadmills resemble a Cold War air base: operational, eerily deserted, and maintained at great expense for reasons no one quite remembers. The direct debits, however, roll on relentlessly.
January deals aren’t bargains; they’re bait. You can choose anything from an £18-a-month off-peak PureGym shed with kit, to classes-only studios, all the way up to Knightsbridge temples of wellness that charge five figures a year plus a joining fee. The price point changes; the psychology doesn’t. Gyms monetise optimism, specifically the belief that after 30 years of avoiding exercise, you’ll suddenly enjoy being in a room of sweaty strangers at seven in the morning while paying for the pleasure. The house usually wins.
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Gyms are warehouses of guilt. You enter feeling inadequate, surrounded by mirrors seemingly calibrated by Nasa to exaggerate every flaw, and leave smelling faintly of rubber and eau de changing room. Every missed session becomes a tiny moral failure, with cash quietly leaking from your bank account.
Then there’s congestion. January gyms are rammed. Changing rooms resemble a wetsuit convention. The equipment is always just about to be free and never is. You wait. You hover. You pretend to stretch, as if anyone believes that’s what you came for. By joining in January, you’re paying the price for going with the herd. The Ryanair model of fitness.
Leaving is another matter. Gyms are wonderfully enthusiastic when you join and curiously bureaucratic when you try to escape. Notice periods, forms, emails that vanish. It’s not malicious, just friction. Another small nudge designed to keep the direct debit alive long after your motivation has died.
That said, I quite like a gym. I like routine and a cross trainer. At one point I liked it so much I joined KX in Chelsea. Less gym, more luxury wellness laboratory for people who already look irritatingly perfect. For north of £600 a month you’re not so much exercising as being medically managed. There are ice baths to punish you for past sins, saunas, physios, nutritionists and hyperbaric oxygen chambers, because apparently the air in London is no longer aspirational enough.
It’s all very impressive, but none of it makes the cross trainer any more interesting. If your ambition is simply to be a bit less fat and not wheeze tying your shoes, it does feel excessive to require medical oxygen, extreme cold exposure and someone explaining your glutes. I’ve reached an age where the gym is never going to give me the body I always imagined I had. Mostly because that body belonged to someone else, in a different decade, with bone structure.
And there is a better option than joining a gym: join a sports club instead. I know, as a former chair of a lawn tennis club in Essex, that I’m biased, but tennis, sports or country clubs, where the gym is a bolt-on rather than the main event, often cost about the same as a gym warehouse (and usually less than the high-end temples) but offer one crucial difference: variety.
When you’re bored of your playlist and the blinking cardio machines, you can do something else. Play a sport; challenge a friend; socialise. There’s usually a proper bar too.
If you’re determined to join a gym-only establishment, you’ll need honesty usually reserved for tax returns and medical forms. Have you ever stuck to a gym habit before? Do you actually enjoy the environment? Even if you attend the classes will you do anything other than linger at the back?
Fitness itself is cheap. Walking is free. Press-ups cost nothing. Yoga videos exist online. You could go for a run every day. But you probably won’t. This is why I have dogs. They insist on walking, whatever the weather. A sports club does something similar: nudging you into activity without pretending you’ve suddenly become someone else.
Before rushing into a January membership, think carefully. Look for a social solution, not a contractual one. Over the festive period I’ve been doing exactly that. Go for a sports club membership. By summer you’ll be happier, fitter, and use it more frequently.
After all, you want fewer pounds on the scales. Not your bank account.
James Max is a broadcaster on TV and radio. X: @thejamesmax
