Gym Staff and Personal Trainers

Some Planet Fitness locations may have independent available if you need one, but they are not included in the membership package, and they typically don’t keep trainers on staff, even for hire.

Also, don’t expect to get much of an orientation from the staff showing you how to use the equipment. When you join Planet Fitness, you are pretty much on your own in terms of figuring out what to do. The staff is primarily there to scan people in, sign up new members, give prospective gym members tours of the facility, schedule tanning bed appointments, walk around to make sure people aren’t grunting, and depending on the location, activate the Lunk Alarm.

This isn’t as much of an issue for people who are already experienced at , but for beginners, it’s critical.

Also, it’s important to know that their staff is not necessarily trained or certified in the fitness field. Since they are primarily hiring people to check clients in, the staff doesn’t have to have any fitness expertise or experience to work at Planet Fitness. In other words, they are just as likely to work at Wendy’s, as they are at Planet Fitness. Remember, this is McExercise, not the fitness equivalent of dinner at Spagos.

I personally have some issues with the lack of basic instruction on use of gym equipment at Planet Fitness, especially since they deliberately try to appeal to “average people” with little or no exercise experience.

There is a legitimate concern about safety and whether Planet Fitness, for all of it’s talk of empowering people to improve their health at their own pace, really has “average Joe’s” best health interests in mind. Clearly their emphasis on keeping costs down is behind their lack of trained staff, but it’s questionable whether they are really doing their novice clients any favors by skimping in this area. At every gym, you see people performing exercises incorrectly or with ineffective (and often dangerous) form, but this seems to be even more prevalent among the Planet Fitness clientele at my gym.