It doesn’t surprise me at all but it does disgust me — you can’t do the most basic exercise that a human can do (pick something off the floor) at a major gym chain. Apparently it was about a year ago that Planet Fitness just outright banned deadlifting instead of being wishywashy about it like they have for the last few years.
On the one hand, joining a gym like Planet Fitness isn’t a transformative experience at all. People are expected to be totally ignorant of all fitness knowledge when they join, the gym’s policies insure they don’t bump into anyone remotely knowledgeable while they’re there, and then people quit going in an equally ignorant state. Let’s be honest and admit that these places cater to the ignorant.
Planet Fitness policies insure they stay that way.
Someone in private pointed out that the deadlift is banned there likely because that type of clientele would be injured by deadlifts and then sue the gym. This person is probably right and that directly points to a lack of any notion of personal responsibility on the part of those that workout there and an overlitigious society that supports that lack of responsibility. People these days feel a need to sue over the slightest things. They aren’t responsible for anything that happens to them. So because these people can’t be trusted to deadlift without possibly hurting themselves and sueing the gym, NO ONE can deadlift. Welcome to modern society.
But on the other hand there’s this — AVOID THIS KIND OF GYM! Sorry for the caps but as an independent gym owner, I feel strongly about this. Why would you want to support a place that HATES people like you? They don’t want you. Their ads say you’re pathetic:
And notice how this BS is a “judgment free zone.” What a load of bull. They are totally judging people they don’t like — people like you! The guy who just “lifts things up and puts them down” has more results and more knowledge than all those other people, trainers included, combined. Heck, if I was working out there, I’d get up and follow that guy out the door to wherever he’s going. He obviously knows what he’s doing and he’ll wind up at a place full of knowledgeable people.
I occasionally hear someone tell me that they love what we do, but their Planet Fitness-type gym is, geewhiz, just so convenient. And I’ll talk to these people next year and they’ll look exactly the same, lift the same weights they do now, and have exactly the same level of fitness. And never in a million years would they put those two things together. Sad.
Planet Fitness and gyms like it cater to weak-minded people that will sue over possibly getting injured from real exercises while smaller gyms that cater to serious training often struggle. If you believe in serious training, then avoid the low-testosterone atmosphere and go to a real gym.
There’s a smaller but more serious gym just waiting for you to join. Seek it out and join up.