Max Out: How gyms are dealing with New Year’s surge of members

As the calendar flips to 2025, people have the opportunity to start on a clean slate.

The phrase “New year. New me.” gets thrown around during the early days of January. Those four words can be used to describe many different goals a person may set for themselves to get better than their 2024 version.

A common goal can be losing weight.

“People in general prioritize a lot of their goals at the beginning,” John Bradford, regional director of operations at Planet Fitness said. “The year is kind of like a fresh start to that new year. And fitness is just something that’s top of mind.”

Each year, around 12% of new gym memberships start in January. Whenever executives look at the yearly reports, they can find a spike toward the beginning of the year.

“This is the part of the year where the majority of the new members will come in around those New Year’s goals that they set for themselves,” Bradford added.

Large corporations and commercial gyms like Planet Fitness see a spike like this every year, especially being a presenting sponsor of the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. Smaller and local gyms have also seen spikes of new members as well, like High Street Body Shop on the main drag of Ebensburg.

Eric Dachanko, the owner and creator of High Street Body Shop, sees the increase in both January and February. He has a theory as to why.

“People get back to work. They put on the dress clothes. They find them a bit tight,” Dachanko said. “First week of January, and people try to do something after three weeks of indulging and not a whole lot of physical movement.”

After those holiday weeks of stuffing your face with cookies and other sweets, the goals pour in for the new year. Whichever goals each person has in mind, they all start by doing the same thing: walking through the door.

“That’s half of the battle, right?” Bradford said. “But just some other basic tips. Having a workout buddy for accountability seems to go a long way to keep people coming back.”

“A few hours to get yourself acquainted with the gym so you know what to do when you get here,” Dachanko added. “You’re not lost wandering around the gym of what to do.”

With all the new members excited to start fresh, studies show that they tail off over the course of the year. 50% of rookies quit within six months of their fitness journey.

It can range from busy work schedules to not seeing immediate results.

“That plateau of going from a sedentary state and you beginning to work out,” Dacahnko said. “You see the results in the first month and a half and you lose that 10 pounds. Was that 10 pounds of fat? Was that 10 pounds of muscle? We really don’t know.”

Gyms have looked to retain these new members in many different ways. It can be their core pillars or just equipment and pricing.

“We try to have really friendly customer service,” Bradford said. “We have the clean facilities and working equipment, as well as our new equipment that we try to evaluate all the time to keep things fresh for everyone’s workouts.”

“When considering a fitness facility, look at first costs,” Dachanko added. “Look at the joiner fee. Look at the fees to quit, the fees to stay a member and take all that into consideration. Also, the availability of supplements. Does your gym offer high-quality supplements at a very low cost? We do here. We do everything we can to retain our members with very low cost and high-quality service.”

So whether you pump iron like Arnold Schwarzenegger or take a light stroll on a treadmill, it can help lead to what goal you are looking for in losing weight. Dachanko recommends to not shoot for the moon on the first day.

“Get yourself here and set a very low goal for yourself,” Dachanko said. “Once you accomplish that goal, chances are you’re going to stick around and do something else. So get that little tiny baby, step in the door and get yourself moving and try to stay on a routine. Because once you lose that repetitive nature of the process, things tend to taper off.”

---

Authored by: Jon Draeger | WTAJ