This morning you woke up and finally found the right motivation: after work you'll go to the gym, because it's been some time since you last went and you start feeling guilty. When the chosen hour approaches, you look out the window and it's already getting dark. It's threatening to rain, and the idea of walking the whole way in the rain, after having already done the shower after training, doesn't enthuse you at all. Maybe for another day you can skip it. After all, you wouldn’t want to catch a cold after walking back in the rain…
The next day you don’t feel up to going to the gym. You’ve barely slept and you have a particularly busy day ahead. It’s also true that you won’t have many other opportunities this week and the one that just passed you weren’t particularly diligent. So what to do? Do you let fate decide?
How many times have you happened to be in a similar situation or felt as hopeless?
Procrastinating and avoiding your workout is a classic
Whether it's because of the cold, the heat, the rain, the late hour, the sudden and unavoidable commitments or simply the lack of motivation, the training session at the gym is one of the appointments that most often happens to be deserted. And while we often tend to shrug it off, postponing training can be harmful in many ways. In addition to the obvious effect on physical health, you have to consider the effect on self-esteem and, much more prosaically, the economic factor: giving up the gym means not taking advantage of a service that, in most cases, you paid for in advance.
Considering the importance of exercise and time management, avoid the temptation to delay and achieve your goals. Motivational help guides are available in numerous places online and in magazines. If these weren’t right for you, then you might consider trying a sharing economy.
Gym, the least exploited type of subscription
If you thought you were the only one, you can take away some consolation: there is no industry that has a rate of abandonment equal to that of gyms. In general, it’s considered that only 50% of users usually go to the gym to which they subscribe to. But there are those who have reported even more surprising figures: according to a study conducted by the Statistic Brain Research Institute, in the United States 67% of people who subscribe to a gym do not go to it or attend it very rarely.
Giving up the gym means not taking advantage of a service that, in most cases, you paid for in advance
Giving up at the gym means not taking advantage of a service that, in most cases, has been paid for in advance. The people concerned, as said, lose out on health benefits and money. But such a low attendance does not even play in favour of gyms: after a similar experience, it is likely that many are reluctant to renew their subscription to the gym.
Sharing economy in the gym
So what does sharing economy have to do with it? In Asia, more than in any other part of the world, services are spreading that cultivate the goal of bringing this model to the gym which is now established in many other sectors.
A startup in Shanghai, for example, has thought to solve the problem inspired by the principles of the sharing economy. Using just three categories of users and a platform: it is enough to push people to train regularly. In this specific case, to attend yoga classes.
As is now the case with new forms of hospitality, those who have unused space can make it available on a digital platform, which acts as a point of contact between owners, teachers and students. The teachers of the discipline can use the platform to book a space available online, indicating a time at which they intend to hold a lesson. By viewing the scheduled ones in their own area, the potential learner can also enroll in a lesson, paying for the single session.
Bringing gyms into people's homes
Another Beijing-based company, on the other hand, has set itself the mission of bringing gyms into people's homes. Or rather, in their courtyards: by installing small kiosks-gyms inside the residential complexes, they intend to bring back the model of bike sharing, so widespread in China, in fitness. Each kiosk, which occupies only 4 square metres, contains a treadmill and a bicycle which is usable at a cost of 2 yuan (20 cents) per minute. Exactly like the bicycle that would be used to reach the gym, if the gym were not right in the backyard.
But it is not only in Asia that the sharing economy is making progress in fitness facilities: In the United States, a service is rapidly spreading that allows gym members to sell their access to non-subscribers on days of non-use and very often at discounted rates.
Although it may not seem very convenient from the point of view of the gym, this solution can be a benefit of great value to the user who, reassured by the idea of not "wasting" so many days, can be encouraged to choose a subscription that also includes the summer months, those in which the heat and the holiday atmosphere make it preferable to an afternoon of relaxation on the beach to a run on the treadmill.