Can Gym-Pact Impact?

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution? Did your enthusiastic promise to yourself involve exercising more? Are you finding your good intentions out the window on this first day of February?

Not to worry. Gym-Pact can help.

Well, maybe. Gym-Pact offers the motivationally challenged workout hopeful an extra kick of incentive: by charging a fine when you don’t use your gym membership. Not to worry, this is not a renegade organization out to guilt everyone with a gym membership into more hours on the treadmill and more visits with the bench-press bar. Instead, Gym-pact is a new social enterprise that hopes to support the exercise goals of Bostonians. Gym-Pact offers discounted gym membership rates, along with a little guilt trip, in exchange for your commitment to use the gym a certain number of days per week. The guilt trip comes in as a “motivational fee” is assessed to you (at rate you set, the lowest option at $10) for each gym session you miss in a week.

The aim of Gym-Pact is to help keep people motivated to use their gym memberships, using a financial disincentive when you miss a session. But will this really work? And will it work in the long run? Maybe this will be effective for a partially motivated individual with a gym membership. Possibly someone who needs a tap on the shoulder to help stick to their fitness goals. Definitely someone who is motivated by the idea of forfeiting their precious dollars. This all boils down to a limited portion of those already attending the gym, and maybe a few folks who think they can take advantage of a reduced-cost gym membership by never, never-ever missing a workout.

There is no proof that technique is effective for increasing gym usage and continuation of fitness goals. Do we need a new quick-fix exercise booster when there is already proof of other methods that do work: like mentorship, attending group exercise classes, partnering with a workout buddy and the use of support groups. A 2001 study of motivations for maintaining exercise among African American women demonstrated that the positive feelings of exercise and weight loss, having a workout buddy and improved health were the main reasons women continued to exercise. This explains the success of the low-cost Healthworks at Codman Square, a non-profit gym that encourages women to exercise by promoting a friendly, accessible environment; a boatload of support services like childcare and nutrition counseling; and a very low monthly membership fee.

I support any method that gets people sticking to their wellness goals, whatever those goals might be. And if this catchy new social enterprise can help people get sweaty, then more power to it. I'd like to see more strides made in increasing free and low-cost exercise, wellness and physical activity opportunities to those who can't even begin to imagine paying a monthly gym membership fee, nonetheless a "motivational fee" for a missed day at the gym. Maybe the next step is for Gym-Pact to apply the ‘motivational fees’ they collect to help support exercise incentives for those who can’t afford a gym membership at all.