The Manhattan Times

New low cost gym provides competition to Jay’s Big Gym

by Adam Garrett-Clark

Sitting in his gym shorts past the humming treadmills and bouncing ab machines in his back office, Jay Hirschhorn is under attack.

The gym owner’s turf was invaded in July when Planet Fitness opened its doors on Dyckman Street.

For a while according to Hirschhorn, Jay’s Big Gym on W. 181st Street was the only game in town. With the exception of the Lucille Roberts on St. Nicholas Avenue and W. 180th Street, which is exclusively for women and focuses more on exercise classes than equipment, and the YM&YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood on Nagle Avenue, Hirschhorn’s double floor facilities were the only option north of 145th Street.

But the arrival of the juggernaut Planet Fitness, able to offer extremely cheap $10 monthly memberships with no commitment, has threatened Hirschhorn’s business.

The franchise, which has 26 locations in the greater New York area, has already sliced into his membership. The number of members who have switched over is in the hundreds, he admits.

A manager at Lucille Roberts could not be reached for comment, but a person answering the phone who would give her name as only “Maria” said the all-female gym’s membership had not been affected.

For Hirschhorn, the competition is the last thing he needs now. There is usually a holiday lull, when many customers would rather focus on buying presents than working out, before they all return at once during the New Year’s resolution rush.

“To convince people that you have to pay and work your butt off,” Hirschhorn said, “this is one of the hardest businesses.”

To compete, Hirschhorn has begun offering a $24.99 monthly membership alternative of his own, a deviation of his normally popular flat yearly fee. A Manhattan Times advertiser, he’s also stepping up his advertising, weighing the pros and cons of a focused flier campaign at the subways versus ads in a larger circulation paper like the Daily News or El Diario, he said.

He’s taken out two bus stop advertisements; one happens to be directly in front of the competition on Dyckman Street. The ad was put up in April before Planet Fitness opened, Hirschhorn pointed out, though it wasn’t before he knew that the gym was coming.

“It’s a prime location,” he said with a bashful smile. “But the fact that they were there only sweetened the deal.”

For Jeff Innocenti, owner of the Planet Fitness franchise, the membership numbers are looking good, as expected, he said. Vaguely aware of Jay’s Big Gym, he said he was definitely not coming after Hirschhorn’s clients.

“They go for another type of member that we don’t go for,” he said.

The club’s registered trademark, the “Judgment Free Zone,” is described on its Web site as a place where a member can “get in shape … without being subjected to the hard-core, look-at-me attitude that exists in too many gyms.”

The sentence seems almost written specifically with Jay’s Big Gym in mind.

Hirschhorn’s top floor weight room has developed a reputation as an attractive place to work out for some of the biggest men in the neighborhood, if not the city. “I have the equipment that big guys can play with,” Hirschhorn said.

His heaviest dumbbell is 140 pounds compared to 60 pounds at Planet Fitness. Planet Fitness simply doesn’t provide equipment for the heavyweights, focusing on the beginner and sporadic exerciser.

The franchise even has what it calls a “Lunk Alarm,” to further discourage workout buffs. If a “lunk,” which Innocenti defines as an aggressive body builder, does something uncouth like slam the weights on the ground or grunt, the staff will sound an embarrassing alarm throughout the gym to shame him.

In 2006 the New York Times reported a potential lawsuit brought against the franchise from a former member in Wappingers Falls, whose membership was canceled because of excessive grunting during a workout. The staff called the local police who escorted him out of the gym.

Taped to the wall in Hirschhorn’s office is an ad for Planet Fitness torn from a fitness trade magazine. “Body builders don’t pay the bills,” the slogan reads.

“It’s an ad to get guys like me to convert their gyms into Planet Fitness,” Hirschhorn said.

The model is simple, Innocenti explains: only 15 percent of the general population are exercise enthusiasts, yet the majority of gyms only cater to that small segment of the public. The Planet Fitness model, created after founder Michael Grondahl acquired a financially struggling gym in New Hampshire and dramatically reduced its prices, targets the remaining 85 percent of the market who are either first timers or occasional gym users.

Not giving up on his hulks, Hirschhorn rejects the concepts end result for clients.

“By excluding body builders and other fitness enthusiasts they deprive their target market from enjoying the benefits of experience and knowledge of the experts,” he said.

He points out that one of his most intimidating looking members, the 2009 New York Metropolitan Overall Body Building champion Audrius Jegelevicius, is one of the quietest guys in the gym. And if anyone feels intimidated they can always come to him. 

Still with a smaller range of exercise equipment, the Planet Fitness model will continue to undercut prices of mom and pop gyms like Jays Big Gym.

Before Innocenti began his franchise, he and his brothers were one of those very “lunks” that he now shuns with an alarm. They used to work out at a Gold’s Gym in Yonkers he said. “We were probably one of the guys that we throw out today,” Innocenti said. In 2004 he and his brothers converted that Gold’s Gym into a Planet Fitness.