Getting Fit – Regular Joes Fuel Planet

It’s a limited group. Only 12 percent of the population had a gym membership, and so gyms competed by offering amenities: day cares, classes, more and more heavy weights. So rather than add those amenities, the Grondahls started taking them away.

They also began lowering prices and doing things to make sure the club was a safe haven for those of us who don’t have ripped bodies and aren’t able to bench-press a station wagon.

By 1998, when the brothers opened their third location, in Concord, New Hampshire, it called itself a “Judgment-Free Zone®,” employed a “Lunk Alarm” for people who grunt too loud or drop their weights, and sold memberships for as low as $10 a month.