Does Planet Fitness Have a Scale? The Truth

A weight scale can prove to be an efficient tracker of your progress at the gym. It helps you evaluate how close you are to achieving your fitness goals and allows you to tweak your workout routines accordingly.

Naturally, you would expect all conventional gyms to have a scale within their premises. But that is often not the case.

Some of the larger fitness chains do not want to encourage over-reliance on weight scales. As such, they don’t really keep one anywhere inside their gyms.

So, if you are looking to join a new gym and want to use a weight scale regularly to track your workout progress, it’s best to contact the front desk and confirm its availability.

A common question asked on the internet is – does Planet Fitness have weight scales?

Naturally, people are curious. It’s one of the biggest and most accessible gyms out there. Moreover, because of Planet Fitness’s effort to make it a “judgment-free zone” for beginners, it’s also home to many people who were recommended by their doctors to join a fitness club. These members often need a weight scale to report their progress.

So, can you find weight scales at Planet Fitness? Let’s find out.

Does Planet Fitness Have a Scale?

Unfortunately, most Planet Fitness gyms do not have a weight scale within their premises. This has a lot to do with the chain’s policy of making it a judgment-free zone so that all the members can work out comfortably with each other.

A scale, as per the staff and management of PF, may disrupt this environment and make some of the members uncomfortable. If people don’t see desirable results on the scale, they might be discouraged and feel insecure about their bodies.

This is the primary reason why Planet Fitness does not employ any weight scales inside its premises.

But that is not always the case. While there is a chain-wide policy of not having scales inside Planet Fitness, some individual franchises do keep them inside their locker rooms or outside the bathrooms/showers.

This is because Planet Fitness operates on a franchise model. So, different gyms might follow individual policies as per the directives of their management. If having a weight scale is allowed in some gyms, you are likely to find them there among other equipment and machines.

So, if having a scale is important for your fitness journey, better contact your gym beforehand to find out if they have one.

Why Did Planet Fitness Remove Scales?

Planet Fitness is a global fitness chain with a firm set of rules and ideologies. It primarily targets casual exercisers who do not want to make fitness the center of their lives.

As such, they make many efforts to appease such a crowd.

One such move was their decision to remove weight scales from inside their gyms. The management at Planet Fitness often cites multiple reasons why it does not encourage having a scale at its gyms. But not all of these reasons are accepted as valid by the public.

Nevertheless, these are the most common reasons why Planet Fitness elected to remove weight scales from their gyms:

Brand Image

Planet Fitness has a very specific brand message – it is the perfect place where beginners can work out and start their fitness journey without feeling intimidated or uncomfortable.

In other words, it is a safe space for inexperienced bodybuilders.

But their brand messaging is not enough. To truly make it a judgment-free zone, Planet Fitness had to take some drastic measures. One such measure was taking down all weight scales from within its premises.

While having a scale might be an important component for measuring your fitness progress, you can’t deny that the tool might propagate negative body issues and dishearten certain members if they don’t achieve the desired results.

Planet Fitness is all about body positivity. Weighing scales can often lead to negative self-talk and judgment from other members who might be overlooking the progress and results of their co-members.

Based on these reasons, the chain decided it is best to keep its branding intact by removing weight scales altogether. Now, Planet Fitness can safely claim that it provides a completely judgment-free zone for all its members.

Discourages Newbies

If you are using a weight scale appropriately, it can be a great tool. But if you over-rely on it, the results might be disastrous.

Many beginners (who make up the majority of members at Planet Fitness) tend to place a lot of emphasis on the numbers provided by these weight scales. When they don’t see the result that they think they should, it discourages their workout rhythm and throws them off track.

This is especially true in the case of newbies who might be anticipating drastic changes in the first few days or weeks of joining the gym.

This sort of overreliance on a weight scale can seriously damage one’s motivation to exercise and remain fit. And it’s not productive at all if you keep using a scale more often than recommended, as you won’t even get accurate results.

To prevent this culture of extra emphasis on scales, Planet Fitness believed it would be better for all parties involved to simply remove these machines from its gyms.

Results Take Time

When you start working out, it’ll be months before you notice any visible differences in your body. The same is the case if you want to lose or gain weight while exercising.

Many beginners tend to use a weight scale almost every day after working out, hoping to see some changes. When they don’t see any progress, they often get disheartened and demotivated.

This might put a premature end to their time at the gym. So, to impart the necessary education that results take time when you have just started working out, Planet Fitness elected to remove all weight scales.

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Final Words

Despite providing multiple reasons to support its decision, Planet Fitness received a lot of flak when it removed weight scales from its gyms.

While people understood that the chain needed to focus on making a judgment-free environment for everyone, they also felt that a scale is an essential tool for regular gym-goers and that they should have the option to use them if necessary.

Based on this ideology, some Planet Fitness gyms do provide weight scales in their locker rooms or outside their bathrooms. So, if you are lucky, you might be able to use one.