Extreme Fitness Personal Training Rip-off

Here is a conclusive review of Extreme Fitness personal training cost. Trueler received several complaints associated with the selling technique used by Extreme Fitness, and made some further investigation.

The price of one hour session with personal trainer at Extreme Fitness is approximately $110.

There was a recent deal on WagJag group buy website: “$24 for a 2-Month Executive Membership, Unlimited Classes, and Two 1-Hour Personal Training Sessions at Extreme Fitness”. It also specified regular price for this deal which was $372. One of our readers is paying $65 per month for the membership. Based on other members’ information, we are assuming here that one month membership fee in the “regular price” featured on WagJag is approximately $75. Therefore we are getting $111 per one hour of personal training session. That is approximately $98 + tax. Let’s count it as $100 for simplicity.

Will you go for this deal?! $110 per one hour of training session which includes running with dumbbells, push-ups, throwing of balls, talks, and so on…

How does Extreme Fitness rip you off?

First of all when you sign up for the membership, there is an assessment, which is “free”. During it Extreme Fitness trainer convince you that you are too fat or too skinny, too weak or too strong, etc. You have a lecture about how bad your eating habits are. You are getting “free nutritionist” promise. They ask you about you goal. Actually, all stuff is extremely good at sales. They can easily and successfully work in real estate business, for example.

Secondly, Extreme Fitness guys tell you that they have a remedy: personal training plan for one year, during which you will gain 12 lbs of muscles, or loose 20 lbs of weight (whichever your case, or even both). They draw something on a paper, and tell you results. Three times per week for the first two months, two times per week for the third month, and one time every second week as follow up sessions for the rest 9 months to make sure that you are following instructions properly. That is about 53 sessions. Sales guy (personal trainer or manager) asks you about your salary, your budget, your goals, and tells the price of $442 and they will tell you that it can be canceled at any time without any fee.

“Of course it is per month” they answer when you specially ask about it. “Of course 13% HST taxes are not included” – when you ask about taxes. In the case if it suits your needs and budget they will never tell you that you can not cancel this deal without owing them money for months. For example, if you cancel the personal training program at the end of the third month, you will be required to pay $442/month + HST for 5 more months!

If the previous personal training deal is quite expensive for you, Extreme Fitness will offer cheaper modifications with $200 per month, for example. Finally they will offer you 8 personal training sessions, so the professional trainer will teach you during 3 weeks (3 times/week) how to do proper exercises in order to achieve your goal, and then you will continue on your own. And this is just for $66 per month! They won’t tell you that you will have to pay these $66/month + tax for entire year, they won’t tell you the price of one single personal training session. If you want to cancel it in the middle, so you will have to pay for the six months until you pay out them for personal sessions you used – $400 for 4 sessions.

Beware of this practice in Extreme Fitness! Especially WagJag users who bought more than 1600 coupons in November 2010.

Keep in mind that the price of one hour personal training session at Extreme Fitness is about $115 ($100 + tax), and you will be legally required to pay for all the sessions you used exactly at this rate, no matter when you cancel.

If they will offer you the first session without charge, don’t sign anything until the session ends! Most likely it will cost you $115 as well…

6 thoughts on “Extreme Fitness Personal Training Rip-off”

  1. My rating went from positive to negative extremely quickly.
    I’ve been a goodlife member via golds gym takeover for 11 years and happy but I’m training for a fitness competition and it would be nice to sometimes train and pose with my roommate. I did a drop in with her once and it seemed to have more than my current location so awesome, it’s worth it to see if I can do some kind of 6-12 month thing with them. It was clean and nice!
    An offer came for a $19.95 10week get started program with no obligation, commitments, etc. seemed too good to be true so I called and was told on the phone “it really is that simple! Come in and we can set you up before your workout today!”
    So 45 mins later I arrive and I am taken to the sales area…
    I’m immediately told that I don’t qualify because I have out of province ID and if my business fails in Toronto (that was a nice touch), nothing will keep me here. I advised that I called and confirmed that there wasn’t a catch, the response: “restrictions apply”. I asked about the “no obligation” part of the flyer and was told that only applies to proven residents. (WTF) but okay…
    Then I’m given the hard pitch over and over again, offered multiple price points and the option to cancel after 10days. I know that any contract has a minimum 30day cancelation clause built into it and wasn’t buying so I asked if I could simply pay the $20 drop in fee and join my friend for that and was refused! Flat out!
    All dressed and ready to go I left and went back to my beloved good life at Goodlife! My roomie will be joining me there.
    I have spent my entire professional career in sales both as a leader and as an account executive in the B2B space. I have zero tolerance for the hard sell and will ensure that as many people as I encounter in the fitness world have accurate expectations of Extreme Fitness.

  2. It makes me a bit nervous to read all of these comments, but so far I’ve had an overall good experience. I’m at the Yonge & Dundas location.

    The initial salesperson who gave me a tour of the facilities (which I thought were pretty nice) was a bit pushy. Friendly, but pushy. Also not the most aggressive salesperson I’ve ever dealt with (or else I probably wouldn’t have signed up). However, I also didn’t enter into my one-year contract blindly. I made sure I got info re: the full monthly cost w/tax, costs if I wanted to freeze my membership, list of everything included in my membership, etc. I signed up for one year because it was a long-term commitment I’d already decided to make prior to visiting Extreme.

    When I came to do my fitness test, the consultant who took care of me was very nice and friendly (he remembers my name and always says hi to me when he sees me on the gym floor). He asked me about my then-current dietary and fitness habits and asked me what my goals were. Based on what I said and what my weight and body fat percentage was (which really wasn’t anything close to healthy), he said it would take me about six months to get to where I wanted to be health-wise (which, from everything I’d read beforehand from multiple sources, was the average length of time to safely lose the amount of weight I need to). Personal training was not brought up. He went over some basic things I could do to improve my lifestyle (e.g. drinking at least 8 glasses of water and ways to remember to do that, when I do exercises make sure to focus on specific muscle groups).

    Then I did the actual fitness test. He showed me how to use some of the machines and had me do some push-ups (could barely do 3 proper ones before I had to switch to the modified style and only managed a few of those). At this point he asked if I’d considered personal training. And I had before I even signed with Extreme because I knew how badly out of shape I was and that I didn’t really have any knowledge of what exactly I needed to do to both lose weight and build muscle. So I didn’t find it pushy when he asked (also, I could barely manage 10 push-ups total, so yeah).

    After my fitness test I saw one of the managers who went over the different personal training packages (24, 36, or 48 sessions, each with 6 sessions with a nutritionist). Again, this guy was really nice and really friendly (cracked jokes with me, said hi when he saw me outside of the gym). And what’s more, he was honest with me. The consultant had recommended two sessions per week for the six months but the manager said that I shouldn’t feel obligated to do that and should go with however many sessions I felt most comfortable with. I appreciated that. I was also told that if I didn’t like the trainer I was initially matched with, I would be assigned to someone else and get back that first session. Also appreciated that.

    He went over the costs for each package (incl. tax) and I’d been thinking about the 48 sessions but wasn’t sure at the time if I’d be employed throughout the next six months. So I went with the 24 sessions and he said if things worked out with the job and I wanted to change my mind, I could come back before the end of the month and make that change. He went over every line of the personal trainer agreement with me and made sure I understood each point, especially the cancellation policy. There were no extra fees; when I came back to make the switch, what I paid was exactly what he had initially quoted to me.

    My trainer is pretty awesome. Friendly, but also blunt, which is something I appreciate because I wouldn’t trust anyone – let alone a personal trainer – who told me that I was doing everything perfectly. My trainer doesn’t let me be lazy.

    The nutritionist is also pretty great. I got a different person from the one I was originally assigned to (the first woman had quit), so I got an extra nutrition session for free even though I hadn’t actually gone in for a session yet. From the first session, she wasn’t trying to make me give up things I like or force me to eat things I don’t like.

    The desk staff have never been anything but courteous and professional to me so far.

    Long story short, so far I don’t feel like I’ve been ripped off. Based on the above post and comments, I’ll definitely be more aware of potential opportunities for shadiness, but so far I’ve been treated in a respectful manner and with honesty. The service I’ve received has made me motivated to come in apart from when I have sessions and I feel a lot better physically, so no complaints so far!

  3. Aside from their appalling sales practices, they routinely loot their customers bank and credit card accounts, often for thousands of dollars.

  4. This is what word-for-word happened to me at their Yonge and Eglinton location (Extreme Fitness – Dunfield club).

    Frankly, I feel like I’m sophisticated enough to know how to run away from such scam. In fact, they made me so angry that I canceled my entire membership immediately; although they stole my downpayment which I had asked back at multiple instances.

    In my life, I’ve seen a lot of sales tactics. However, I’ve never seen one such vicious; such immoral and dishonest as that one. I really hope that company goes down the crapper..

  5. I experienced something similar with my personal assessment. I was shock at what I was told about my body.

    the personal trainer used a portable body fat analyzer on my arm to assess my % body fat. It read 26%. However, I am 105 lb and 5’6 in height and I’ve been running one 10k every week for half year prior to my assessment. From my understanding below 18-20%body fat is considered healthy. I couldn’t believe my eyes so I asked for a retest, which read 29%.

    I was suspicious that the reading on the analyzer may be rigged so I asked him to test it on himself, but he said it wasn’t necessary.

    Upon telling him I would like to keep my current weight, he presented me with a goal, which, similar to other people’s experiences, I was told to gain 18 pounds of muscle and loose 15 pounds of fat over a period of a year.

    I asked him where he got the ratio 18:15 from. He says fat weighs more so you simply need to loose less fat. It was difficult to hold back from laughing because everybody knows muscles weighs more than fat. So I asked, “who said fat weighs more than muscle?” He answered arrogantly, “It’s science. You can’t go against science.” So I put it differently for him, “given the same volume of fat and muscle, the muscle would have higher mass, therefore heavier.” I also asked what he had his education and qualification done. Not impressed.

    Anyways, I had no time for anymore of this so I told him that I had to run to another appointment. He called his manager to try to talk me into it but I simply said I had to go and would think about it. I receive calls days after but I didn’t pick up the phone.

    Very disappointed. Thank goodness he is not a science teacher.

  6. thats so funny that your brought this up:

    “First of all when you sign up for the membership, there is an assessment, which is “free”. During it Extreme Fitness trainer convince you that you are too fat or too skinny, too weak or too strong, etc. You have a lecture about how bad your eating habits are. You are getting “free nutritionist” promise. They ask you about you goal. Actually, all stuff is extremely good at sales. They can easily and successfully work in real estate business, for example.

    Secondly, Extreme Fitness guys tell you that they have a remedy: personal training plan for one year, during which you will gain 12 lbs of muscles, or loose 20 lbs of weight (whichever your case, or even both). ”

    I actually heard that speech from them, seems like a common practise, thank god I didn’t fall for that.

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