I’ve mentioned that I use ClassPass to book my workouts at boutique studios. For $99 a month, I get unlimited classes (up to three per month per studio) at a ton of studios I love! However, the other catch besides three classes per studio per month is that you can only sign up for classes a week in advance – and a lot of the studios that I like tend to fill up, sometimes even before availability is open to ClassPass holders. So, I’ve gotten in the habit of logging on every morning and booking my workout for six days out – e.g., today I booked my workout for next Wednesday.
ClassPass lets you cancel a class up to twelve hours ahead of time, so usually the day before my workout, I do a quick check in with my body to see how I’m feeling and what class I’ll be up for the next day. If I’m already really sore, I might sub out my bootcamp for a yoga class, or even cancel entirely for some light cardio on the hotel elliptical or no workout at all.
Lately, the one-two punch of Reform & Run on Monday nights and Burn Dallas on Tuesday morning has gotten me pretty sore, and I’ve found myself canceling the Wednesday and Thursday classes I had already signed up for. Last week, I told myself both days that I’d head down to the hotel gym instead. However, I found that when I didn’t have an actual class, I procrastinated in my hotel room before getting my butt down to the gym, and either got a limited workout or none at all. Not my intention, though probably not bad that I got to rest.
This has been a pretty rough week at work, though. I went to my Monday night and Tuesday morning classes, but then Tuesday night I was at the office until 10pm and had to be back in by 6:45am the next day. Probably would have been a good morning to skip my workout, but I had already signed up for a 5:30am spin class at Zyn22, and I didn’t realize the conflict until well after the 5:30pm cancellation window had passed. If you cancel within the twelve hour window, you pay $20, and if you no-show the class entirely, you pay $25. Loss aversion is real, so I dragged my butt out of bed at 4:30am, made it to class on time, and was able to shower/drive fast enough that I made it to the office on time too.
You would think I had learned my lesson, but once again, I had a late night and didn’t think to cancel my Thursday morning Zyn22 class until it was too late again. Lather, rinse, repeat! Turns out that the fear of losing $20 is enough to get me out of bed no matter how little sleep I’ve been getting. I woke up pretty cranky, but felt a lot better after class (and after a stop at Starbucks) – so in the end, I was really happy I went.
Moral of the story: if you want to stick to your workouts, give yourself some negative motivation and attach a price to skipping them. I may have to repeat this trick in the future!