I Quit Orange Theory
July 28, 2022
If you have never heard about Orange Theory Fitness (OTF) or you have heard about it, but may be thinking, “What does a fruit have to do with working out?” Then here’s a quick summary of what we are working with. OTF is a group, interval-based workout studio that focuses on target heart rate zones to collect twelve splat points. In a typical class, you spend about half the time doing treadmill/cardio work, while the other half the time is spent doing exercises.
I joined the Orange Theory Fitness community back in September of 2021. I joined OTF because I was struggling to incorporate cardio into my workouts and was craving a new outlet to make friends. Before my first class, I was extremely nervous; I had never done a group fitness class before and I really did not know what to expect. To my dismay, OTF makes a pretty big deal about your first class. They put your name on a sign, give you a tour of the studio, and the coach is pretty much by your side the entire class – hello social anxiety.
My initial thought after my first class was, “that’s it.” I even remember telling my boyfriend that I think I liked it, but it wasn’t as challenging as I thought it would be. A little back story, I was inshape prior to my first class and I grew up with coaches that made me do ridiculous sprints and runs they probably couldn’t do themselves, so some burpees and twenty-five minutes of sprints were not going to throw me.
And of course, after the first class ends, they immediately convince you to come a minimum of three days a week which makes their unlimited (and most expensive) membership the best option for you. And, wanting to be open to something new, I definitely signed up and bought the expensive Apple Watch heart rate monitor so that I too could see my heart rate on the big screen and collect my twelve splat points.
Obviously, by the title of this post, there are some major cons to OTF, but I do want to start by pointing out some of the positives that kept me part of the community for over nine months.
The Positives:
OTF has this “great” rule that if you signup for a class and you don’t cancel within 8 hours or you are more than 5 min late to the class, you will be charged an additional $15. So if you are looking for something to hold you accountable, that DEFINITELY will.
The “we’re all in this together” mindset. At my studio, the 7 am crew was a ton of fun. There is something about seeing familiar faces in each class and getting to know some of those familiar faces over time that leave you feeling a little bit more fulfilled after a workout.
Benchmarks. At least once a month or so we had a benchmark workout on the calendar that was used to track your performance and show improvement over time. These benchmarks really pushed me to keep improving and work harder in my workouts.
(Some of) the Coaches. During my time at OTF, I had some really great coaches that understood where I was physically and knew how to push me. I really appreciated their positive encouragement and making the workouts fun.
OTF is National. Yes, OTF is a national fitness studio where you can travel and use your membership at any of their studios. But it is also national in that every studio across the nation does the same workout. This was fun because I have friends and influencers that I follow that also do OTF and it is just a nice way to connect and relate with others.
With so many great positives to OTF, why did I quit?
The Negatives:
The Cost. The Unlimited Membership at OTF, meaning that you can go to as many classes as you want in a given month was $159.00 at my studio when I signed up. Also, when you signup you need the heart rate monitor that links to their system. As mentioned before, I bought the Apple Watch option for $114.64. By the time I ended my membership, the cost for the Unlimited Membership had increased to $169.00. I know that is only $10, but that $10 adds up to an addition $120 a year and I can think of a lot of other things I would like to buy with that money.
The Fees. As mentioned above, there is a $15 charge anytime you cancel within 8 hours of class start, completely miss a class that you scheduled, or don’t arrive within 5 minutes of the class starting. I have heard this is due to instructors being paid by the number of people in their classes, but no matter the reason life happens and sometimes you are great to attend class when you go to bed and then next thing you know you have a stomach bug in the morning and are being charged extra. Being late is not the only thing you will pay extra for, every few months they will have a challenge. Every challenge costs extra to participate in on top of your membership. What do you get by doing the challenge? A Tshirt.
HIIT. If you didn’t know OTF is based on “interval training.” OTF claims that they do not fit the High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) criteria, but as someone who has dedicated their life to fitness, I can assure you the majority of OTF workouts fit the HIIT criteria. HIIT puts a lot of stress on your body. American College of Sports Medicine only recommended doing one or two HIIT sessions a week (Orange Theory recommended a minimum of three OTF sessions for me).
Hangry. As mentioned above this style of workout was putting a lot of stress on my body, so my body was constantly in need of extra food to refuel and repair. This led me to almost constantly need to be eating and consuming extra calories just to keep up with these workouts. And I know burning a lot of extra calories sounds like a good thing, but when it is causing you to overeat and lose touch with all your hunger cues, it is destructive. It wasn’t until about two weeks after I had stopped that I actually got full after each and could go more than an hour without having some food.
The average person only attends 2.5 OTF classes per week. Knowing how hard OTF is on your body, I’m glad that is the case. However, OTF definitely uses that statistic to their advantage and I started seeing a frequent repetition of movements and it was hard to evenly workout your body. What I mean by this is, it is not like you know that if you go on Monday there will be a leg focus and then Tuesday would be an upper body focus. It seemed as though there was no true rhyme or reason as to why they were choosing the exercises that were choosing, it was more of we want to do this pattern of exercises on this day, so what exercises do we have in our archives that could fit this. I also found that some exercises would appear repeatedly in the same week and I would actually be so sore from doing them earlier in the week that I wouldn’t be able to repeat them. For the cost of the membership and knowing this was national programming (a.k.a. they are making money all across the US with one head trainer’s workout plan), this was a big turn-off for me.
I wasn’t making friends. Remember, making friends was one of the main reasons I had joined OTF. This was not for my lack of trying, I would try to strike up conversation with others in class, but the reality was that the age and life stage that most OTF members were in was much different from mine. Either I was the youngest in the class at the age of twenty-six or everyone had a full on family by twenty-six and this was the only time they left the house. I cannot speak for every studio on this, but this was my experience.
Finally, the Mindset. As I mentioned in the beginning of my post, OTF is built around Splat Points. One splat point is earned for every minute your heart rate is in the two highest heart rate zones; you are supposed to collect twelve points every class so you get the “after-burn.” While, yes, this is a great feature to make sure you are not slacking off during class, it is the only thing most coaches care about during class. I remember one day my allergies were so severe that I could not run or it would cause me to wheeze and the trainer came over and asked me if I could get my heart rate in the “Orange Zone” and did not even ask if something else was going on. Also, OTF, like most American fitness brands, places a large emphasis on weightloss. When I signed up for OTF I really was just looking for some cardio accountability and some friends, and the coach that signed me up was a little too adamant that my fitness goal needed to be weightloss.
While these “negatives” that I have found about OTF are not necessarily that bad, over time the negatives eventually outweighed the positives. In June of 2022, I took my last OTF class and finally got the courage to ask for my only OTF friend’s number. We are grabbing drinks tomorrow, so I guess it all worked out.