The average gym membership in the US costs $58 per month. That is $696 per year. And according to a UC Berkeley study, 67% of gym memberships go completely unused. That is nearly $500 per person per year — donated to a building full of equipment nobody touches.

I canceled mine in 2023. I am in better shape now than when I had it. Here is how.

Bodyweight: The Free Gym

You do not need equipment to get strong. You need progressive overload — making exercises harder over time. Bodyweight exercises scale beautifully: go from regular pushups to diamond pushups to archer pushups to one-arm pushups. From bodyweight squats to pistol squats. From plank holds to side planks to plank reaches.

The key is a structured program, not just “doing some pushups.” The Recommended Routine from the r/bodyweightfitness subreddit is free, takes about an hour, and covers everything. I have been doing it for over a year.

Running: All You Need Is Shoes

The Couch to 5K (C25K) app is free. It takes you from “gets winded going up stairs” to running 5 kilometers in nine weeks. After that, running is infinite — you just run farther or faster. Parks and sidewalks are free. Treadmills in a gym that nobody uses are not.

YouTube: Infinite Free Classes

Yoga with Adriene. Fitness Blender. HASfit. Caroline Girvan. All free. All high-quality. All with full programs, not just random videos. A yoga studio charges $100-150 per month. YouTube costs zero.

The Accountability Problem

People keep gym memberships because they think paying for it forces them to go. For most people, it does not — the 67% unused statistic proves that. Replace the financial commitment with a social commitment: find a friend who also wants to work out and text each other every day. “Did you do it?” is more motivating than “$58 left my account this month.”