Gym sublease: when one activity goes out of fashion, ink the page for another. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve covered a sublease within a gym or health club, hereafter referred to as a “physical fitness marketplace”.  A few years ago, I noted how a physical therapy clinic had moved into a space within a larger health club—a glassed-in chamber that previously served as a racquetball court.  This time, I fly a few states away to the Indianapolis suburb of Fishers, where a different branch of the same health club features another surprise.  Another gym sublease.

I’ll concede that I use the term “sublease” to describe MyDojo without knowing the particulars of the contract.  Sublease would only be accurate if the gym itself is a tenant within the larger strip mall: a lease within a lease—an entirely separate business operating as a tenant within space leased by another agent that is, in turn, a tenant and not the owner.  However, it’s possible that the health club featured here is in fact the owner of its footprint, since it is the anchor tenant amidst a few other, significantly smaller in-line shops.  And property managers/developers often give the anchor tenant a purchase option as an incentive.  If this is the case, it isn’t a gym sublease: the health club is the owner and MyDojo is simply a lessee.  Either way, the contract reflects a tenant within a larger operation.

These particulars are not really the concern here—what interests me is the space itself, where it  operates within the gym and what it indicates about changing trends in physical fitness.  In the previous photo, I peered through the window and tried to block out all glare; all things considered, I did a pretty good job.  Obviously MyDojo was not operating at the time of my visit, but it clearly rests near the entrance of the cavernous big-box of the health club; it gets window exposure.  Here’s the view stepping back a few feet:

This photo might not have much significance to most people, but it evokes at a shift in the use of space.  Normally this is the room where gyms typically have featured their “kids clubs”: a colorful area with matted floors, toys, and indoor playground equipment.  In many instances, the kids’ clubs operate under reduced hours, where a staffer supervises children while Mom and Dad work out elsewhere in the physical fitness marketplace.

But that seems to be absent at this Fishers location.  Instead, the gym offers MyDojo.

With this photo, I’m inside the premises, peering through the locked door.  I am 99% certain this space used to be a kids’ club.  Notice the little mini-half door to the partitions at waist height (at least the waist of an adult).  This location abandoned the kids’ club concept and replaced it with something much less overtly kid-oriented.  But why?

My first impulse was to indulge in a doomsday speculation: that the reduced demand for kids’ clubs in gyms parallels the low birthrates and a diminished need for kid-friendly spaces in general.  After all, the escalating hallmarks of Gen X and Millennial nostalgia are forums reminiscing on beloved family-friendly restaurant chains: not just the ones that are shuttered altogether, but the chains that continue to prosper but have increasingly eliminated their children’s sections.  McDonald’s PlayPlace comes to mind, but so does the basement rumpus room vibe of old Pizza Huts (complete with durable table arcades), or, if you grew up in the Midwest, the entertaining, devil-may-care bric-a-brac on the walls of Max & Erma’s, complemented by the bathtub sundae bar.  (Though still in business, Max & Erma’s these days is about as vestigial as another Ohio chain, Rax Roast Beef.)

Yes, people are having far fewer kids, and the reduced demand for kids’ spaces—combined with escalating health and safety concerns—prompted McDonald’s to shutter many of its PlayPlace features in the 2010s.  Then COVID-19 forced all of them to close, and many never reopened.  But the low birth rate does not translate to non-demand.  With inflatables and trampoline parks and go-cart racing, the recreational opportunities have diversified and decentralized.  The kids’ zone at the average grown-up health club is pretty lame for kids over six.  And it was hard to justify a separately paid gym employee to supervise a diminishing number of kids who got fidgety with the limited offerings.  All of these factors prompted the gym sublease.

Besides, the new tenant, MyDojo, promotes itself as “martial arts training suitable for all ages, focusing on overall fitness for the entire family.”  Its essentially a beginners’ studio, which, since it operates as a separate business, involves a separate flow of cash.  Though the interior doesn’t look kiddified in the least, MyDojo’s webpage prominently features children.  I suspect MyDojo recruits participants regardless of whether they have a membership at the gym, which explains why it is helpful to locate it near the gym’s entrance doors; it prevents free-riders from sneaking a workout after a session at the dojo.  And, while most MyDojo participants probably have little or no financial commitment to the gym itself, the management of the larger physical fitness marketplace receives a financial windfall through the gym sublease.  The kids’ club was a complimentary offering to gym members.  With MyDojo, the physical fitness marketplace has separately monetized some of its interior space.  The gym management traded one kid zone for another, and the new one is much more financially lucrative.

Any physical fitness marketplace should embrace a spatial typology that allows for adaptability, especially when it involves all-purpose health clubs that attract people through no-hassle memberships, rather than pay-as-you-go like the pricey Orangetheory Fitness.  The multi-function gym must be big, open, and easy to modify, with few load bearing walls on the interior.  Using this scheme, CrossFit zones can preempt group aerobics classes (still popular but not as unifying as in the past).  Little nooks with plumbing and refrigeration cater to a health bar that serves protein smoothies and energy foods, again often as a separately licensed business through a gym sublease.  And, as spinning and racquetball recede in popularity, I expect it’s only a matter of time before indoor pickleball courts become common.  Or maybe an astroturf field for all-season quidditch.  Or a massive Finnish hobbyhorse obstacle and dressage course.  The physical fitness agora must remain, to a certain extent, a tabula rasa.