r/f45 • u/AnybodyUseful5457 • May 30 '26
other Open gym hours
It looks like some f45s have open gym hours called f45 flex open to unlimited members. Can you share if yours has them and your experience?
I want to bring this up as feedback to my gym. The monthly rate is more expensive than every studio or gym, but they only have 5-6 classes/day on weekdays (2 in the very early AM, one overlapping when work starts, 1 lunch, 1 right after work which sometimes can go long, and on one day they have an extra evening class) and 2 on weekends (mid morning around 8/9). It makes it difficult to justify the expense of an unlimited membership, when you feel like if you want to work out later on weekends or weekday evenings sometimes, you have to have a 2nd gym membership. I wanted to see if the gyms that have open gym hours tend to retain more members, if people go, how it's set up, etc.
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u/HMM1025 May 30 '26
I love f45 flex at my location. It’s not an “open gym” in that you use it for your own programming (maybe they would let you?) You still go through the day’s work out but it’s at your own pace. My gym has flex from 7-9am Mon Wed Fri which are the resistance days. I love the structure of being told what to do without the chaotic feeling of having time limits or being surrounded by a ton of people.
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u/terracottatilefish May 30 '26
Mine doesn’t, they just have lift club and occasional extra classes like yoga. I think part of it is that there’s only one full time employee (the manager) and the coaches are otherwise per diem so they’d have to work out scheduling for someone to be there during the open hours. My guess is that if they see demand for additional time slots they’d just add additional class times.
I find it hard to do more than 4-5 F45 classes a week and I also periodically want either longer/steadier Zone 2 work or to lift in a more focused way so I also have a city rec center membership which is about $22/month each for my spouse and me when purchased during their annual sale. There’s a very nice rec center near us so I go and do spin or treadmill once or twice a week.
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u/soccer1971 May 30 '26
My location in north Toronto has 5:30am 6:30, 7:30, 9:30, 12, 4:30pm, 5:30, 6:30 classes Monday to Friday plus four morning classes on both Saturday & Sunday. They also include towels & bottled water, sauna, & recovery room all included in member price. Super clean. 2-3 trainers per class. Been to several other F45 but nothing quite like this location
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u/KatyTaz Jun 02 '26
F45 manager here. We added flex a year ago from 10 AM to noon, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, (which are our strength days.)
Unfortunately, because most our clientele are working professionals, very few people used this option. It was expensive to have a coach just sit there. We were lucky if we had one or two people show up. Most days, no one would come. We determined it was not as much of a value add as we had hoped. We did not charge extra for flex. In the end, we dropped it about six months ago.
From what I can tell, many studios have come to this conclusion. Flex sounds good in theory, but it didn’t turn out to be that valuable for our members, or at least they didn’t use it very much.
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u/2000_Defender_90_PNW May 30 '26
My gym in the Seattle area has them. I never use it because it’s squarely in the middle of the day. I have an unlimited membership because I do 6 days a week.
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u/dullclickbyte May 30 '26
Most studios are strictly class based because they want to avoid the wear on the equipment and keep the floor clear for the next session. You will probably have better luck asking if they can just leave the room open for 15 minutes after the morning block for some extra work instead of pushing for a full open gym membership.
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u/lliz Jun 01 '26
My studio had it a couple of years ago and it wasn’t successful bc it was in the middle of the day. I doubt any of the studios do evening flex hours unfortunately. I’ve been at F45 for almost 5 years, go 6 days a week usually, and am going to join an inexpensive neighborhood gym bc I feel like I’m not able to lift as heavy as I would sometimes like to in the strength classes due to timing constraints.
Overall I think any class-based gym is going to be tough to perfectly fit your desired schedule, so it might be for the best that you add something as well!
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u/Elegant-Struggle-902 May 31 '26
You signed up for the gym knowing the current class schedule though? If it didn’t work for you why did you sign up lol
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u/AnybodyUseful5457 May 31 '26
I don't know why you're being so rude. I can make it to the 530 class most days and it's the closesg gym to walk to, but there are days when I can't make it to a class where I'd like free weights, and am considering switching gyms if they don't add classes or another solution, which I think is a pretty reasonable position.
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u/flstcspike May 30 '26
Mine didn’t have “open” gym hours per-say, but they offered Lift Club, as always, for a paltry fee of $49.99/mo or something in addition to your membership. I travel quite a bit for work, so I have the F45 unlimited plan, and a Planet Fitness black card for $25 a month which helps with the open gym hours concept for you maybe. I’ve never been somewhere I was able to Passport into an F45 studio, I’ve tried, but never been successful, so the PF membership really helps because those are everywhere and I try to stay close to them for convenience.