Portland ClassPass Review: Top 5 Favorite Gyms (So Far)

As of today, I have officially been doing ClassPass for 60 days, and I’ve gone to 48 classes at 20 different gyms, so I figured it was time to start writing about some of it on the internet. Back in the old days I would have instantly written about each gym after every class, but now my sit-at-the-computer-all-day job is cutting into my blogging time, so apologies for the delay. But now, get ready for my feedback on ClassPass in general, plus my top five favorite gyms that I’ve been to with ClassPass (so far)!

My friend Lauren started texting me basically every day about ClassPass a few months ago, saying something along the lines of “you will love this,” every single time. It’s true, I have always been a big fan of going to new gyms and belonging to multiple gyms at the same time for no other reason than for being able to give off the illusion that I’m rich and spend money with reckless abandon (instead of being poor and spending money with reckless abandon, which is more of what was happening but does not give off the image I was going for). But ClassPass let’s you go to a bunch of different gyms without spending too much money, so even better! If you don’t really get what ClassPass is, read this. After about a month of prompting from Lauren, I went ahead and signed up, and have gone almost every single day since, other than a weeklong vacation.

Lauren was right, it’s my favorite thing ever, for two reasons:

1. I get to go to so many gyms! True, I can only go to any one gym three times per month, but it turns out that there’s enough gyms that it’s not really a big deal. I live and work in opposite corners of the city, so most parts of Portland are fair game since I drive through the whole thing daily, and there are a ton of gyms on the way.
2. There’s an annoying penalty system for missing/canceling classes, which has actually turned out to be amazing motivation for me to follow through with my plans and get in pretty good shape. Usually when I make a plan to work out, somehow I end up sleeping instead, but ClassPass charges you $15 if you cancel a class with less than 12 hours to go before the class. This means that if I haven’t canceled a class before I go to bed at night, I have to go unless I want the penalty fees to start stacking up. Since I really like money, this has been a good incentive to go to every single class I sign up for.

I don’t think ClassPass is for everyone. If you get extreme anxiety from the idea of going new places and meeting new people, maybe just find one gym and go there. If you can’t keep a schedule to save your life, probably not good for you either – unless you are very affluent and care-free with your money. Then you should especially go, because it’s probably people like you who are bankrolling my aggressive use of ClassPass that basically lets me pay $4 per class.

This girl probably wouldn’t thrive on ClassPass:

Hardcore anxiety today, took me 5 hours to leave my apartment, now I am sitting on a park bench in my RayBans like a PERSON in a SOCIETY

— Jenny Paxton (@omgitsjpax) September 4, 2015

PS. Who is Jenny Paxton? Why do I know who zero of the people I follow on Twitter are?

The only downsides I can find to ClassPass so far are:

1. The user interface isn’t perfect – once I wanted to book a class several days out, went backwards and then forwards again in my browser and it had set the booking date to the current date, and I booked a class thirty minutes out, while I was at work. They make you confirm with an extra click, but I was so sure I was on the right date I didn’t worry about it. They gave me a generous one-time pass on the last-minute cancellation fee, but also assured me that there are obvious alerts when you are booking a class that’s less than 12 hours away (so you can’t cancel). It was not obvious, but whatever. They were cool about it – I just can’t ever do it again.
2. I feel kind of guilty. I don’t know how much the gyms get every time I go, but I feel like it’s pretty low compared to what I’d be paying if I was an actual gym member. I reassure myself by assuming that most of the gym owners around here are probably pretty smart, and like with Groupon, they’ll soon figure out if it is helping their business or not, and proceed accordingly. Because as much as I love some of these gyms, the truth is that I would never belong to all of the ones I love since that would be crazy expensive, so it’s not like a ClassPass or full-membership situation, it’s a ClassPass or not-at-all situation.

Which brings me to my favorite gyms so far! This is getting long and it’s Friday night, so I’m not going to write much about the gyms, I’ll save that for later (if I feel like it). But I do want to give props right away to all the gyms in the area that are especially awesome, because they’ve been making my life way more awesome in the past two months. Criteria for making it into the Top 5 are a) having nice instructors that talk to me, b) giving me a good workout, and c) giving me personal attention/instruction. And so, in alphabetical order, here are my Top 5 Favorite ClassPass Gyms (so far):

1. POINT – Owned by two super fit/knowledgable/enthusiastic/kind ladies who teach all the classes, this place is super fun, the workouts are intense (mostly circuit-style workouts), and nobody looks like they want to punch you in the face when you won’t stop talking about your dog. Kind of the opposite, in fact.
2. Torque – This is a CrossFit style gym that has been very tolerant of my total inexperience with most CrossFit exercises. The classes are small, and I’ve gotten a lot of personal attention and modifications specific to my capabilities. I can finally kind of do a proper squat, thanks to them!
3. Revocycle – Check this place out, and they will explain all about why their bikes are better for you than most spin bikes. Something about most spinning classes having stationary bikes that make your legs essentially get flung around by the momentum of the bike’s design, whereas these bikes make you work as if you were on a real bike. Obviously I’m not the one to give you the details, but the owner, Michael, is usually there (I want to say always, but I’m not always there to confirm), and is really passionate/informative/helpful/nice.
4. CorePower Yoga – Everyone already knows how great this place is, so I don’t need to talk them up a lot. Most importantly, they hire really great instructors, which I’ve found out not all yoga studios do. Or maybe everyone has different preferences for types of teachers, I just know that these ones are awesome.
5. Yoga Pearl – Same as with CorePower, they just hire good instructors. I like going here before I destroy my flexibility and posture by slumping over in a desk chair all day. Yoga studios are also one of those things where you just have to go and see how you like the space. Yoga Pearl is one of those places where people don’t talk at all when they get into the yoga room, which I like. I wouldn’t mind if people would talk to me, but they never do, so I get angry/jealous when they’re having fun conversations without me while I’m supposed to be getting all zen and ready to yoga.

I highly encourage anyone to try out ClassPass or one of these gyms/studios. And no, this post is sponsored by nobody and nobody is giving me anything to write all of these nice things. I just hope that somebody goes to one of these gyms so I can hang out with or at least chat about gyms with someone. For now I will just keep texting Lauren about how awesome it is (she’s in Boston so we can only remotely enjoy ClassPass together).

…And just so I don’t have a post with no pictures, remember how I got a new adorable baby puppy dog? Here’s a picture of him flying: