$36/mo is cheap for a gym. I am jealous!

Gyms around where I am tend to be expensive, and my health insurance doesn't do any reimbursement. (You get a discount on some gyms, but none near me have what I want -- it's mostly Curves, which I loathe). I've done some community ed classes, though, and those are fun and inexpensive.

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Just a thought but a lot of gyms well actually let you prepay memberships for a few years at a time. While not normally an advocate of prepaying as the best you can hope for is the return of inflation of the purcahsed item in the case of gym memberships a SUBSTANTIAL discount is sometimes available.

Thats said I would make sure that the gym is fairly solvent and not in any trouble as if the go bankrupt you lose.

In my case here in denver I was able to get a three year membership for 299 and no others fees (initation, enrolement etc) to one of the larger gyms in the area and one that was very convenient to me. The going rate was 30 a month with a 30 enrolement fee so in 10 months a break even and then 2+ years of gravy. Additionally, adding more years can be done at a rate of 59 a YEAR as long as i don't let it lapse.

When I started going to the gym regularly, I noticed that I was more careful about what I ate, etc., because I was more aware. It sort of has a cumulative effect. I have gotten out of shape and then back in shape a few times in my life, due to an unrelated injury or similar. I always tell people that the best way to get in shape is make sure you start by just by going through the physical act of actually going to the gym (or home gym). Get in the habit of going, even when you don't feel like it.

It's okay to tell yourself that you are just "going" and won't really work out that hard, and more often than not, once you are there you will do a normal workout.

i have two gyms available to me at the university. they throw that in free with the outrageous tuition bill

since moving farther away from campus, it's harder to go 3x a week because i'm usually hungry at the end of my work day and i suck at remembering to bring my gym bag with me. but when i was going regularly, it was great. i just have this tendency to work myself *too* hard and i've got a joint problem that flares up in response to that. i need to limit myself better and i probably will be able to stick to a better schedule. i do get a certain satisfaction knowing i can lift heavy... but it's just too heavy for 3x/week.

This is an important point for frugalists. I don't have the time to go to a gym since my wife and I stagger our work schedules so that one of us is home with the kids at all times. My only option for lifting is to do it at home.

I started off with bodyweight exercises, which are all anyone really needs to do at the beginning until the muscles and connective tissues adapt to the stress. But when I got good enough to do more than just bodyweight exericses, I stumbled upon the untapped resource of dust-collecting weights. My cubemate at work had a 300 pound set of olympic plates with the bar, a bench, and a squat rack that he wanted to unload. He goes to a gym, so he didn't want it clogging up his basement anymore. He sold it to me all for $100. And he even delivered it to my house!

My dad used to be big and sickly. Learning this, he enrolled himself in a gym , and hired a personal trainer. After 7 months of weighlifting, cardio, etcs, he now looks very healthy. He even bought some exercising equipments to work at home. Keeping in shape really does benefit you physically.