I went to a HOTWORX in another state, when I was visiting some family. It was such a great workout…read moreand I swear I have never slept better in my life than the night I did Hot Yoga in the evening. So I saw that northeast Philly was getting one, and I decided to sign up for their pre-sale.
Had to wait over 6 months for the gym to finally open, but it's open!
First- the gym itself is great. The managers and franchisee are very nice, present, and responsive. This is a big deal!
The gym is small, each sauna that you do the classes in is only big enough to hold 3 people, but usually you're flying solo. There's an app to reserve your slot for every class, so you can choose to book a room to yourself, or see someone else is registered and choose to sweat it out with them.
Classes are split into HIIT cardio classes that run every 15 minutes on a video loop inside the saunas, and hot isometric classes which are 40 min in length.
I love the classes so far. I know it can be repetitive having the same virtual instructor run the exact same class with the exact same script, day after day, but I find it actually a little rewarding, as I get better and able to push harder, the lines I remember from the class seem to make the class feel shorter. "Oh we're already at that point? Almost done!"
Now for the bad....the APP IS TERRIBLE. And getting as much psychological reward out of this program relies VERY HEAVILY on the app. If you have a Fitbit instead of an Apple Watch, you can just forget having accurate calories counted, half the time (especially if you take a 2nd class in one visit) it won't even let you record your calories, and "afterburn" is supposed to be tracked for the 60 min after you finish your workout. If you forget to tap "record your calories" right at the 60 min mark, forget it! It records zero calories.
So, do I need to buy a $300-600 watch to enjoy accurate app performance? Maybe. But that's nuts. The UX of the app is also some of the worst I have ever seen.
None of this reflects on the location of this gym, or the gym itself, so I'm not taking any stars off on the review. I left an App Store review for that.
The biggest drawback to the app being a POS, other than not getting the full experience the concept promises, is you can't compete on the leaderboard if your sessions aren't logged correctly, and there's no way to manually add them or fix it. Each gym, and the entire franchise, has a leaderboard and there's supposed to be rewards or prizes for ranking highly, so it's a bit of a let down to know that no matter how often or how hard I show up, I'm not on the leaderboard accurately, and I'm never going to "win" even the mental prize of seeing my name towards the top for our location.
:( I'm actually a competitive person, but the app's shortcomings don't allow one to tap into that....which could result in falling off in going altogether, and then canceling your membership.
Anyway, I love this gym, despite the app sucking. I feel incredibly energized and CREATIVE after my Hotworx sessions. I'm a graphic designer by trade, so this is SO valuable to me. Maybe I will reward myself with an Apple Watch one of these days. But for now, I know I feel great, and my Fitbit app is still tracking what it is supposed to, just not always sending it to the Hotworx app like it's supposed to.
