I joined TQG in May of last year. I was super excited to get back in the fitness wagon. The workouts are decent (although they get easier every single time there is a new challenge group) and the community is amazing. Honestly, that's the best part of the gym - a community of amazing, loving queers.
From there, my experience goes downhill. The membership itself is rather expensive, ranging anywhere from $199-250~ a month for a virtual workout. The coaching itself is odd ... they have a hard time retaining coaches, so there is no continuity is coaches themselves. There was one coach who was fired extremely abruptly and then the entire gym was notified in probably the worst messaging I've ever heard. There have multiple coaches interviewed, expected to come on and they're advertised on social media and then poof, nothing. They don't get hired. It also seems like folks, when they resign, aren't given a 2 week notice period. They get let go immediately.
To be clear, the classes are best described as circuit training. These are workouts you can find online, but the value you find here is that you have a coach telling you how to do them. At one point, you did get feedback from the coaches telling you how to correct your form. Since the gym has gotten larger, you get coaches yelling in your ear motivating you but every little on feedback on form. This has led to me developing a hip injury that I'm working on rehabbing.
The schedule changes pretty consistently, so once you find yourself in a routine, it is disrupted yet again. During coaching, at least in earlier stages of the pandemic, there was a lot of pressure on hitting protein and other macro goals. To me at least, this uncovered a lot on my end and led me to getting professional mental health treatment for an eating disorder. It seems that now the nutritional coaching is focused on intuitive eating. Overall, I did see results although they have been slow. I've lost around 20lbs overall, 10% body fat, and about 7lbs of lean muscle mass. The coaches struggled to help with my slow progress and I wish someone would have told me to see a dr sooner to get blood tests done because we could have identified the reason I saw ridiculously slow progress in the beginning.
During the weekly accountability calls, it feels as if it is becoming group therapy and people are unloading all of their struggles. At the end of the day, I want this to be a gym and during accountability calls, I want them focused on nutrition and fitness goals. Mental health, while yes, a piece of the puzzle, should be handled by trained professionals and not personal trainers (whom only one, I believe is accredited).
I ended up submitting my cancelation notice and was notified that there was an additional 30 day commitment after submitting it. During my initial sales call with Nat, she told me there was no contract, no BS so this caught me completely unaware.
My problem overall with the gym is the way that the owner operates the gym. Over the last few weeks, there has been an increased in volatile actions by the part of Nat. Folks have quit over the way certain schedule changes have been made and lastly, over two particularly classist and transphobic IG posts. Go and review their IG - you'll see a transphobic post with a weak apology linked below it. You'll also notice that a lot of the postive comments below that are from Nat's family rooting her on. The other one was deleted almost immediately after posting. I contacted the gym about the first one privately, expressing my concern. The second one I commented on and later requested an early termination due to the classist and frankly, tone deaf "meme" that was posted (all within my 30 day window). Over the next few days, I was removed from TQG Facebook group by an admin and I've been told that I'm still a member through the remainder of the month. If I'm a member, I would presume I still have access to member benefits, including a Facebook group.
Overall, it's an expensive gym, the classes are things you can find online, there is high turnover with the coaches and lastly, the owner is impulsive and a weak leader overall. You'll notice that there is a constant stream of new reviews and they're pretty cyclical; they're all posted either immediately following the conclusion of a challenge group (again about a $400-450 investment if I remember correctly) or when the gym puts a competition to post reviews for a trip.
I will not be returning nor patronizing any things hosted by TQG. Although I love the community that has been built here, until there is radical change in the way Nat approaches customer service and social media this gym will continue seeing rapid turnover in coaches and members. It's interesting to notice that most of the members are recent and it's rare to find members who are apart of the gym for longer than 3-6 months. read more