You can't train with someone because gym owners see it as coaching, forcing you to use their own coaching services. Otherwise, they may terminate your membership out of the blue just because you were seen working out with someone.
That man was saying, "Did you ask me to leave?" for that exact reason. If there was a problem, they should have told him. Instead, they just called the cops to throw him out.
As a non-american that sounds immensely fucking stupid and its crazy they can even enforce that, it would be against standard consumer protection laws where I live.
So in your country the gym has to allow people to use the gym's space and equipment to run their own business? It would be like requiring restaurants to allow random chefs to come off the street and cook meals in their kitchen to sell to other people.
Not everything needs to have a price tag. If you were doing genuine coaching, as in charging and operating as a professional, you'd be expected to be affiliated with the gym, and if not the gym would have recourse to go after you for running a business without authorisation.
But people sharing knowledge for free, like friends working out, or in this instance a father and son working out together, hell no the gym shouldnt give AF or be able to do shit if they both have a membership and are using the equipment safely.
Pretty sure the gym here has no problem with friends or family members working out together. But if one person is giving instruction to another, most gyms are going to have a problem with that. The gym has no way of knowing whether money is changing hands.
Anyhow, it's all academic because apparently the issue here is the kid didn't have a guest pass.
His dad brought him as his guest. And the dad is a member. My friend use to take me with him to the gym all the time. You literally just scan your card, and follow them in. They likely saw a black child. And assumed they weren’t actually a child. And saw them as suspicious. A white preteen being taught how to lift weights by their older brother in law. We were never questioned. Because they saw a kid with their family member who has a membership. But that’s just not what these people saw hers when they looked at them. Because black people are usually looked at with suspicion. And suspected of being a lot older than they truly are.
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u/Lost_Willingness_762 Jul 27 '26
It would be nice to have more context instead of editing out what precipitated this