Can You Get Strong
at Planet Fitness?
Planet Fitness calls itself a judgment-free zone, then hangs a siren on the wall for anyone who lifts too loud. So I gave myself 100 days — September 22 to December 31, 2025 — to join the 1,000 lb club inside a Planet Fitness. Bench, squat, and deadlift had to add up to 1,000 pounds, and I had three rules: follow every gym rule, don't get kicked out, and don't set off the Lunk Alarm.
The whole 100 days is in the video, including the final lift.
Why Planet Fitness makes heavy lifting hard
- Smith machines, not free barbells. The bar runs on a track. You can't move it forward or back, which changes how the deadlift feels.
- You can't drop anything. At a normal gym you finish a deadlift and let it fall. Here, every rep has to be lowered quietly, or the alarm goes off and the whole gym looks at you.
- People notice. The more plates you load, the more awkward it gets. Everyone's already watching before you start.
- The rules. No slamming weights, no tank tops, no gallon jugs. I followed all of them.
Why do it there at all? Partly because it was the cheapest membership in Charleston and I already had one. Mostly to prove you can get a real workout while playing by their rules.
October: too easy
I started at a 295 lb squat and a 315 lb deadlift. By October 5 I'd hit a 335 lb squat, the most I'd ever done. I was adding 20 to 30 pounds a week, still golfing and going out, and honestly thought the video would be too easy.
November: the plateau
Then everything stopped. Ten-pound jumps turned into 2.5s per side that I barely got. I failed my first squat and had to set it down on the rack with the whole gym watching. On top of that:
- The deadlift became the problem. Lowering heavy weight silently burned out my forearms before the lift itself did. My deadlift got close to my squat number, which should never happen.
- Ten days off. I spent 10 days in Ireland living in a van for another video. No lifting.
- My shoulder. I got wrecked surfing 5-foot waves, then went to failure on 70 lb incline dumbbells and could barely move my right shoulder the next day.
The fix: stop maxing out every session
I asked my buddy Marco — a former ballplayer who knows his way around a weight room — what I was doing wrong. My routine was the problem: I'd work down to a one-rep max on bench, squat, or deadlift every session. His advice:
- Do three sets of six, then one AMRAP set (as many reps as possible).
- Only test your max every two or three weeks.
- When you plateau, change your sets and reps.
- And: "You just pick it up."
It worked. I started adding weight every week again.
December: life got in the way
Then I got laid off from a new remote engineering job the same day I drove 18 hours to the office in Wisconsin. Lifting was the last thing on my mind. The rest of December ticked away with almost no training, plus Christmas cookies and beer.
Day 100: the final total
Going in, my best total was about 995 — five pounds short — and that was a week and a half and a holiday ago. I had gummy bears for carbs and smelling salts. I had zero confidence.
- Bench: failed 255, failed 251, got 245. Ten pounds under plan.
- Squat: my best of the whole challenge had been 360. I got 365.
- Deadlift: that left 390 to reach exactly 1,000 — a weight I hadn't pulled since November, on a Smith machine, without making a sound.
I'll let the video show that last rep. What I'll say: halfway up, my forearms were already going, and the only thing in my head was Marco's line. Just pick it up.
So, can you get strong at Planet Fitness?
Yes, with caveats. The Smith machines work for bench and squat. The deadlift is where the rules hurt most, because lowering every rep quietly adds a lot of fatigue. If your gym is Planet Fitness, train smart rather than maxing every day, and expect the deadlift to lag.
Keep reading
- David Dobrik's 75 Day Challenge Review — the other fitness challenge I filmed
- 108 Cold Showers Later — three months of a different kind of discipline
I'm a YouTuber in Charleston, South Carolina. I pitched college baseball at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and now I film experiments like this one between running my Turo fleet. More about me.
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