The honest trade
- A gym gives you range
- Every kind of equipment, whenever it’s open, for not much a month. For building serious strength, nothing here beats a loaded barbell.
- Reformer gives you teaching
- Somebody plans the hour, watches you do it, and corrects it. That isn’t part of a standard gym membership.
- A gym asks more of you
- You need a plan and the will to follow it. Most lapsed memberships lapse for that reason and no other.
- A class books you in
- A fixed time with your name against it. For a lot of us that’s the whole difference between exercising and meaning to.
The bestworkout isthe oneyou do
You don’t have to choose
Plenty of the women who come here also lift or run, and reformer sits nicely alongside both. Controlled, low-impact work through a full range is a sensible counterweight to heavy or repetitive training.
If you can only afford one, pick the one you’ll actually turn up to.
When the gym is the better answer
If what you want is maximum strength or more muscle, the gym is the right tool and reformer won’t stand in for it. And if money is tight and you already know how to train, the gym gives you far more per session.