We’d like to think that the gym is the place where you just get fit, but Max Hawthorne has looked at gyms another way.
Not since the 1985 movie Perfect, which starred John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis, have fitness clubs been exposed to the degree of Memoirs of a Gym Rat, which chronicles one man’s 20-year journey through the bowels of the health club industry. Hawthorne pulled from his real-life experiences to uncover shocking behind-the-scenes shenanigans with his humorous but eye-opening account of our nation’s health clubs.
“After 20 years in the business, I’ve seen it all,” says Hawthorne. “Walk into almost any fitness club around the nation and you’ll find it – sex, drugs, deceit, membership cons, locker robberiess – you’ll be shocked to know what really goes on at these cllubs, both during and after business hours. It’s all very troubling.”