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Writer's pictureElliot Fisher

Squeeze Every Penny Out Of Your Fitness During A Cost Of Living Crisis


Fitness during a cost of living crisis seems like an impossible feat. With fuel, food and energy prices rising faster than many can keep up, we have to make cuts. Many often cut their own health aids first. Why are you reducing one of the most vital aspects of human health in modern society?

Toy pig
No neeed to break your piggy bank

Firstly, fitness can be absolutely free! So why are there huge multi-million dollar industries built around it? Because we inherently need to move and in an age of information overload many of us aren’t sure where to start. Though start we must, to help ward off serious diseases, obesity, ailments and improve our bodies into later life as well as keep our mental states that bit more resilient when blow after blow rains down.


Health and fitness is incredibly important to us all, yet come to the crunch do you drop the barista coffee or the exercise class? Which is easier? Let’s put this into perspective. An Armoured Muscle Bootcamp can cost £4.85/class* in which you get around an hours worth of total body all round fitness development to invigorate your muscles, pump up your heart rate and boost your feel good hormones. Not only that, in a group setting you get to meet new friends and chat with existing pals. The Bootcamps have loads of variety and games to help keep you more entertained than Netflix and keeps you from becoming a hermit. As a bonus the Armoured Muscle staff are on hand to message about any questions you have to help you with your journey (this bits free).

Yet, would you rather come to a Bootcamp or have a McDonlads Big Mac meal? Tempting we know. Yet when you say you can’t afford to come to fitness classes but think nothing of a tasty, salty, fast food burger. Generally a medium Big Mac meal will set you back £5.09 not including any happy meals you are obliged to pay for as the kids are in tow. Sure you get 10 mins of satisfaction sitting in your own cubicle but is it helping you live any longer? Or any happier?


Coffee, oh you black gold! As nice as it is the cost doesn’t half creep up on you. Looking at one of the UK’s most popular chain baristas, a cappuccino from Costa, arguably one of the most popular drinks will set you back about 3 quid. Granted less than a single Bootcamp class but where this catches many people out is that they can easily have multiple take out coffees every week or even every day! At 150 kcal a pop you’d do wonders for any weight loss just cutting back on these let alone your bank balance. What’s more is that you could double bubble your health and fitness progress by diverting the cash from coffee to classes.


Maybe you need more support than a fitness class or a gym. Maybe Personal Training is the ultimate solution you need to finally kick your arse into shape once and for all. Expensive is probably one of the first words that comes to mind. Until you get takeaways in your sights. Many families get takeaway once a week. You know, celebrate another week with a whopping load of calories and grease and wonder why 3 months later they’re having to buy new jeans because those old ones don’t fit any more, for some strange reason. What’s a standard takeaway cost? Well really depends on your flavour as they vary a lot. Here at Armoured Muscle we favour the pizza and even on a meal deal for us both, that’s £25 a pop. Done weekly (sometimes more) that’s £100/month. The UK average comes in at around £120/month depending on your source. If you can find £20-40 more you could have yourself your very own personal fitness assistant working with you to get you healthier, happier and more resilient. With less body weight, you eat less food, saving costs.


Ok Ok, you’d still need to find more money in a cost of living crisis to hire a PT through cutting out takeaways alone. If you want to save money, sort your health and fitness out AND have cash to save QUIT SMOKING! We’ve seen it. We’ve had a client that openly admitted their smoking budget was paying for their PT sessions. You want to get healthy but you don’t want to stop smoking. Seems a pretty contradictory notion. You want to get fit but you can’t afford to (even though it can be done for free) but you can afford to smoke? You want to lose weight but the cost of healthy food is too much yet you’re more than happy to turn bank notes into cancer? An Armoured Muscle PT package costs £140/month yet smoking can set you back £274! You wouldn’t even need to go cold turkey, you could halve the chuffing habit and still be no worse off financially. Even packing up vaping will get you to a fitness class once a week with pocket change to spare.

Cost of smoking vrs cost of vaping
(Image from https://vapable.com/how-much-does-vaping-cost/)

The moral of the story is priorities. When budgets squeeze, what do we chop what do we trim? With a step back and looking at what you actually want to achieve and what's contradictory, you can make the most of your fitness economy.


  • Health vs Fast Food

  • Health vs Coffee (tough one)

  • Health vs Takeaway

  • Health vs Smoking


If you've done all of the above or even just want to shave a few pennies anyway, you could check if your gym has any concessions or discounts you may qualify for. You may find you do actually get a discount that they like to keep close to the chest. If not it costs you nothing to ask.


There's a handful of free workout videos with the Armoured Muscle On Demand section which can save you time as well as money to get an essential level of fitness underway. Not to mention the many others out there on YouTube too.


If you really need that human element though, check with your local class fitness instructor for discounts. At Armoured Muscle we offer discounts for Armed Forces and Blue Light card holders as well as the reward cards whereby you can build up 10% discount codes. You can save 3% on classes when you block book 4 or more. It’s not a lot of cash saved but as the $25.1 billion dollar company Tesco says….Every Little Helps.


What value do you place on your health and fitness? How important is a takeaway vs being able to function in your 60's. Times are hard no doubt, they won't be made any easier when the doctor tells you that you have early onset lung cancer or when you're circling the depths of depression because that burger made you feel guilty financially and emotionally.

 

Download the 'Fit by Wix' app - Apple - Android - Invite Code: XCJTBX

 

*£4.85/class when part of a block booking discount


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