Gyms and Fitness Studios Editing and Proofreading Services

Somebody joins in January, tears a ligament in March, and discovers in April that freezing the membership costs eleven pounds a month, requires a doctor's letter, and cannot be backdated. They will pay it, resent it, cancel in September and tell eleven people. The gym did nothing it had not written down, in clause 14, which they did not read.

We edit what gyms and fitness studios produce — membership agreements and their cancellation and freeze terms, joining and induction information, class booking and no-show policies, personal training package terms, price change notices, health screening and waiver documents, facility rules and etiquette notices, and the correspondence that follows a disputed payment. Our editors work on the terms members only read when something has gone wrong.

The cancellation and freeze provision is where a gym's reputation is actually made, and its failure is a term written to be enforceable rather than to be understood. Members do not leave over the price; they leave over how leaving works. We work through these so the minimum term and its end date are stated as a date at the point of joining, since "12-month minimum term" signed in January means nothing to somebody in October; so the notice period is expressed with the exact effect — the last payment that will be taken and the last date of access — because the argument is almost always about one final payment; so freezing is described with its cost, its maximum duration, the evidence required and whether it extends the term, given that a freeze which quietly adds three months to the contract is the term members feel deceived by; so the medical and relocation exits are stated with what evidence is accepted and how quickly, as these are the two circumstances in which people most need the process to be simple; so the cancellation method is one that can be completed the same way it was started, since a contract sold online and cancellable only by post is the practice that generates complaints; so price rises are covered with the notice given and the right to leave; so any third-party payment collector is named with what happens if a payment fails; and so the whole thing is summarised in a short box before the clauses. Terms written this way produce members who come back.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, member correspondence and business documents. We are editors rather than lawyers or consumer advisers, and we offer no legal advice and no view on contract terms, enforceability or any dispute. What we can do is make the exit as clear as the entrance.