Your Gym Will Never Let You Go (Thanks FTC) But small owners know service

If you’ve ever tried to cancel a gym membership — or anything that keeps billing you until you forget — you already know this fight. Ask anyone who ever tried to shake loose from the old Bally Total Fitness contracts or the Sawmill Athletic Club back when it was famous for billing you for months after you begged them to stop. This isn’t new news for Columbus. It’s just business as usual.

This is what’s on trial: the Federal Trade Commission — our consumer watchdog, our so-called pit bull — finally noticed that signing up for a shiny new subscription is easier than falling into bed drunk, but getting out of it is harder than getting a politician to keep a promise.

So they drafted a rule: Click to Cancel. One click in? One click out. No three-hour phone calls. No hidden hoops. Just transparency — the way it should be.

But law loves its twists. And the FTC, in its infinite bureaucratic genius, skipped the homework. Before you slap sweeping rules on entire industries — gyms, streaming services, all the places that quietly drain your wallet — you’re supposed to prove the cure isn’t worse than the disease. That’s called a cost-benefit analysis: run the numbers, test the impact, open the floor for debate.

They didn’t. They underestimated the cost, dodged the math, published anyway — and bet no one would notice. They lost that bet. The companies sued. And the Eighth Circuit Court — three judges in lifetime black robes — said, “You broke your own rules, so your new rule doesn’t stick.” So the whole thing got tossed.

So here we are: the everyday American still stuck wrestling with shady contracts that let you sign up online in seconds but demand a notarized letter and your firstborn to cancel. The FTC tripped on its own shoelaces, and you get the bill.

That’s the real tragedy — not that companies fought back (that’s business), but that the government fumbled the protection you actually needed.

So what happens now? The FTC has to start over and do it right this time. Maybe your state will step in first — maybe not. Maybe your gym won’t play games — maybe pigs will fly.

Until then, one-click sign-ups stay easy, one-click cancellations stay a fairy tale.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a good idea dies of bureaucratic incompetence.

At MyoBio, we don’t hide behind fine print. We don’t trap you. We keep you because we earn you — every session, every rep. Fair contracts. Real results. Walk in strong. Walk away free if you want. That’s how it should be.