I Tried the $7,500 a Month Gym. Is It Worth It?

"I just learned about this new gym," a fellow reporter tells me over hors d'oeuvres at an event. "It's like $10,000 a month." Um, excuse me?

Working in health and wellness, you hear about a lot of over-the-top things; this is the industry that spawned Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop and the actor's infamous, multi-thousand-dollar gift guide picks, after all. But even within that context, a $10,000 per month gym seemed excessively extravagant. What could it possibly offer to merit that price tag?

As I quickly learned, the gym in question isn't really a gym. Named Continuum Club, it's one of the latest additions to the rapidly expanding field of super-exclusive, members-only wellness clubs. (Other contenders include the Alo Gym and Heimat in Los Angeles.)

After learning about it, I couldn't get Continuum out of my head. So when, a few weeks later, someone from the club reached out and offered to bring me in for a tour, it took me less than a minute to type and send "yes."

Upon visiting the space, I learned that Continuum had tweaked its membership options; no longer $10,000 a month, it now offers tiers from $1,000 a month to $7,500 a month — still an eye-popping fee. But are Continuum's offerings enough to justify the price? That's what I intended to find out.

Although Continuum is nestled among the winding, narrow streets of New York City's West Village, it wasn't hard to find. That's because the front door is adorned with ropes and a doorman, giving it a distinctly nightclub feel. But once I approached the entrance, I was reminded more of a really nice spa. The doorman was expecting me and greeted me warmly by name, walking me down a half-flight of stairs to the lobby and asking if he could help me with anything else before turning me over to the person working the front desk.

The actual onboarding process at Continuum takes about a month, but I was just there to learn more about the club, tour the space, and undergo a functional movement screen, one small part of the usual orientation. First, however, I met with Tom Wingert, the chief revenue officer and vice president at Continuum, who gave me some insight into how the club works.

Continuum calls itself "an AI-powered luxury social wellness experience," and while that may sound pretentious, that's basically what it delivers. The club is designed to supply you with your own personalized "wellness prescription" so you don't have to spend any time figuring out how to best take care of your body and meet your wellness goals.

The 30-day onboarding process involves a long list of tests, including a sleep study, bloodwork, a VO2 max test, a functional movement screen, a resting metabolic rate screen, a bone density test, and more.

From there, the Continuum team uses AI-driven diagnostics to help synthesize all that information into your wellness prescription, which tells you exactly what types of workouts, recovery, and nutrition support you need to reach your goals.

Then, the club gives you everything you need to stick to that prescription. Continuum offers a full-service gym (with trainers, of course), and everything else you need to support your physical and mental fitness: sauna, cold plunge, physical therapy, massage, red light treatments, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, a float tank, and more, all in one beautiful, luxurious space.

Exactly what's included in your membership fee depends on your tier. The $1,000-per-month tier includes access to the club, sauna, and cold plunge, and all other services are available à la carte. The $2,500-a-month tier also includes four training sessions and four recovery treatments, including physical therapy and massage. And the $7,500-a-month tier is all-inclusive, with luxury perks such as priority scheduling and a dedicated locker.

Wingert notes that the club is also meant to be a place where people mingle socially, which is evident from the spacious lounge where members can relax and connect between treatments.

I have to admit, I wanted to find Continuum lacking. The $7,500 a month price tag sounds just too ridiculous, and the club's Instagram account is just too aesthetic; the cynic in me was sure that the space could never deliver. But with every hour I spent at the club, I began to find ways to justify the cost a little more.

For one, it's clear how much Continuum employees believe in the value of what they're doing. After meeting Wingert, I was taken through a functional movement screen — a way of identifying movement pattern asymmetries and issues — by Continuum's head of human and sports performance, Kennedy Chukwuocha, DPT. When I asked him why he decided to leave his previous job to join the team, he emphasized the impact the club was going to be able to make among their clientele, thanks to Continuum's AI-assisted diagnostic tools.

And while I can't speak to the entire onboarding process and membership experience, the club amenities certainly deliver. Continuum's sunny gym is stocked with all the newest resistance equipment and cardio machines you could need. The lounge area is decorated in grounding, earthy shades and filled with plants and comfy seating. Even the locker rooms take the typical gym provisions to the next level, with Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryers ($345-$430) and Olaplex No. 4D Dry Shampoo ($16-$30), No. 5 Leave-In Conditioner ($16-$32), and No. 6 Bond Smoother ($15-$30), instead of the typical Revlon and Batiste fare.

Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryers

From

$429

$429 at google.com

Olaplex No. 4D Dry Shampoo

From

$30

$30 at google.com

I personally wouldn't be able to easily find space in my budget for even the lowest membership tier Continuum has to offer (if they'd accept my application, that is; you have to request an invitation to join, and the club is currently accepting no more than 100 members with plans to never exceed a cap of 250, per a spokesperson for Continuum). But after my visit, I could easily see why someone would join. Wingert told me that the average member visits the club 14 times per week — that's twice a day, every day. To me, that emphasized just how good a job Continuum does at being a one-stop shop for all your wellness needs. Even on days they're not working out, members are stopping by for a massage, red light treatment, or sauna — and who can blame them? Considering the fact that Continuum replaces your need for a gym membership, personal trainer, physical therapist, massage therapist, and more, you could also see how someone could girl-math their way to justifying the membership fee.

Once my movement screen and red light therapy session were done, I felt my time at Continuum quickly slipping away. I tried to prolong it, treating myself to a sit in the locker room sauna before showering off, making use of the Dyson and Olaplex, and finally getting dressed and heading back out into the bright, New York City fall day. A passerby eyed me as I emerged from the tinted, roped doorway and I resisted the urge to tell her about the cool social wellness club that was through the entryway. "It's this new gym," I imagined confiding, knowing exactly what to say next to get the best reaction: "It's like $7,500 a month."

Mirel Zaman (she/her) is the health and fitness director at PS. She has over 15 years of experience working in the health and wellness space, covering fitness, general health, mental health, relationships and sex, food and nutrition, spirituality, family and parenting, culture, and news.