Dear Prudence,
I’ve been a member of a climbing gym for about three years, but I don’t really climb. I’ve almost exclusively used the gym to access group training classes led by “Kelsey.” There is a group of maybe 20 regulars who rotate through her classes during the week, and spots are limited so there is almost always a waitlist.
The thing is, Kelsey isn’t a great trainer. She knows her stuff and is very strong herself, but she basically writes a workout on the board and then films herself working out for social media. It’s more like we’re doing a curated workout alongside her without almost any kind of coaching or guidance. She sometimes demonstrates form, and I will say she intervenes if someone is going to hurt themselves. So not terrible, just not great, and the “small group coaching” feels like false advertising. I’ve seen so many people come and go through the years, so excited to finally get into Kelsey’s famous lifting classes just to be kind of disappointed and embarrassed about floundering around without help. Kelsey is a charismatic person and many people feel drawn to her, but I’ve always found her to be fairly self-centered and hard to connect with. Definitely not a supportive coach-like figure. (For context, I am also a woman, so no misogynistic, impossible-to-achieve standards here.)
Until recently, our town didn’t have another good lifting gym, but a new one just opened up, and I decided to switch my membership. I’ve been asked to provide feedback on why I’m leaving and I wonder if it’s worth being honest. If I were, I would say that my membership was priced to deliver more of a hands-on coaching experience and a community feel, and Kelsey was not able to deliver on either of those. I was having a big box gym experience at a small expensive boutique gym, so I decided to just save some money and start going to the big box gym. Do you think I should let them know I feel this way or should I just decline to give feedback?