How to Manage Your Class Schedule: A Fitness Quandary

Missed class fees happen. They don’t have to.

Did you overschedule yourself, overestimate the MTA’s abilities, or underestimate your hangover? Sometimes we live life on the edge and cut it close to a fitness class time—meaning fees for missed classes and dashed hopes of a workout high.

(Or on the other hand, maybe you’re a fitness fiend looking to book lots of class fixes as far in advance as you can and the pressure of those late-cancellation fees will hold you accountable—right on!)

We can’t solve all your problems. Sometimes, it’s just too late to get yourself out of a bind and in or out of yoga class, as the case may be.

But we can help you try to save unnecessary fees. Below is a cheat sheet of fitness schedule quandaries for some popular New York City fitness classes. If your favorite class isn’t below, contact us, and we may add it!

Canceling Before the Fee Deadline

• ClassPass: Usually 12 hours (check the studio’s policy in your confirmation email, though—they can vary).
• Flywheel: 5pm the night before (8pm the night before if you have a Superfly membership).
• Barry’s Bootcamp: 12 hours.
• SoulCycle: 5pm the night before.
• Exhale: 4 hours (oh, the luxury!).
• Physique 57: Classes before 11am must be canceled 12 hours ahead; classes after 11am can be canceled at least 6 hours ahead. (If you find this little calculation is too hard, just go to class.)
• Monster: 12 hours.
• Peloton: 12 hours.
• Uplift Studios (closed June 2019): 12 hours.
• Fhitting Room: 5pm the night before.
• Brrrn: 12 hours.

How Late Is Too Late to Show Up to Class?

In most cases, if you show up after this deadline, the studio reserves the right to give away your spot to those on the waitlist—or not let you into class at all, with no refund. If it’s your first class, you really should listen to the studios’ advice about arriving even earlier than class starts.

• ClassPass: Varies by studio (check your confirmation email), but it’s pretty much impossible to convince a studio that has marked you down for a missed class to undo it, if you get there after they stop letting people in. Generally they want you to show up 5-15 minutes before class.
• Flywheel: You can arrive up to 5 minutes after class starts (reasonable).
• Barry’s Bootcamp: Check in 5 minutes before class or forfeit your spot. It’s hard to go into class even a minute late because you might be uneven in your treadmill/floor balance, and space is tight so it’s dangerous—but I have seen people (I won’t name names) come in a couple of minutes late before.
• SoulCycle: You’ve got a luxurious 10 minutes after class starts to saunter in (they recommend you call up to 4 minutes before class starts to save your spot). So generous!
• Exhale: Same as SoulCycle: 10 minutes after class, you can still enter. Calling if you know you’re cutting it close is recommended.
• Physique 57: You can arrive up to 10 minutes after class starts (if it’s a 30-minute class, you can’t enter after class starts).
• Monster: Class is closed at its start time; check in 5 minutes before class or forfeit your spot. Nifty trick if you can come back later: if you miss your class, they offer you a same-day standby class if space is available.
• Peloton: It starts when it starts. Don’t be late. (Your spot may be given to someone on the waitlist 5 minutes before class.)
• Uplift Studios (closed June 2019): 5 minutes after class starts, you can’t enter. Their waitlist is pretty generous to latecomers, though—your spot probably won’t be given away since the waitlist-into-confirmed-spot conversion closes 4 hours before class.
• Fhitting Room: Entry ends at the start of class (at which time your spot may be given away to a waitlister).
• Brrrn: 5 minutes after class starts is all you get. Sort-of chill, for a cold workout studio.

When You Can Sign Up

Reasonable or tricky sign-up windows:

• ClassPass: Varies, usually 1 week before, noon (but if you’re trying to book Flywheel and Flybarre on ClassPass, they still open Sundays at 5pm).
• Flywheel: Every Sunday at 5pm.
• Barry’s Bootcamp: 1 week, noon.
• SoulCycle: Every Monday at noon.
• Monster: 2 weeks (until the end of the month, when a new monthly schedule is published in the last few days of the month)
• Peloton: 1 week, noon.
• Brrrn: About a week and a half in advance.

Sign-up windows that seem too good to be true:
Keep an eye out for substitutes if you have your heart set on a particular teacher (though I haven’t yet met an instructor I didn’t like at these studios), but these are great classes if you want to book way in advance.

• Exhale: Weeks and weeks in advance.
• Physique 57: Forever in advance. Their calendar has more than a year with what appear to be functional signup buttons. What a dream!
• Uplift Studios (closed June 2019):
  : 2 weeks in advance (not bad!).
• Fhitting Room: Sundays at 4pm, 2 weeks in advance. (Emerald members have access 3 days before anyone else, Thursdays at 4pm.)

Update 6/6/19: If you need any more information on a studio listed here or beyond, check out Registration Required. There, Michelle Ridgley has methodically reviewed tons of classes and organized them brilliantly—including color-coded subway information to help you get there (hopefully) on time.

And if you do miss class, Girls on ClassPass offers hilarious memes and commiseration on the late or missed class fee struggle.