People would rather work anywhere but the office — including their gyms

• A new Wall Street Journal report finds that people are increasingly working from their gyms.
• In turn, gyms are embracing coworking, and building out space for their remote workers.

Ever since the pandemic, work has become more of a concept than a place — and now, workers and their laptops are hitting the gym in the latest iteration of working from everywhere.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, gyms are the latest venture to break into offering coworking space. For workers on hybrid schedules, gyms are a way to not sit at home alone, and also to get a workout in. It signals how hybrid workers are using their newfound remote work time, and also how the dissolution of the traditional office is creating a desire for connections that exist outside of both the house and corporate cubicles.

According to the Journal, more gyms are building coworking spaces; the new Chelsea Piers in Brooklyn, a luxury gym, reportedly boasts 4,000 square feet of coworking amenities, and attendance across locations is now above pre-pandemic usage. Its website touts that the gym's members lounge "offers communal work tables and social lounge spaces available from open until close for all club members," where members can "catch up on some work" or "just relax after your workout."

"We see throughout the day members are coming, taking a call, hopping into a class, getting back online," Keeth Smart, a senior vice president at Chelsea Piers, told the Journal.

As research on remote workers' time use shows, more are using their breaks to work out or participate in other leisure activities. Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and work-from-home expert, told Insider that the ability to structure breaks towards meaningful activities is one of the big perks of work-from-home.

At the office, "What's the best thing you've got available to you?" Bloom said. "Often it's gossiping with colleagues, playing computer games, or scrolling the internet."

"You see much more reading and computer game playing in the office and much more exercise, chores, time with family at home," Bloom said. "And I think that is why people really like working from home."

That could explain why a gym-based coworking space is so appealing: You get the ability to socialize, work out, and still get your work done. It is, as the Journal notes, a coveted third space — somewhere that's neither home nor work, like the coffee shops that saw laptop-clad workers move in en-masse once things began reopening.

Of course, that may not mean the gym for everyone. Some might prefer flocking to cat cafes or hostels, craving the company of cats over people. Or others might want to knock out their chores, rather than their daily workouts, and opt to work from a laundromat equipped with coworking instead. As long as it's not at home and not in the office, it might be the right fit for the new fleet of workers grappling with how much — if at all — work should be taking center stage in their lives.

Are you working from your gym, laundromat, coffee shop, or another third space? Contact this reporter at jkaplan@insider.com.