Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Bally Total…

As any gym rat knows, January can be a crowded time as health clubs overflow with new year’s resolve. But this January is especially tough on thousands of former Bally Total Fitness customers in Philadelphia and around the country, who are feeling a burn unlike the one they crave.

At the end of 2011, the oft-troubled Chicago chain sold 171 of its 271 health clubs for $153 million, and with them the contracts of hundreds of thousands of customers. The clubs’ buyer, LA Fitness, apparently welcomed some with open arms. But not all.

The rough spots, which last week prompted a Marlton lawyer to pursue a class-action lawsuit in Pennsylvania and New Jersey over the deal, are a window into an industry that has often rankled consumers – when it hasn’t left them totally in the lurch.

Consider the story of Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz, two of the plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania suit filed Wednesday by Mark S. Guralnick.

Tobia signed up years ago when the couple lived in New York, buying a lifetime membership in 1990 at what was then a Jack LaLanne fitness center in Brooklyn. He paid more than $600 to join, but he says his “gold membership” – which became “premier plus” when LaLanne sold to Bally – was worth it.

One advantage was a promise that his annual fee would not rise above $72. Another was access to other clubs in the chain or a national affiliate, useful for when he traveled. Tobia was happy enough that in 1995, four years after the couple moved to Philadelphia, his wife joined as a family member at the club, by then a Bally.

Her deal was not quite as attractive. A lifetime membership cost $199, and her annual fee can rise. But Maksymowicz did not hesitate at the price on the 2012 bill that arrived in late December at the couple’s Powelton home: $226.80.

Still, something seemed odd to Maksymowicz and Tobia, who are both artists and college professors.

The bill from Bally was postmarked Dec. 20. But for weeks they’d heard that Bally was being sold – not surprising, since the privately held companies announced their deal Nov. 18, saying it would close Nov. 30.

Each time they came in December, whether to their usual club at 15th and Walnut Streets or a second club they occasionally prefer in South Philadelphia, the advice was the same: Sweat over your exercise, not over the acquisition.

“They were saying nothing will change, don’t worry,” Maksymowicz recalls. “Pretty much the whole month of December, everybody just got waved in.”