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Physical inactivity is still a major problem contributing to a growing public health crisis despite a fast-expanding body of technological solutions and wellness research around fitness training. The inaccessibility of professional fitness training remains a leading cause of this gap for reasons encompassing socioeconomic factors, cultural and demographic barriers, and more recently the threat of global pandemics that disrupt traditional modes of staying physically active. Previous lines of work have explored using AI for fitness activity recognition from various sensing modalities such as computer vision, wearable sensors, and force and pressure sensors. However, these works are limited by their feasibility, deployability, and accessibility in real-world scenarios, in addition to the technical challenges faced by each modality for accurate and reliable activity recognition. In this paper, we propose an accessible system for gym activity recognition and correction focusing on foundational fitness activities using ML and a novel pressure sensing mat, and validate its deployability in a real-world use case in a natural gym setting. We present the detailed and previously under-investigated Centre of Pressure (COP) profile of four main gym activities in terms of several COP-related metrics specifically as targets for ML-based recognition tasks. Based on this, we identify COP displacement and COP balance measures as important features for ML-based recognition of these fitness activities for future research in this area. Furthermore, we compare the performance of several ML models in the activity recognition task, achieving 98.5% recognition accuracy using ML models suitable for real-time deployment. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our system in a live real-world with use case in a natural gym environment.