10 days at LA Fitness (and the beef with other gyms)

Our friends joined up with a Boston-area gym called LA Fitness. It is a fairly new gym around these parts, and I believe there is only a couple of locations so far. Luckily, they were given two VIP 10-Day passes for anyone of their choosing to also try out the gym – they picked us!

                                                   

This past December, we moved to North Shore of Boston, leaving our THREE gym memberships behind. Yes. THREE. TFK and I both belong to Boston Sports Club and he has a secondary gym membership at Golds Gym. Unfortunately, we are now too far from either gym so we are in the market for a new one. My relationship with the gym is this: I HATE TO LOVE IT. Due to the fact that I am not a runner, the gym gets me access to other cardio and classes, however I usually am not a fan of the atmosphere and/or the price.

 Some other riffs we have had with our previous gyms:

• Planet Fitness: Planet Fitness was a great gym for cardio; however it is not geared towards “hardcore lifting”. TFK is into high free-weights, and planet fitness only has dumbbells that go up to 60 pounds. Another issue is that due to the cheap price of this gym, it is so crowded all of the time. And I am talking packed sardines type of crowded. Regardless, the ride it took to get to the nearest PF ended up being not worth the very cheap monthly price.

• Gold’s Gym: TFK liked Gold’s Gym for there apparent catering to a more “bodybuilding” type of workout. There was higher dumbbells, however the Gold’s near us was quite small. There cardio equipment was half new/half out-dated, and it seemed that regardless of the time we went; it was always JAM PACKED. The price seemed a little on the high side ($30 per month) for such a small gym, and there early termination fee is $200!

• Boston Sports Club: Firstly, the price of this gym is almost double that of any other previous one ($60 per month) which is crazy expensive. Although this gym had a lot of amenities like a pool, sauna, and basketball court, it still is questionable whether or not it is worth the price. TFK ran into problems with this gym’s lifting section as well; since it was really small and seemed a bit dated. However, I liked this gym purely because the cardio equipment of this gym is definitely the best I have seen, with all new equipment and TV’s on every cardio piece. This gym also has a lot of different classes to choose from; but does not offer the “official” body pump class which I have yet to find at any of the gyms I have belonged to.

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So, needless to say we have had our share of gym experiences in the last 3 years, but cannot seem to find a gym that caters to both him (free weights, large lifting area) and me (updated cardio equipment; large cardio area). We started our 10 day pass at LA Fitness yesterday and my initial thoughts on this gym are this:

• LA Fitness: TFK is loving this gym so far. This gym has a huge free-weight section that has a lot of benches and a lot weights. The cardio section of this gym is upstairs, and has an OK amount of equipment. It seems a bit dated, lacking the newer precor cardio machines I have grown to love. However, it does have a pool and a racquetball court with a decent amount of classes offered.

Off for day 2 at LA Fitness…

-A
*Clearly these are my personal views on my experiences at the Gyms listed above*