"Designer" Gyms....

So for the past two or so years I have been a member on Planet Fitness. Not so much by choice but by their takeover of the World's Gym that I had been a member of for a year. The World's Gym was more of a weight lifters gym, with a few tread mills and tvs, played rock music, and had a decent group of members. The location was perfect sitting right in between work, school, and home. So I decided to keep my membership at Planet Fitness as they took over. They progressively changed the place. Putting in purple and yellow equipment, yellow walls, playing an assortment of crappy music from techno to smooth jazz, new free weights, and so on. This all should be cool right? No....

They also installed a Lunk Alarm. Anytime someone dropped a weight, grunted, ect they would set off this alarm and come point you out as if you were some sort of scumbag. By Planet Fitness's terms, a Lunk is defined as anyone who grunts, drops weights, or judges someone. They also go by the statement that their gym's are judgement free zones, yet they have signs all over the place that state "Your dress is based of our judgement whether or not it is suitable to work out in," or something along those lines.

Then they started taking out certain plate sizes...no more 35lbs. plate weights. Then they removed multiple bench press stations and took out one of the two squat racks. Adding about 20 treadmills in the space. Then just recently they took out all the dumb bells over 60lbs. Call me a meathead, but I use 65lb dumb bells to warm up with on tricept extensions. The stupid bull E36 M3 finally caught up with me and I flipped out on the employees when the set off the lunk alarm on me for making noise when racking 225lbs on the squat rack.

So I canceled my membership was recently on the hunt for a decent hole in the wall, meat head, muscle beach, whatever kind of gym. All I could find were these E36 M3ty designer gyms for people to have a social gathering in. Oh yea I forgot to mention, thats what everyone did at Planet Fitness, their great rate of 10/month really brought in a great crowd of slapdicks who just socialized with their friends/coworkers, ect just to say they were at the gym.

Finally found a meat head gym today and I am very happy. It's like a freakin warehouse filled with weights, weight machines, punching bags, and so on. People are in there to get in shape and stay in shape, not play pocket pool with their friends. Very excited, and end rant.

my biggest pet peeve in gyms is loser standing around talking to each other..

Shut the berkeley up and lift.. Don't counsel me on how I'm doing it wrong. Don't talk to me.. Don't spray so much disinfectant everywhere it gets in my eyes. Don't wear skimpy clothes.

I'm tired of it.. (so tired I don't go to the gym much anymore.. Ok thats acutally the MBA work load..) I left my last gym because it failed to have a power rack. who dosen't have one of those...

theres this old guy in good shape who always wheres this shirt at the gym... "In training.. Don't talk to me" every time he lifts.. I want to be like him.

and quit it with the hammer strength stuff.. It's OK.. but I don't need to chose between 3 High Row machines...

exactly, i dont need machines, just free weights. Ok well maybe cable machines to do cable crossovers, crossunders, and rows.

I'm fat and indifferent, but I understand your anger.

I belong to a climbing gym and love it. The weights are kind of secondary, although they have a pretty good weight area, and there's always plenty of free equipment. (I'd say it's larger than the are for treadmills and bike machines, too.)

Mostly, I like the culture since it's not about being hip and hooking up or anything like that. Climbers is a bit more social than weightlifting, since you do regularly converse with other people on how best to work some problems on a route.

Again though, it is the sort of place where people are there to get in shape and actually do something. It is also in an ugly old warehouse.

Wowak wrote: I'm fat and indifferent, but I understand your anger.

that's impossible you drive a miata, therefor you sound like a woman calling yourself fat!

It's just frustrating that the new trend for gyms is to be like this. It's all about treadmills, ellipticals, and "machines." Great if you want to say you went to the gym and burned 100 calories, not if you are trying to stay in peak performance shape and wanting to try out for the Orlando predators (arena football team).

Planet Fitness is the freakin' wal-mart of gyms too. They put as many people in there as cheap as possible.

Oh yea, there is a climbing place right next door to this hole in the wall. I get a free month trial there for signing up, so I'm going to check it out. I've always been interested and it's a great all body workout (well core), but still cool.

Salanis wrote: Again though, it is the sort of place where people are there to get in shape and actually *do* something. It is also in an ugly old warehouse.

Another good part about rock gyms?

The quality of the female attendees is self-regulating. Fat chicks can't climb! Giggity!

Note: I reserve a whole lot of loathing for people who use gyms as single's clubs. That being said, it is one of the best places ever for meeting the fairer sex, and is completely allowable if done with skill and consideration for a workout.

While we're on the subject of gym annoyances:

Get the berkeley out of my squat rack! On campus, we've got scores of "bros" doing what I've come to know as "frat curls" for 30+ minutes in the squat/power rack. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg! This is, of course, followed by another 30 minutes doing whatever fad ab workout is floating around. Their modus operandi is quite effective at picking up the bleach-blonde-I'm-reading-Cosmo-while-sitting-on-that-stupid-reclining-bike-thing segment of the campus population.

DirtyBird222 wrote:

Wowak wrote: I'm fat and indifferent, but I understand your anger.

that's impossible you drive a miata,

I had to take the doorhandles out and replace them with leather straps.

I miss the amount of climbing i used to do at OSU. 3-4 nights a week and i was in the best shape of my life. theres rockclimbing at my current school, but only 1 night a week and with too few courses. you only get about 2-3 climbs in in a week, not worth my time.

i need to find a good mountian bike trail soon.

lunk alarm is new to me.. was this something automated, or was it something the staff would do?

So basically, if you grunted while lifting, the alarm was raised?

Now I know why I never bothered even trying to belong to a gym

Your problem is that you are in too good a shape. My wife signed me up for valentine's day. (I love you, now waddle your fat ass down to the gym) I like it a lot. They are open 24 hours so when I get off the train I can stop in at 1 am and punish a treadmill or reclining bike with my ipod and Cosmo, and do their 30 min work out which I don't know what exactly it does but I feel and move a lot better since I started doing it. I haven't lost much weight yet but I had gone so long without regular exercise that the first few weeks it was an accomplishment to not hurt the next day, and now I have moved up to more strenuous work. I hadn't noticed the lack of muscle heads, I just assumed at that hour they were out in their wife beaters and parachute pants trying to pick up women

Gyms are not about getting fit. Gyms are about selling memberships. They don't care if you show up or not once you've paid.

It's easier to get a hundred suburban housewives who think they're fat (incidentally, they're right) to pony up a bunch of cash with five extra recumbant bikes and some TV's than it is with 35 pound plates in the freeweight section.

Wall-e wrote: Your problem is that you are in too good a shape.

According to my Wii Fit I'm overweight lol. My BMI is 26.xx, but I don't know if that thing takes in the fact that muscle does weigh more than fat. Although the six pack I once had has turned into a pony keg over the past year because of working full time and going to school.

I don't find myself overweight but it sure did motivate the hell out of me and I've been dieting and working out like crazy lately to get back to how I was two years ago + some.

It's also a thing that I don't want to have the problems I see my grandpa and some of my uncles having in my family. My dad is the oldest and having the least amount of problems but he works out 3 times a week.

I either go surfing or mountain biking almost every day. They are the good kinds of exercise because i will actualy do them as they are loads of fun. I should check out a rock climbing gym. Sounds exciting.

Woodyhfd wrote: Gyms are not about getting fit. Gyms are about selling memberships. They don't care if you show up or not once you've paid. It's easier to get a hundred suburban housewives who think they're fat (incidentally, they're right) to pony up a bunch of cash with five extra recumbant bikes and some TV's than it is with 35 pound plates in the freeweight section.

The first part isnt as true as you would think. An active member is really good at recruiting others to join. The fact that a good friend will come to your house and drag you out of bed to get you to workout is way better at convincing you monthly dues are worth it than a smooth talking salesperson.

The second part is absolutely true. You dont have to market to the meatheads-they will find you. The suburban housewife or the professional are the ones with money who are harder to recruit so you cater to their whims. They also tend to have steady incomes and dont mind paying for the luxury of a gym with carpet and televisions.

DirtyBird222 wrote: Oh yea, there is a climbing place right next door to this hole in the wall. I get a free month trial there for signing up, so I'm going to check it out. I've always been interested and it's a great all body workout (well core), but still cool.

Absolutely, best full-body workout I've ever done. There have been times I've gone climbing and had muscle groups sore that I'd never noticed before. But it is more core and grip strength than other groups (you're trying to keep your body position as static and controlled as possible, while holding on by your fingertips. You can vary your climbing style to favor different muscle groups too. If you're a meat-head, you might be good at "campusing". That's where you climb an over-hangy section without using your legs. You will build more tone than mass though. Although, I have Popeye forearms now.

I also thinking it's a great cross-over with auto-sports, because the mental game of planning out a route and how you're going to take each move is a mental exercise like walking an auto-x course. Not to mention that grip strength, core stability, and shoulder strength are vital for muscling a car around.

As for the quality of the fairer sex at climbing gyms... Trim, athletic, confident women in tight pants and yoga tops who move with grace, balance, and poise. You have to find muscular shoulders attractive though (or at least not be put off by them). You'd be surprised of how large of people can still climb; but fat-lazy people tend not to last with it. Most of the larger women tend to be butch lesbians, and climb more like men than women.

I love rock climbing though. It's a ton of fun, and it's a really rewarding sport. You can constantly reward yourself by being able to top out a route or get a series of moves that used to throw you off.

Started going to a "health club" back in the 80's. Went for a while and got in decent shape, but even then the "meat market" was very active and annoying, so I eventually started working out at home. Years passed. Reached a point where the bones and muscles were willing, but the joints and connective tissues had other ideas. In pain and gaining weight, I finally listened to my wife and started doing Pilates. No more back issues, lost 4" off my waist. The place I go is somewhat atypical as it has a substantial male membership. Works for this old Boomer.

I don't work out. I did until I was done with high school. Now I just caddy, and somehow maintained my weight or gained weight from the ages of 13-17 doing it. But now I've stopped growing, and I lost 14 pounds caddying.

I never joined a gym because they are... well... designer gyms. I think that I'll do it at school, and get the personal trainer guy for the first month or so. Because I haven't lifted since March. And I really don't think I can get back into it unless I have someone to make me.

I can't stand working out at a gym, even when I've been purposefully wanting to exercise at a gym, because even the best gyms always have some posers. When I have gone to gyms I'd go at off-peak times to reduce the number of people, better for peace of mind and for getting through your workout faster.

With that said, I've been in much better shape doing "stuff"...I prefer indoor soccer, but I've also done outdoor soccer, mountain biking, and rock climbing throughout the years. For me, being in shape means I can exert myself for long periods of time...that is my personal goal staying in shape. I do plenty of heavy lifting working on cars and houses, and while I do appreciate the strength that gives me, I appreciate stamina more. Mountain biking is great for shedding pounds and has the benefit of usually having good scenery. Rock climbing in a gym is fun and a great workout, but fairly expensive for a good gym (plus equipment), while climbing outside is awesome but not very convenient as there aren't many places to climb...indoor or outdoor, I've met great people doing it. I prefer soccer because I push myself harder in competition, outdoor is good but I tend to get hurt more in outdoor and it's not much fun in the winter. Indoor is my favorite because it is extremely fast paced, giving the same workout in less time, and you can play year round.

Woodyhfd wrote: Gyms are not about getting fit. Gyms are about selling memberships. They don't care if you show up or not once you've paid. It's easier to get a hundred suburban housewives who think they're fat (incidentally, they're right) to pony up a bunch of cash with five extra recumbant bikes and some TV's than it is with 35 pound plates in the freeweight section.

I agree with this...my girlfriend is a member at a designer gym that is a bit cheaper due to a deal with her employer, but is still something like $20-25/month. Since she became a member she has gone on average once a month. The place is open 24 hours so they cater to "busy people" but in reality the people who are too busy to work out between 6 am - 10 pm are going to be too busy to go in the first place. I've been trying to encourage her to go to a closer gym (5 minute walk instead of 15 minute drive) but she likes the tv+music+elliptical+machines stuff because it's less like working out and more like hanging out. Since she joined the gym a year or so ago she's gained weight. I know several other people who are guilty of the same thing. I went to her gym once and was completely out of my element, I didn't feel like you were supposed to really work out there, you were just supposed to use machines and move some weights around for a while...but make sure to be done before the juice bar closed.

My favorite part about designer gyms: basketball courts. Aren't there like a jillion public basketball courts??? Heck, some are even covered so they can be used year round. Anywhere I've been in the US, even the poorest of poor areas have a basketball court. I'm baffled as to why somebody would pay for the service they could have anywhere else for free.

Bryce

I know my gym membership usage has been pretty week the past 2 years. Chalk 1 up to going to night school and working as an engineer full time.

can't wait to go back 5 weeks left in classes..

Nashco wrote: I can't stand working out at a gym, even when I've been purposefully wanting to exercise at a gym, because even the best gyms always have some posers. When I have gone to gyms I'd go at off-peak times to reduce the number of people, better for peace of mind and for getting through your workout faster.

Yeah. That's why I avoid them and stick to track days and auto-x. Never get any posers at those. Oh... wait...

The average free bball court in gainesville (if you arent a student) is overrun by guys who really dont want middle aged slightly out of shape professionals in their way.

MrJoshua wrote: The average free bball court in gainesville (if you arent a student) is overrun by guys who really dont want middle aged slightly out of shape professionals in their way.

Yo yo yo, pass the rock!

MrJoshua wrote: The average free bball court in gainesville (if you arent a student) is overrun by guys who really dont want middle aged slightly out of shape professionals in their way.

That's if you could even find one where there wasn't a wait.... Even the b-ball court at the apartment complex I lived in, in G-ville was always packed. I doubt half the people there playing even lived there too...

I need a weight room for strength training, I have a bike, two feet, a jump rope, and punching bag for cardio/stamina. Yea I work on cars all day when i'm not at school, but uh...that's really no workout except for burning up some calories and shedding a lot of sweat.

I stopped lifting weights about 2 years ago even though I had free access at school and was playing rugby. I just couldn't get excited about lifting weights anymore. I found that I didn't really need to be "big" except for vanity, and I was never all that successful at getting huge anyway.

Instead I took up long distance running and swimming, and started doing triathlons. Result? I'm in better shape cardio-wise, just about as muscular as ever (maybe down 5 lbs), and leaner. Could be partly to do with the metabolism/testosterone of being a 23 year old dude, however.

The activities and fitness level I enjoy now are sustainable into old age, which I cannot say about lifting heavy weights and playing rugby.