Recently canceled my LA Fitness membership, and am now going to go to every gym in my area that will give me a free pass. I'll try to start each review with a ultra-short cliff's notes, and keep things somewhat funny within. I live in North Dallas, and will remain within 15 minutes driving distance from my home in Plano.
I'll post in-depth reviews of LA Fitness (including details of the year+ I worked there), as well as the week I've already spent at Gold's asap, but I wanted to go ahead and share tonight's experience:
24hr Fitness: Completely terrible
24hr bought this old gym (The 'Q') a few years back, and it turns out they didn't change or update a single thing on the inside. The machines, benches, racks, and everything else (except treadmills obv) are clearly 20+ years old. Picture 80's style green+purple, yellow+blue, everything-is-neon kind of ****.
The crazy thing is, my dad had a membership to this place back when it was the Q. I actually remember being brought to this gym when I was maybe 12, and I swear to god they haven't replaced a single thing in those 11 years.
Brief walkthrough with membership salesmonkey. I already have a bad feeling about this place. He launches into a couple different hard-sell lines, and I immediately head each one off. I've uttered each of these bull**** lines before, and he gives me the free week I ask for.
WORKOUT FLOOR
The floor is extremely crowded - with machines, not people. Imagine db benching 90's with 2 feet of clearance to the next bench, where some 14-year old is attempting OH presses with 2.5's. Every area is like this. Equipment is crammed in without regard for the range of motion required to use them.
Benches are not regulation height, they are clearly a few inches too tall. Couple this with the fact that they are also covered in that super-slick vinyl, and you have an extremely unsafe bench for unilateral pressing movements.
One power rack, one shotgun rack. Zero non-assisted dip bars (obv today was chest day). Dumbells only go up to 120, and are all completely out of order.
One working water fountain on the whole floor.
POOL AND LOCKER ROOM
Sauna and steam room are co-ed. It's always worse than you think.
The sauna floor had none of those plastic tile things that keep you from walking in puddles. Just smooth, small tiles with very black grout. Yum.
1st time I'd ever been in a steam room, and it smelled strongly of mildew. I could feel the steam-borne molds permeating my lungs. Same smooth tile allowing pooling/rapid evolution of sentient fungi. ****ing disgusting.
The pool was ****ING SALT WATER. WAT. Seriously? I only swam 5 laps because the salt taste was ****ing with me so bad. Obviously slick tile all around the pool, so you have to do that slow, wide gait to keep from slipping.
Lockers are covered in rust. Maybe because of the salt water pool? Maybe because they've been there since 1978?
Showers are similarly tiled and rust-covered, with a lovely crystalline calcium buildup visible on the showerhead.
No swimsuit water extractor. Great, now my gym bag is full of mildew.
SUMMARY
Man, what a ****ing beatdown. I didn't even finish my workout because I was so frustrated. I feel like I should try a different 24hr, but this was the worst gym experience of my life.
I may go back just to take pictures to post here.