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.

I found this list of power-lifting friendly gyms in Texas.
http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/texas

There is this place called Metroflex in Plano which I think is more a body-building gym but will still probably work for you.
http://metroflexplano.com/

My only personal experience is with the 24 hour fitness on 75 and Royal. The place seemed alright and reasonably maintained. I wasn't doing SS at the time so I can't speak on that but they seemed to have everything. They also had a pool and basketball court, but I never used the pool. I got this great deal online where I payed $24/month with no contract and only first and last month upfront which was nice.

lolololol @ salt water pool and no non-assisted dip stations. WTF?

you went to my gym!

I was there at Noon, you see a young bearded fellow hobbling on a bad ankle?

Edit: looool not my 24hr in North Dallas, b/c ****, mine doesn't even have a pool. I think I'm going to cancel my membership as the place sucks and *gasp* is only open from 5am-10pm, which is the most blatant form of false-advertising I've ever seen.

If you find a good gym let me know, thinking about checking out the Gold's near mine.

Spenda, where in Dallas are you? I'm pretty near Coit/G. Bush. I'll be checking out Lifetime Fitness, Sky Athletics, maybe Cooper, and definitely Metroflex.

Thanks dtemp for linking that, I had no idea they'd just opened a location up here. Looks nice and ghetto, should be great. I seriously doubt they have any kind of guest pass program, though. I might have to man up and shell out for a membership after all this is done.

There's another 24hr up the road from me (Coit/Campbell), I may give that a try tomorrow.

can you review wichita falls athletic club?

Probably not. Isn't that where Rippetoe trains? I may make a special trip down to the main Metroflex, though I'd probably just get laughed at.

Another review to come tomorrow.

do it lol

You know, it looks to be about a 2-hour drive. Might be fun to get a hotel and do a 2-day training extravaganza.

Ha, I like the gym-hopping. When I was moving around nyc, I collected passes to around 7 or 8 gymes and squeezed all the juice I could. Fun times.

Invariably, the sales dude/lady giving me the "tour" would get the vibe off me, and figure out I'm just there to lift and don't care about the facility. A couple gave me extra passes.

Very hardcore.



I second/third the Wichita Falls TR.

Well, ****. I up and joined Metroflex. $30/month cash, it'll be $25/month when I switch it to EFT.

Gym looks great, owner/operator is really cool, and he said I could train private clients there for only $10 each. Sick sick sick.

I'll post my Gold's, LAF, and Metroflex reviews soon, and let this thread die.

that's my gym!

Aww, I was looking forward to more reviews. Not for usage (I live in England), but it was pretty amusing.

and obv get a photo with rippletoes holding a sign saying hi to H&F!

extra credit if you intentionally misspell his name on the sign:

"Hi H&F! I'm mark rippletoes! Happy squatting!"

or

"Remember H&F, Ripplestoes says: No curling in the squat rack!"

This is gold. "Ripplestiltzken says H&F pwns OOT & BBV imo"

Put in a solid 2 hour workout at Metroflex, and it was ****ing awesome. They have an impressive array of gear (no kettlebells though), and there was angry, loud music that made me feel comfortable grunting. 2 different-sized tractor tires out back, plus a standard SUV tire + sledgehammer that I donated.

My main worry is that the place was empty. I was the only one on the floor for 95% of the time. I saw the day's sign-in sheet (no fancy member cards, just sign your name when you come in), and there were maybe 20-30 names. I'm worried the place might go under. It's tucked way back in a low-rent part of town, but still.

Appreciated. I will still post lengthy reviews of Gold's and LA Fitness, as well as ongoing (pictorial hopefully) reviews of Metroflex. I will also likely scam a week here and there for access to a pool and racquetball.

If you do go there try to workout wherever the hell glenn pendlay coaches.

sounds like the perfect gym to me...

Ha, nice. I've been there a couple of times. Ridiculous space, and just one rack right?

I live a block away. My buddy wants to get a lift in there.

not sure how many racks because i haven't used weights yet (tonight or tomorrow i'll start SS). i go during lunch so the place is pretty empty, which i like. also mostly office workers and gay guys, so don't have to deal with the meatheads, douchebags, teenagers that come out at night. i usually go to the one in hell's kitchen.

Always empty squat racks are so nice because
1. you can can hog one all you want and
2. you don't have to deal with the absolutely ******ed bench spotting skills of most people.

Gold's Gym: Reasonably good

Spent roughly a week lifting and swimming here. Many of the sales and training staff were former coworkers (some from LA Fitness, one from ****ing Guitar Center), so I was given virtually zero hassle to buy a membership. I probably could have worked out free for months. I think monthly dues are in the ~$30 area.

Atmosphere feels like your average yuppie gym (West Plano, affluent area), but there's a few real lifters, plus plenty of misguided wannabes, drawn by the reputation Gold's has, I suppose. I did see a smallish guy squat 405 deep for 5 reps, but this gym is by no means geared towards lifters.

A weird phenomenon was the drastically different racial mix at this gym. Across the street at the god-awful 24hr, there were roughly 50% asians. Here, there were <5%. I can't imagine why for the life of me. Maybe the 24hr locker room conditions remind them of home in the labor camps (racist ban imo).

WORKOUT FLOOR

Two shotgun racks, no power rack, only two smiths. I will say that the shotgun racks had adjustable safety bars up to ~3ft, making it almost just as useful as a power rack. None of the db-area benches are secured to the floor. DB's go up to 120. Large signs posted with rules including no chalk, dropping of weights, or loud noises while lifting. I said **** that - it's clean and jerk time, bitches. 1 out of 3 ain't bad, right?

This place has - I **** you not - a cardio theater. WTF's that, you ask? Well, quite simply it is a little movie theater with treadmills and **** in it. You go in and run (slowly walk) while watching 50 First Dates or Maverick (lol).

The gym has a lot of random **** as far as ab/stretching/etc goes. They actually have foam rollers for public use, which was really nice. They also have all the crazy useless balance board stuff. I found myself doing quite a bit of abwork when I was done lifting.

POOL AND LOCKER ROOM

Sink area is 3-sided with mirrors, which is great for narcissism. Nice electronic scale. Weird layout where you have to walk in open line of sight of workout floor to get from pool/sauna to shower, but whatev. Lockers are nice enough.

Pool/showers are plain tile, but textured to be non-slip and angled + well-drained. Sauna (co-ed) has plastic draining tiles, and was always plenty hot. Sauna ceiling is only 8 ft high, so no jumping jacks or bench step-ups can be done. Pool is 25m, only 3 lanes, but generally empty. They have a water extractor.

SUMMARY

This gym was built from scratch in 2008, and it shows. Biggest complaints are early closing time (10pm weekdays), small freeweight area, and high traffic during peak hours.

Biggest pros are cleanliness/newness of gym, access to huge shop + made-to-order shakes, and lots of hot girls. If I was rich I'd consider a 2nd membership to this gym for the pool/sauna, ab stuff, and girls.

I looked at a gym here with a cardio theatre. I laughed in her face. She also offered for me to look in the men's locker room. WTF? Like I want to increase the probability I see another dude's dong....

I joined a golds a couple months ago and have had pretty much the same experience, except power racks instead of shotgun. We also have a cardio theater. We don't have any "no chalk" signs so I've been sneaking some in. Also have no asians. Or hot chicks.

Yeah, the crowd at that Gold's is comparatively pretty young, so I never once saw a dong. They actually have a changing booth with a curtain in the locker room.

In-depth LA Fitness review forthcoming.

LOLOL WTF

You aren't actually serious? I can almost understand the first two, but no loud noises when lifting? What are you supposed to do, wear a gag? I can't believe places like this actually exist.