What Are The 3 Things You Wish Your Gym Had?

I’m coming to the realization that most of you are probably “settling” when it comes to your gym.  If you belong to a commercial gym (like 24 Hour Fitness), then you have most equipment you need, but not everything.

Every hear of Bally’s?  I had heard of it, but never worked out there until last week.

Most commercial gyms pretty much suck.  Despite the high # of equipment, it’s often the wrong mix.  Of course, they are better than hotel gyms.

But the environment of the commercial gym also stinks.  The people surrounding you are doing the wrong thing, with the wrong attitude. And I’m a firm believer that to raise your level of performance in any activity (from parenting to training to career), you need to surround yourself with positive influences.

What to hear me rant?  Read on.  But most of you probably have better things to do than listen to me complain, so I’ll understand if you want to skip this one…

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Read on to hear my rant and chime in with your own!

How To Get In Honestly For Free

First off, I’m always surprised that all these commercial gyms have people working there giving away business.  I mean, I’ve been traveling a lot this year, and I’m always 100% honest with people at the front desk:  I’m traveling here on business and will only be in town a few days. I have no intent to join long term.  Then I ask for a week-long pass.  They always say they don’t have one, that it is just $x per day.  I then don’t say anything.  Seriously, I just stand there.  They ALWAYS break the silence by saying, “I’ll tell you what, pay for today and I’ll put you in for the week at no charge”.  I’m serious, it always happens.

I’m not complaining here – I figure it’s good to start off saying something positive before I bring out the hammer…

[As a businessman, I don't know why they don't offer a special price for a week-long pass.  Then they'd get more $ and the customer wouldn't pay full price. Win-win.]

Now let me do a quick summary of a Bally’s in Chicago…

Bally’s Stinks

I have no way of knowing if all Bally’s are this way, but the heading of this section is literal:  the bathrooms were not properly ventilated and so the entire place spelled like a toilet.

I’m NOT one of these guys who thinks a gym as to smell like a florist’s.  I love a little grit and the smell of hard work.  But toilets?  It was very distracting.

The place was also messy. They don’t label any of the racks – the dumbbells and plates were completely randomly stacked, or not even stacked at all.  I was there at 5 am every morning, right when they opened up, and plates were laying around everywhere.  Without labels, the average lifter has less motivation to re-rack weights.  But the employees also failed to clean up the night before.  Bad management.

Most commercial gyms have a single squat rack, and this place was no different.  But no deadlift place at all.  Everything was so cramped that I literally had to move machines out of the way in order to make room to deadlift.

The People Environment

And once I did start deadlifts, people looked at me like I was doing some African rain dance as part of a circus – it’s like they had never seen it before.  I got some strange looks.  Of course, maybe those looks were looks of disgust because I was covered in sweat and dripping everywhere (hey, squats followed by deadlifts are KILLER).  I’m not sure they had ever seen someone sweat who wasn’t on a treadmill.

Oh – and that brings me to the treadmill.  Out of the 150 or so people I saw there over 3 days, here were the top activities:

1. walking on the treadmill (the weather was actually beautiful outside, by the way)
2. bench press (and variations)
3. very slow jogging on the treadmill
4. curls
5. doing machine circuits

Don’t these guys know how to do other weight lifting exercises?

But you know, this is nothing new and has nothing to do with Bally’s.  It’s the stupidity of the masses.  Sure, I applaud people getting on the treadmill compared to doing nothing (or if you have some mobility issues that make other exercise difficult).

But in the weight room the value of the bench press is, well, overvalued. I mean, maybe 10% to 15% of your upper body workouts should involve the bench press.  Many of the guys there only did bench press variations.  That’s it!  And they rested for 5 minutes between sets of 10 reps, did like way too many sets, had huge pot bellies, only used a partial range of motion, etc.  It was really frustrating.

And don’t get me started on fat guys doing curls. If you can’t do 15 chinups, don’t even look at a curl bar or any other kind of biceps curl exercise.  Lose your fat, ramp up your chinups, and then only do curls at the end of your workout (if ever).

Remember that single squat rack I mentioned?  I was the only person to use it while I was there over 3 days.  Except for one guy who decided to use the squat rack for…  wait for it… bench presses!  I did see one guy doing squats – on a Smith machine though!  (Bally’s had 3 Smith machine racks…).

Another rant:  the personal trainers working with clients there.  Man, these guys sucked.  I know they sucked by one simple observation:  they didn’t look their clients in the eye. In other words, they were going through the motions with newbies and they didn’t really give a hoot about their clients.  If you ever hire a personal trainer who doesn’t care as much about your progress as you do (and who won’t look you in the eye), fire them and move on.

One shining light: I did see a guy with a workout journal!  Yay!  He wasn’t in great shape (yet) but my heart was filled with joy that here was someone setting goals and tracking his progress.  I’m sure in 3 to 6 months he’ll be seeing some great results!

I Leave You With 3 Questions?

So I’ve mentioned in this post, and in my post on 24 Hour Fitness, some pieces of equipment that I wish commercial gyms had.  My biggest three:
a) more than one squat rack
b) at least one deadlift station
c) a hex bar or two (a/k/a a trap bar)

What do you wish YOUR gym had (or had more of)?

What can’t you live without?

Do you belong to a gym that has everything you need?

Chime in with your wish lists and feedback!

[Next week I'm going to summarize my tips for getting the most out of workouts in unfamiliar gyms because hitting a new gym can be very inefficient...]

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Related posts:

1. Don’t Break The Unspoken Rules
2. My 24Hr-Fitness Experience – Part 1 of 2
3. Top 8.5 Tips For More Efficient Workouts In Unfamiliar Gyms

Tags: commercial gyms, equipment