My house is located in what I like to call “gym no-mans land”. There isn’t an affordable gym located near my house. I say affordable because there are a couple private gym/studios close, but I don’t have that kind of dough. The most affordable gym near my house is the corporate giant…24 Hour Fitness. I’m not a fan of the company in general, but its my best solution so I gotta make it work.

I used to really love going to the gym and getting a great workout in. While I go almost everyday, I find myself getting stressed out and anxious about my trip to the gym. There is just too many things wrong about this gym to really enjoy it:

• Too crowded. For a corporate gym, its relatively small to begin with. The real problem is that they just keep checking people in even though its crammed packed with people. At times, there are more people standing around waiting for a piece of equipment then there are people actually working out.
• Not enough of the right equipment. The gym has all the equipment people will ever need. However, I have noticed many pieces of the equipment hardly get used while other pieces have people standing in line to use. It’d be great if they just did a quick study of what is being used and what isn’t and adjust accordingly. For example, there are two squat racks that are always being used and there are several isolation machines that never get used. Why not remove a couple of those and get another squat rack. Same for row machines and elliptical machines. Get rid of a row machine of two and get a couple more ellipticals.
• Parking. The gym just isn’t setup to handle as many people that they cram in there. This causes a major parking issue.
• Locker rooms. I can’t speak for the woman’s locker room but the men’s locker room is (again) too small. There aren’t enough lockers for the amount of people. Plus the lockers are on top of each other. There are only two showers and one urinal. Again, not setup for the amount of people they squeeze in.
• Broken equipment. I get it; the equipment gets used a lot. Mechanical issues are bound to happen. My issue is the amount of time it takes to get the equipment fixed. This makes the everything worse as now there are the same amount of people trying to use less equipment.

The worst part about all of this is that I have no other solution! I’ve gotta live with it. Until a private studio/gym runs a deal or lowers their rates, I’ve gotta make the best of it. I know it doesn’t help much complaining, but I sure feel better blogging about it and getting it off my chest.