Choosing a Gym

For me, it was price, equipment, and attitude.

Equipment: barbells, benches for bench press, squat rack, power cage were the essentials. A few other stations - though most gyms have these - were less important, but nice to have.

Attitude: You don't have a problem with deadlifting? Good. What? No deadlifts? I'll pass.

Price: $10/month, with a $39 yearly fee. Not gonna beat that, short of having my own gym.

You can always go check it out before making a commitment.

I look to see what equipment there is and the availability. I had joined a gym where the equipment was very limited, especially during their busy times. You can always go check it out during the time that you plan on going to see how busy they are.

If you are interested in taking a class, see what is available and if there are any extra costs to take it.

I also look at the general atmosphere, friendliness of staff, cleanliness, hours of operation, and location.

I joined based on price and equipment and attitude of people IN the gym. We have a good number of gyms here. One in particular my Love had a membership to and it was $49 a month and the size of my office, overstuffed with half broken equipment. It was popular because it was 24 hours. Another one closed at 10pm but had a lot of very ripped men AND women. No problem there. Until I listened to some of them discussing different performance suppliments, talking crap about other patrons weight, and just all together making my time there terrible and uncomfortable. Soooo I joined planet fitness. It's $21.77 a month ($9.99 or $19.99, we opted for $19.99) and 24 hours. Everyones extremely nice and has walls upon walls of free weights and cardio machines. They unplugged the lunk alarm at ours so we don't have to worry about it going off. It's very laid back and we love it.

Go and have a look around when its about the time you will use it. You can get a good feel for the place and whether you cna imagine going there.

Equipment, interests of staff, hours open, contract terms (look to see if it ties you in for a period or just a month), price.

One thing I did make a choice on was closeness of gym as I made a decision to switch from a nice gym to one much closer in the Autumn. It was completely the correct decisions as many times i made it to the gym becayse it was close by where i would have stayed away from the other becayse it was raining or too cold to travel the extra miles.

My priorities were:

1. They had to have an Olympic platform and bumper plates as well as power racks and the like and allow that kind of lifting. A lot of gyms, particularly big commercial gyms don't allow Olympic lifting anymore because for some reason gyms are supposed to be quiet like libraries or something and snatches and cleans are some how intimidating to other people or some such *kitten*. My current gym is primarily a weight lifting gym...it has a very small cardio room which is mostly used for warm-ups and cool down...most people who belong to my gym are there to lift.

2. Location...I commute 80 miles round trip for work everyday and didn't want to have to commute to the gym as well. It had to be ideally no more than about 5-10 minutes by car to my house or near my office. I initially belonged to a really great community center gym that had a ton of amenities, including stuff for my kiddos...but we were commuting 20 minutes+ both ways...so 40 minutes or more round trip just to workout for an hour. My new gym doesn't have the amenities, but it's very close to home.

3. Cost...I don't like spending a fortune on gym access. My current gym is $33/month.

4. Access...I didn't need 24/7 access, but it's nice knowing I can go whenever I want to go.