Originally Posted by
Elle
There isn't a single gym in a 30 minute commute that passes the chalk test. Heck, there isn't even one with multiple squat racks.
This is the story of the "last straw" at each of these locations. I'm so glad to finally have run out of gyms to try, and convinced my dear husband to replace our dining room with a home gym.
First gym: a rock climbing gym with a pretty sweet Rogue rig. The problem? The top of the rig doubled as monkey bars, and people were constantly complaining my bar got in the way of their legs. So in between sets I'd have to completely unload the bar so I could set it on the ground for them to do their monkey bar nonsense. Then reset.
Second gym: hadn't been updated since the 80s. Still had that sick patterned carpet and everything. It didn't even have a squat rack, it was more one of those angled thingies with pegs and a set safety stop.
These two girls from the local community college were on my exact gym schedule but would always beat me by 15 minutes and hog the squat rack. Not to squat... To film each other performing hip thrusts. Nevermind that there was a large open room nearby to do it in. Nevermind that the squat rack actually kind of got in their way. They had to do it in the squat rack. And between the multiple film takes and the hair touch ups, they took well over an hour. I complained to management, and the girls switched to doing good mornings. Still in the squat rack.
At great personal sacrifice I tried changing my gym time to the morning. Only to find myself smack in the middle of senior citizen social hour. I was the youngest person in there by 50 years. And turns out, when you're 80 you don't give a shit about openly oggling a girl. Also, you don't care about deoderant. It was just too uncomfortable.
Third gym: one of those tiny 24 hour things. They said a rig with 4 racks, I said sign me up. Turns out that 2 of the racks had equipment placed directly in front of them and were unusable, so that brings us down to 2. That was sufficient on Saturday when we toured. But turns out this place has a booming "group personal exercising" (I refuse to call it training) business. So during the week, the trainers reserve both racks for 5 hours at a time, with barbells loaded to about 65 pounds and clients doing quarter squats and other nonsense. Actually, they mostly used the bars as something to grab onto for inverted rows. And I was categorically admonished for asking them if I could steal one for 20 minutes. Also, one of the personal exercisers had the worst cackling hyena laughs of all time. It penetrated my over-ear noise cancelling headphones. And she laughed probably once every 3 minutes. It was enough to cause you to misgroove a set.
Fourth gym: a CrossFit gym that let you use the squat racks during open gym. I asked them where the safety bars were and they sneered at me. Turns out they're too cool for them. At that point I was so desperate I just decided to give CrossFit a try. 6 months later my thyroid quit on me.
Last gym: walked up to the window, looked inside, saw a guy curling in the only squat rack, turned around and went home.