When I joined this gym it was pretty decent for the price I was getting. Some safety concerns regarding wonky flooring (I didn’t notice until I joined, but some of the floors are softer than others, or have ridges/lips immediately behind where you deadlift, for instance) and the lack of safety bars on power racks, but a fair enough stopgap while my other local gym was undergoing renovation. They did make me sign a 12 month contract which is non-ideal; they also did not make any attempt to tell me about the 12 months, and when I asked about that specifically, told me “Oh don’t worry about that kind of thing” and when asked if I could cancel online anytime they said "yeah yeah". The gym does not handle its own contracts, but rather you will be signing a contract with Ashbourne Management – give them a google if you want to see their reviews, they are famous for losing a court case where they tried to get people on 3 year contracts without being able to cancel, so that gives you an idea of who you're dealing with.
Regarding the gym itself – when I first joined it was serviceable. Pretty grotty showers/toilets but mostly due to the aging facilities rather than lack of cleanliness. However shortly after, the changing rooms closed as did one of the toilets, leaving only one. The remaining toilet doesn’t lock too good – I had people occasionally just pushing on the door to unlock it, while I was mid-use. They closed that toilet as well soon after, though they did both reopen after a few months. Once when I went into the gym, there was an unexplained trash smell coming from beneath the floorboards like rotting bins. No idea what that was.
Related to this, the staff are mostly hands-off when it comes to music. You like quieter gyms, or at least, not blaring London hip-hop played at 1000 decibels? Too bad, turn it down and they’ll just turn it back up again. I’m talking so loud that playing my own music through earphones at max volume still did absolutely nothing to drown it out. This sounds like an exaggeration, but I’ve seriously been to nightclubs which damaged my ears less. For my first few sessions, this wasn’t a problem, so I can only assume the staff got lax. If you DO like to listen to exclusively UK hip-hop (SHUT UP DAD I CAN PLAY MY MUSIC LOUD IF I WANT) at 1000 decibels, you and your mates from school are going to love this place.
Can we talk about lax staff? Mostly, the staff members were content to leave plates, clips and dumbbells all over the floor (obviously this should be down to clients, but not to the point of "well I didn't put it there, so I refuse to put it away"). Occasionally they will clean, but don’t seem to have much awareness of their surroundings – ie, they’ll walk right next to you while you’re mid-deadlift. Not the first gym I’ve seen this kind of thing, but for a place that prides itself on being a “proppa gym”, the staff should probably know better.
As others have mentioned the equipment is pretty dated. Mostly usable, but a few pieces are really bad – namely the one rowing machine and the lack of safety bars on the power racks and Schrodinger’s safety clips (simultaneously hard to compress and put on, but slide off incredibly easily). I have never needed to drop a weight before, but lifting-related injuries are serious business and you want good safe equipment, not shoddy or non-existent safeties that will snap and kill someone. You think you don’t need safeties? Google Igor Golushkin, or just bench press deaths. Weight lifting inherently carries a risk of injury, but personally I’d rather keep that risk to a minimum and have the only pain I feel be the good kind after a good session.
Despite knowing I had 6 months left on my contract, and this being the closest real gym to my home, I opted to go somewhere a bit further away and more expensive, but better. If I had to choose between here and somewhere 10 miles away that had a single power rack, I’d … well I’d probably just get a home gym, but you know.
Own or work here?
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