Tuesday, September 11, 2007

My Rye YMCA

Almost every morning I workout at the YMCA in Rye. My wife works out there sometimes too. And my son also take some classes there like swimming, gymnastics, sports, etc. They even have babysitting for my daughter.

For the most part the people are very friendly and it's a great value. We pay about the same price that I would probably pay for gym membership just for me. But all I use is the fitness center and sometimes it seems like you get what you pay for.

The equipment is certainly good enough to get a good workout, even though they are missing some essentials and some of the machines they choose certainly are poorly designed. More importantly, despite requests, no one ever seems to maintain and clean the equipment. Also, there are definitely some simple and inexpensive improvements they could make, but despite many recommendations, they have not done so.

The worst part about the Y is some of the trainers. Many of the members probably never worked out in a real gym before and therefore have no gym etiquette, but you would imagine that the trainers would. So many times I've seen trainers behave so inconsiderately it blows my mind.

It's always a pet peeve of mine when people lift right in front of the dumbbell rack so that they block the dumbbells. This happens a lot at the Y, but I never get over how many times I see trainers have their clients do it, or even trainers doing it themselves. They'll even setup the steps right in front of dumbbells racks, blocking the entire rack.

It also surprises me how many times the trainers don't put their equipment away, like weights, steps, etc. I don't know how they expect members to learn gym etiquette if they don't set an example.

2 comments:

  1. One time I was doing dumbbell presses on the incline bench so I put the bar on the floor behind the bench, which I've seen trainers do many times. In between sets I was switching dumbbells.

    As I was walking back to the bench, with the dumbbells in my hand, one of the trainers at the Y walks by with a client and puts the bar back on the bench. I told him that I was using the bench. He said "okay" and keeps walking away without removing the bar again.

    I spoke to him about it afterwards and he apparently could not understand why I thought that I should not have to put down my dumbbells, remove the bar again, and pickup my dumbbells.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I once saw a trainer bring a bench in between the cables so his client could do pull-ups. As he did this a member told him that she was using the cables. Instead of waiting for the member to finish her set, the trainer said they just wanted to do one set.

    Then, when his client was done, he left the bench in between the cables without moving it out of the members way.

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