I moved to Phoenix from Peoria where I had the luxury of my posh Mountainside Fitness. I am by no means a gym snob. I will take grungy sweat laden power lifting gym any time. But I digress.
I was very disappointed to find that the center of the city has no gyms. Well, not a cornucopia of options as one might think. Thus I wandered in to 24 Hour Fitness for my free 7 week pass.
Upon entering i thought maybe I walked through some sort of space-time continuum that brought me back to high school. The decor was straight out of a 90's pop culture movie.
I decided not to judge by the cover, so I approached the desk for my pass. The desk clerk played '50 ways not to give this woman a free pass' with me. That was fun. Maybe he thought I would actually use the equipment.
After pulling teeth to get the location of weights and restroom... Yes I had to ask all of these things... I went upstairs to find myself in nothing short of the twilight zone. The equipment was so old I needed a manual to figure out how to move the pins on the squat rack.
And the freaking floors were linoleum. I'm a figure athlete and amateur powerlifter, so this wasn't going to fly. I can't slide all over the floor when doing plyo pushups or dead lifts.
The front desk guy would wander around staring at people, then walk over to the dumbbell rack and do a set of curls. What's up with that?
Anyway, overall this place was the dirty armpit of the city. For serious lifters, you are better off pushing stones uphill like Sisyphus.