Pretty new to the site and triathlons in general. I only raced one olympic distance triathlon last year and got hooked. I’m looking at getting a gym membership so I can get a start improving my swim time (currently horrible). I was looking to see if anyone has had any positive or negative experiences with LA Fitness. I used to be a member at Lifetime Fitness but I can’t afford paying $60/70 month (I travel for my job so not sure how often I will be home). LA Fitness has rates around $25-35/month in my area and they have a pool, new machines, and everything else I am looking for. Just wondering if anyone has strong feelings on why I woudln’t want to join.
Last thing, I live in MN if that changes anything.
Pretty new to the site and triathlons in general. I only raced one olympic distance triathlon last year and got hooked. I’m looking at getting a gym membership so I can get a start improving my swim time (currently horrible). I was looking to see if anyone has had any positive or negative experiences with LA Fitness. I used to be a member at Lifetime Fitness but I can’t afford paying $60/70 month (I travel for my job so not sure how often I will be home). LA Fitness has rates around $25-35/month in my area and they have a pool, new machines, and everything else I am looking for. Just wondering if anyone has strong feelings on why I woudln’t want to join.
Last thing, I live in MN if that changes anything.
Thanks!
-Jeremiah
I work out at LA Fitness in the Phx area. It’s not too bad, the pool is generally pretty warm, and there are some really weird people that inhabit it. (Search for strange denizens of the pool thread). A lot of time you get the people that think they can just sweat off the lbs making laps between the hot tub and the pool to rinse off their sweat.
Most of the time it’s just a general type semi-public pool, and I usually have a lane to myself, or I might have to share a lane with 1 person. Most of the time that ends within 15 mins, one of the advantages of doing longer workouts in the pool than most people.
I workout in Atlanta w/ LA Fitness. Probably the most popular gym in the area. Something like 15 or so in the area and it is $35 & can use any one I want. Typical gym. I like it. Its cheap and it works fine. Wish they had a masters program, but they don’t.
You can’t go wrong. It’s a good self service gym. I used to go to one in Irvine, CA. Only problem was at peak time it was PACKED. It was huge, but still couldn’t accommodate the volume.
I like L.A. fitness, I live in N.Atlanta and have many to choose from.I use the Spin classes,Pool (clean & not too busy)Pilates once a week.Good value for 35 a month they also give you the option to freeze your membership, I used this feature because I was going to be away for about a month.
You being in the great white north should take advantage of the Spin Classes so you will be ready to hit the road in the spring
It’s nice because where we are there are a lot of them, means I can hit different ones based on
where I’m going/working.
Of course I wish there was one closer to my house.
They all have pools, but the pools aren’t all the same. The real problem is how to get
“coaching”. I’m going to have to do something in addition to my gym membership to
really get better at swimming. Avoid the “aqua-fit” times.
I have heard good things about the new LA Fitness clubs in MN. Several people I work with have joined and they have no complaints. I have a membership at Lifetime mainly because of the convenience (I work downtown Mpls and can go before work to the one that is located downtown) but other then the convenience factor would not recommend LTF. It is nice to see some competition come into the area.
I definitely plan on taking advantage of the spin classes. I have heard good things about the various classes they offer and I figure they would be a good motivator at any rate.
I’m going tomorrow with their free pass offer so I’ll have to make sure to ask about freezing my membership if I am gone for months at a time like I have been this past year. Thanks for pointing that out!
Isn’t the dowtown Lifetime insanely more expensive than all the other levels? I currently live in Dinkytown but am moving out to the Hopkins area. I have always like Lifetime but the high costs and the various levels of clubs they have deters me. The LA Fitness I plan on joining is only a mile away from my new place and with new equipment I can’t go wrong. You are right though, I guess convenience plays a large role is where you go.
For LA Fitness, you need to find the time when the pool does not have too many people. In my area, the pool is always packed with people doing the breaststroke. You may be the only one doing freestyle.
I was lucky, most people would see me doing the long workouts and let me have the whole lane.
There are two clubs downtown Mpls, one is the LTF Athletic Club on 2nd Ave, the other one is in the bottom of the Target Center (the one I go to). The Target Center one is the cheaper, I think it is the cheapest level of membership (not sure what they call the various levels anymore). LTF doesn’t own the Target Center, they lease the space therefore there were no updates or remodeling done to it like the other clubs when they were bought out from Northwest. The pool is OK and they have good spinning classes on Tuesday and Thursday morning at 6am. However they don’t do a very good job of cleaning the locker rooms. I go to the LTF club in St. Louis Park on the weekends and that one has been nicely remodeled but it is more expensive. If you can get better rates at LA Fitness plus get new equipment and a good pool that sounds like a great deal.
I joined LA Fitness a little more than a month ago so that I had access to a pool beyond daylight hours this is not freezing. I too wanted to work on my swimming over the winter.
Anyway, I have been happy. The only issue I have is that you need to be aware of the pool exersize classes. At my location, the poll is officially closed for lap swimming for that hour and it happens to be from 6pm to 7pm. This is fine for me since I swim in the morning but you should check the times out.
We belong to LA Fitness after many years of belonging to NW/Life Time. I think they are pretty nice in terms of having a good amount of treadmills and ellipticals and weight machines. Because all the clubs in MN are new, obviously all the equipment is pretty new which is nice! My wife has been checking out several of the different clubs and their spin classes and they are definitely hit and miss in terms of the quality of the instructor and the workout. I don’t think she’s tried the Hopkins club for the classes, so can’t help you there.
The pools are ok, as they are for lap swimming only and everytime we’ve gone to one, it’s been no problem getting a lane. The water is a bit warm for lap swimming though, so depending on the workout you want to do, it might not be the greatest. Honestly, if you are going to be living in that area and want to improve your swimming, I’d join Hopkins Masters which swims weekday mornings at the pool right across Hwy 7 from the LA Fitness. There are a good range of swimming abilities there and workouts from 5:30 - 6:30 and 6:30 -7:30 every morning…
It is nice to be able to put your membership on hold. I think it’s $25 dollars to hold it for 3 months. Of course, you can re-activate sooner thatn 3 months, but the fee is not pro-rated. We did it this past summer. The advantage is your rate stays locked in and there’s no re-activation or re-initiation fee.
I 'm a member of an LA Fitness on Long Island, NY and I can’t stress how much I HATE this gym. My previous gym was geared more towards muscle-heads and privately owned and was run perfectly. My fiance is intimidated going to that gym(80% men) so I am now at LA Fitness.
This is why I hate my gym:
No one puts weights away. You have to be a detective to try and find a matching dumbbell some nights. They don’t have enough barbells for all of the Benches and squat machines. There are times when a bench is available, but no barbell to use on it.
The pool is way to warm. More geared towards the fat, old lady aerobics classes.
I used to swim at an aquatic center where you were required to wear a swim cap. In LA Fitness you are not and I constantly have women’s hair stuck in my watch when I get out.
They don’t seem to care how many members they have. There has to be some type of equation to find out how many members to have and what % will not step foot in the gym. When they find that # they should stop or slow down signing new members. It is extremely overcrowded.
My brother wanted to cancel his membership. They print out a letter for you and you have to MAIL it to California to cancel your membership. They make it so easy to sign-up, but when you want to cancel not so much. I know mailing a letter is no big deal, but in the day of computers there is no reason you can’t cancel at each location.
If it weren’t for my fiance and the fact that I need a gym where I can cancel anytime, albeit a Pain in the @ss, and pay month-to-month I would have canceled a long time ago.
I agree with mambwe’s statement. I used to belong to the LA Fitness in Long Island (Lake Success), and I had a pretty horrible experience. Not only do they charge you a lot of fees for different things (first and last month upon joining, freezing your account fees) it is not worth the service they actually provide. The pool has a lot of activities going on and even if there are only five f’in aqua joggers in the entire pool, they refuse to leave one lane open for lap swimming. In addition, there are definitely way too many members for the facility they have, which results in overcrowding. I am only speaking from my experience in the LI facility, but the organization seems like a bunch of con artists.
