Gym

[jack]

I went for a trial session at Nuffield (formally Greens) gym. It's £60/month, but is reasonably convenient for work, seems quite nice, has a swimming pool, seems to have a reasonable mix of members, not all muscle-obsessives or avoiding-improvement-obsessives.

It felt really good to jog somewhere comfortable and exert myself without worrying about needing to get home and shower immediately afterwards.

I probably need to go twice a week to make it worthwhile, but that's probably what I need to do to make any sort of exercise worthwhile.

Shall I go ahead and sign up?

Edit - Hint: I assume the answer is yes, but after all of the political and philosophical questions, I wanted to lob my audience an easy question :)

Comments

[redbird]

Can you sign up for a week's or month's trial, or a month-by-month membership without cancelation fees, to get a better feeling for how often you'd go, and try it, if not at different times, at least different days of the week? (The gym I use is noticeably less crowded Friday evening than any other time; this is reflected in the class schedules, but I can easily see someone trying it on a Friday evening that they happened to have free, signing up, and then being disappointed at the number of people competing for the equipment some other evening, or even Friday at lunchtime.

[jack]

Yeah. The usual membership is three-months initially and rolling month-by-month after that. That's not perfect, but probably good enough.

[kaberett]

University gym would be much cheaper, but isn't necessarily better, from all sorts of points of view.

[liv]

I definitely think you should sign up! The fact that it's expensive may help in some ways because you'll feel more motivated to work out at least twice a week in order to get your money's worth. If it's pleasant and geographically convenient and has a good mix of people, and you don't have a clear cheaper second choice, signing up looks definitely better than doing nothing.

[jack]

*hugs* Thank you.

[ceb]

Go for whichever gym is least effort for you to get to. There are gyms in Cambridge for cheaper but really, you're most likely to go to the one that's easiest to reach.

[jack]

Yeah, it's good to see that said explicitly. I'm not sure if it's the closest, but it's fairly good. Ideally there'd be a gym in chesterton, half way between home and work, but I don't think there is. (The confusingly-named chesterton sports centre is in Arbury just to be difficult :))

[mathcathy]

If you think you'll go, then sign up. It's a lot of money for nothing.

It's less than what I pay for gym membership, though, and I love having the flexibility that the gym offers to choose different activities and really push myself into greater fitness.

[naath]

Yes (and pretend I referred you.. :-p *cheeky*).

It's decent (although the showers are going to be shit for 5 weeks while we get new shiny showers).

I don't think there are too many muscle d00ds, or at least they never bug me.

[jack]

You did refer me! But when I asked, they said they didn't have a referral programme any more and when they did, it was only if I signed up for a year and then never came back[1]. Are they advertising one internally? If so, they're probably lying because I didn't mention you earlier, but if not, I guess it's just been discontinued.

[1] OK, they didn't say "never came back", but it's what they were implying :)

[naath]

Oh, well, that's dim of them! Maybe the new company is NEW and EXCITING or something; not quite used to them yet. It's a decent gym anyhow.

[jack]

To be fair, it's possible that no-one ever really goes out of their way to get a referral bonus, just accepts one when someone they know happens to be looking for a new gym. Although I wouldn't discount the alternatives.

[naath]

They used to (the old company) have loads of signs up saying "recommend a friend and we'll give you..."; it was pretty annoying really, considering I'd recommend them to a gym-wanting person in the right part of Cambridge anyway and I'm certainly not interested in recommending them to other people!