Stuck at Home

My poor car.  Don't worry Max
We'll make you better.

Hey guys,

Just wanted to chime in here and say my car was totaled and, while this doesn’t affect me for work, this is really hindering my ability to go to the gym.  So for now I’ve been working out at my apartment
fitness center, and hopefully will have something figured out by the end of this week.  …Not having a car sucks, btw, especially in Dallas.

LA Fitness - Victoria (London)

Still recovering from a procedure (though next week I should be back into the exercise/lifting game), but I thought to share my experience gym surfing abroad during this interim period.

A year ago my best friend was working in London, so I decided to go pay him a visit.  He couldn't take off from work, but I figured that was fine, I could go sightseeing on my own.  It also meant that I didn't have to take off from lifting (every day counts!!!).  So of course I look up the gyms near his apartment and found LA Fitness Victoria.  I was staying there for five days (no hotels to pay!!!) and needed to workout for three days, so their three day trial period was perfect for me.

Layout/facilities

When I took this picture I had
no idea that I would use it a year
later in a blog.

The building/space a little strange in that is mostly underground.  I guess this makes sense in a city as crowded as London where anything goes.  You take a spiral staircase downstairs, it feels a bit like going into the tube, except that it is light and airy.

Back in undergrad (2002, to be exact), I got the chance to study abroad at Oxford.  While there, I was fortunate enough to get a gym membership (they didn't have a college gym for us).  It was a very interesting experience because that gym had almost no mirrors, and was almost entirely treadmills/stairclimbers.  There were almost no weights.  I figured this was a reflection of the soccer-culture in UK/Europe.  As opposed to beefy American football players, here it's more "skinny" soccer players.  Also, there seemed to be less concern about physique (thus the lack of mirrors).

I also had a bit of a learning curve.  I was trying warm up with some bicep curls (remember I'm 22 at the time, don't judge) so I grabbed some 20's.  I did like 5 reps and then I couldn't do a sixth rep.  I was really confused.  I was usually using 35s for my last, really tough set. Why were 20 pounders giving me so much trouble??

It was then that I realized that the weights were in Kilograms, not bloody pounds.  I was curling 44 pounds, not 20.

Anyways, back to the London gym.  This gym definitely feels more like an American gym.  Lots of mirrors and weights.  Also, this time I knew that everything was in Kilos, and adjusted accordingly.  Older and wiser.

Classes

I got to see some boxing and aerobic classes in action, they seemed pretty... ordinary.  I guess fitness is the same around the world.

Locker room

I didn't really want to check out the showers here, they were a bit... unclean.  I think they were kind of relying on the location, not the cleanliness of the place, to get customers.

Surfability

This one is actually kind of hard to surf.  You can't just sign up online.  First, you fill out an online form, BUT you need to provide a London phone line for them to call you on.  In my situation I was able to use my friend's apartment's phone line.  But if you're just visiting I doubt your hotel room number will work.

Talked to the nice lady on the phone for a bit, scheduled my tour, and then walked over and took the tour.  She took me around and showed me everything, asked me what I was doing in London, stuff like that.  I distinctly remember the sales associate trying to figure out my skill level, to see if I needed an extensive tour explaining how everything works.  She asked me how much I can bench, and I had to think a bit to convert pounds to Kilos, and then responded with something like "I can do five reps of 100 kilos, does that work?"  She quickly nodded her head and said that was just fine and then left me alone to the weights.

Looking forward to getting back into the iron game and trying out new gyms.

Xsport Express (South Barrington, IL)

So while I’m waiting to be able to get back into the gym, I’ve realized that my gym surfing/critiquing goes father back then mid-2014 when I started this blog.  Two years ago when I was in Chicago for Christmas break, I thought to try to use just gym passes so I could lift while in the Barrington area.  What happened was me visiting the closest gym, an Xsport Express. And that gym wouldn’t let me get a trial pass since I had tried out their gym in Alexandria, VA a few years earlier (BTW the Xsport in Alexandria is supposed to be their nicest gym in the country)

So what happened was I tried to get out of the gym without buying anything but instead the sales guy convinced me to sign up.  He told me that after two weeks I could get a full refund if I attended X number of days and had a free session with one of their trainers. I was only going to be in town for about two weeks, so I decided to sign up.  This was not really my proudest moment, but I really did feel a whole lot of pressure to sign up, and I didn't go into the building prepared for it. So I caved.

I had an ok time there, but I really, really had issue with the trainer who I met up with for the required free session.  It is actually because of this meeting that I do not take up gym’s offers of a free training session with a trial membership.  I don’t want to just completely break down a person’s ability to do their job, even though the fitness industry, as a whole, is a sham and simply won’t get you to be stronger, faster, quicker, leaner, etc., etc.

The experience with the trainer left such a bad taste in my mouth that about a year later I posted a review on yelp.  I mean, not only was he wrong about many different things, he also never admitted to being wrong when I challenged him on his shit.  Here is that review:

This place has a great location, and quite a bit of equipment.  However, they have only one squat rack so things can get congested.

My issue is with the trainers, at least the one that I worked with.


I decided to take this gym up on its offer of a free training session, just to see what it is like, and walked away sorely disappointed.  The fellow I met with really had poor listening skills and appeared to be ignorant of pretty much anything that has to do with weightlifting.  For example, when he asked me what my goals were, I responded with "to get bigger and stronger" (imagine being like Brian Shaw). He then proceeded to tell me how we were going to get my fat% down. ...Nowhere did I mention wanting to get cut.  

He also lost any respect I had for him when I told him I was squatting three times a week (starting strength program).  He threw down his pen when I told him that and said "oh well that's too much, that's your problem right there."  Really??? He was going to sit there and tell me that programs such as the Texas method, starting strength, or any Olympic lifting program is inherently flawed because they all involve squatting multiple times a week?  What about the well-renown Bulgarian system that has people squatting heavy multiple times a day multiple times a week?!?! Clearly this "trainer" knew nothing about training, and sadly the rest of the session did not prove otherwise.


I will say that he had me wear a heart rate monitor to make sure I didn't pass out. I doubt many trainers out there take such an easy precaution that has a lot of potential benefit, and more should do this.


That said, he had me do lots of accessory exercises in three sets of ten reps.  First off, the fact that we did so no strength work whatsoever (heavy weight at 3-5 reps) and did only hypertrophy (lighter weight at 10-12 reps) seemed off the mark since my goal was to get stronger (although this should theoretically get me bigger, though only up to a point).  Secondly, the emphasis seemed to be on the accessory work, not on the main compound lifts.  Accessory work is fine, but if I want to bench 315 for reps (as I stated in my goals) I'm not going to get there doing three kinds of tricep presses.


It honestly felt like this guy's program was mainly to "feel the burn", not really to train to a particular goal.  I would suspect he is great with coming up with an exercise routine, but not a training routine.  If you don't know the difference between exercise and training, then you should be working as a "trainer".


I should also mention that it seems like these guys are part supplement salesmen.  He kept telling me 
I should get some protein powder and I kept telling him no thanks I prefer to just have a steak. Supplementation is fine, but I felt like it wasn't his place to try to push the stuff on me.

Unquote . I can really see the beginnings of this blog in this review, it's kind of cool.  Simply re-reading this story makes my blood pressure rise though, and it makes me glad that I haven't had to deal with a trainer in a professional situation since then.  I don't mind helping out trainers from time to time (Like explaining to one at Trophy how the over head press works)