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.