SMU's Fitness Center

So I decided to buckle and paid for a guest pass at a gym. I was only going to have a car to drive for one day and all the other gyms that I have lined up are going to be one or two week passes. I didn't want to possibly waste passes so I had to go for an option where I could just pay $10 and go out one day.

Exercising that option led me to good ol' SMU, my old stomping grounds. Back when I was a student at SMU, the fitness center was atrocious. It was so small there the daily campus wrote about how the square footage of gym per student ratio was so much lower than other like-sized Universities.

For a while I used to lift weights in the cinco center (which was much nicer than the previous facility). It was called the Cinco center because it was only supposed to be up for five years and then torn down. Originally it was just a stopgap for the football team, it was a place for them to work out while the real strength and conditioning facilities were being built. But after the football team was done with it SMU then decided to save some money and let the students use it and make that the fitness center.

So with all this disappointing history with SMU, I was really excited to see this new (to me) facility. I had heard it had a wall climbing section as well as so many more basketball courts then before, plus a track and an indoor soccer court. They even have, as SMU should, an outdoor reflecting pool for people to sunbathe and hang out. You know, strut their shit.

The gym is actually pretty nice. Two years ago I used to work out at Duke's fitness center and Dukes gym is actually newer and better than SMU's so I was a little disappointed. On a side note I really don't like Duke fans, really annoying with their basketball superiority complex.

But back to SMU's facilities. I think they have seven basketball courts and one indoor soccer court all on the first floor. Above that is indoor track that runs around the whole space. You have to go downstairs to find weightlifting floor.  I was expecting a light and fresh place, similar to Equinox.  Instead, the walls are a light beige, making it seem kind of muddy, and the light is a little yellowish too.

I was also a little surprised that they didn't have more squat racks (four). Although the number that they have for here is more than adequate I guess. They also have two Olympic lifting platforms which, interestingly enough, were being used all the time when I was there.  It's nice to see people doing Olympic lifts, I used to think no one ever knew about them.

Very serviceable, but nothing fancy

Lockers

Non-descript. The type where you bring your own lock, though most of the lockers are not day lockers but people's personal lockers.  The showers seemed decent. Also, it seems one of the sinks was having issues, have no idea how long that had been going on but they way it was talked about seemed like it had been that way for a while.

Surfability

They simply do not offer free trial passes here. I knew I wanted to eventually visit this place, so paying was inevitable, but it was so nice to keep the streak going.  Given that this is a school's gym and not a gym that's a private business, they just let you pay the fee and you can walk right on in. There's no tour or anything.

For the record, an alumni guest pass is $10.  Still kind of upset that I ended up paying for a workout.  Oh well, guess it took a car wreck to make me break the streak.  Here's to another one!



Days in: $142
Total money spent: $10