Out with the old in with the new

So as I outlined in Dufisthenics, my gym yesterday once again sounded more like a techno dance club than a fitness center.  The thumping, never ending dance mix shit was once again pouring from the over head speakers.  I had complained about this in the past, as recently as last week.  Well I was done complaining, I decided to take some action.

I have had various nagging issues with Royal Fitness (formerly Retro Fitness) over the years. I was a client from basically day one when they opened.  I remember early on being very annoyed that they refused to turn on closed captioning on the tv’s mounted along various walls, despite the volume on them being turned off.  The explanation of “it is against company policy” made no sense to me.

For at least the first two years the gym had no real hot water.  Evidently whatever hot water tank that was in the space when it was a Walgreens was never upgraded when it became a gym.  As a result if you were foolish enough to take a shower there the best you could hope for was slightly less cold water.

The gym had a pretty solid staff the first year or so but since then there has been an unending carousel of people behind the counter.  I have described in the past the odd pattern where gym members suddenly transformed into gym employees, only to fade away as quickly as they came.  The vast majority of these people possessed no common sense on how to treat gym patrons, typically keeping their heads buried in their smartphones when people came and went instead of at least greeting them.

The gym also always had a cleanliness problem.  Cobwebs are in nearly every corner, and dust bunnies roam the floor.  Anytime I get up from doing a set of push ups my hands come up black.  It’s pretty gross.

It was easy to tell that financially the gym was not doing well.  Auxiliary side ventures came into the gym to try to generate additional revenue.  The most noticeable of which was a supplement peddler that had all of his stuff locked inside a 6 foot tall square cage obnoxiously stuck in the front of the gym.  The guy and his cage lasted all of a few weeks of not having any customers before it was torn down.

There have been a number of management changes at the gym although the ownership has never changed hands.  Once they dropped the RetroFitness franchise name there was a ridiculous period of time where it seemed every other week there was somebody new in charge of the place.  During this transition the majority of the pre-existing staff quit which to me was the beginning of the end.  I have documented my thoughts on the new training staff there,  including their lack of attention to clients unless they are attractive women, as well as body odor issues that seem counter productive to their role in the gym.

Basically, since the gym name change I have found very few reasons to keep giving Royal Fitness my money, short of the few gym buddies I have there.

One of those buddies, Jim, recently jumped ship for the NCH wellness center, a gym run by the dominant hospital in Collier County.  It’s normal monthly rate was expensive, normally $50 a month, but you get a lot of things for your money including tons of fitness classes, modern equipment in a huge space, sauna, steam room, a lap pool, and more.  And yes, the place is immaculately clean.

County employees get a huge deal at NCH, paying only $25 a month, only a couple bucks more than what I am paying at Royal Fitness, making the switch an almost no brainer.  Really the only potential snag is the additional 1.25 miles NCH is located from the office although in my trip timing yesterday it actually took me less time to get there.

Yesterday after work I made it official, joining the new place after quickly walking the facility which was huge, modern, clean, and appeared to have everything I would need and then some.   After signing up I decided I may as well stop at Royal Fitness to make my termination official as well.  I was not surprised that the process was annoying and unprofessional.

I walked in and the only woman behind the desk told me she was busy and it would take a few minutes until she could help me. She was trying to figure out how to do something with the cash register she was not familiar with.  Ok fine, I patiently hung out, looking around the gym that I would more than likely never step foot in again.  Sure the sentimental part of me was there, I expended a lot of effort inside those walls over the 5-6 years I had been a member.

Whatever issue the woman was having evidently was more challenging than she expected.  She came over to me and quickly asked what I wanted.  I told her I was cancelling my membership and wanted to know what I needed to do to make that happen.  She tells me I have to write a letter that states this with my name and date it.  Um ok, that’s odd, I am standing right here, why do I need to write a letter, I thought to myself.  She pulls out a blank, unlined, blue piece of paper and a pen, puts it in front of me and goes back to her issue.

I scribble on the paper that I am terminating my membership to Royal Fitness as of 7/28/14 and then both print and sign my name.  I hand the note to the woman and confirm that is all they need?  She said she will “take me out of the system then” but I may want to “check back in a week or so” to make sure I was removed.  No, “why are you leaving?”, “we are sorry to hear you are leaving” or cancellation paperwork/reference number was offered, not that I was surprised.  To me it was an appropriately unprofessional parting of the ways with Retro/Royal Fitness.  I totally expect to have to take further action to make sure my membership is indeed terminated. I’m looking forward to my workouts morphing along with my new environment.

Last night at home I started my 1000 pull up series, an idea that came up while Randall, Lily, Cindy and I were talking this weekend.  The concept is simple, 1000 pull ups with every rep on video.  Originally I had thought I would record all 1000 reps and dump them into one MASSIVE video.  However the AdSense mogul inside me realized this was stupid.  To maximize ad revenue it makes much more sense to do a large number of shorter videos that are more likely to grab views.

I plan to try to keep things interesting by making every single set unique in some way.  I can see  a number of reps going down during our upcoming road trip. Take a look at my first 60 reps below.