Second chance, Pope’s here

So after work last night I made a pit stop to my old gym stomping grounds, RetroFitness. (formerly Royal Fitness and then RetroFitness before that).  As soon as I stepped in the door I could tell they gave the place a thorough cleaning, it looked practically brand new.   I immediately spotted Luis, the guy that was managing the place before I left.  Like I mentioned earlier, he was pretty much the only person on the staff that seemed to have a clue about how to treat customers.  He was very happy to see me and greeted me by name.

I had at least a 15 minute good conversation with him by the front desk as he filled me in on why things went downhill before and how much better things should be moving forward now that there is new ownership in place.   In addition to cleaning the place thoroughly they did renovations/tune ups on all of the equipment.  They also are going to restore the cardio theater room which was turned into a junk room and have bought the adjacent vacant space which will be used for fitness classes and some medical/health services.

I left there totally on board with signing back up.  My 40+ glory days of fitness all went down inside the walls of Retro.  I like their equipment more as they have dumbbells that go all the way up to 120lbs, a squat rack, and spare olympic bars that can be used for stuff like deadlifting.

All of these are items missing at Planet Fitness. Also, the locker rooms/showers are mediocre and the gym can get annoying full at times, even in the middle of the day when I go. I also question Planet Fitness’s decision to fill their staff mostly with individuals that are very overweight and not representative at all of a healthy lifestyle.

To be fair, Planet Fitness has not been awful.  The Lunk Alarm has not sounded off once in the 8 or 9 months I have been a member.  They keep the place relatively clean and I like that they have the Concept 2 rowers, something Retro does not have.  I wound up getting better workouts in there than I did at the Wellness Center at least.

I need to inquire at the PF membership desk about how financially painful it will be to cancel my membership early.  I signed up for the 10 bucks a month plan which includes a 1 year contract which I still have a few months left on.  If the penalty is very stiff it may actually be cheaper to just keep plopping down 10 a month until the contract is fulfilled.  Either way I plan on rebooting my membership at Retro asap.  I am excited about getting back to my fitness roots after drifting around for 18 months inside of the Wellness Center and The Judgement Free Zone.

Speaking of fitness, I awoke today with extensive lower body soreness from Tuesdays lower body resistance training backed up with yesterdays cardio brick which included 20 very difficult minutes on the rower.  Cindy is feeling much the same after her first full session at Orange Theory yesterday.  The workout she described to me sounded very intense.

Hey, the Pope is here.  Evidently there is a rock star aura surrounding his visit with 24/7 media coverage and throngs of catholics surrounding his every step and and hanging on his every word.  Don’t get me wrong, as far as popes go, I think the current pope is the best I have seen in my lifetime.  He seems to be willing at times to inject a little common sense into his positions on various issues that contradict the normal religious narrative which is a good thing.  I am also glad he just looks like a good person, not look like Satan spawn, as the last pope did.

I can’t say I have watched 10 seconds of pope coverage.  It just doesn’t move my interest meter a single tick.