Personal Milestones
I made a decision this week – to go back to the gym. Let me be perfectly clear – I really, really dislike exercising. But. I have hit a point where I’m concerned for my health, so back in the gym it is.
So I had to figure out which gym and what I was going to do. Ugh. What do I want out of this? What gym would help me do that?
I made a list (that surprises you, right?). Needs: (a) child care on site. Have to have some place to stash Munchkin when I’m sweating. (b) pool. Not for me. *shudder* That’s for Munchkin, too. And maybe DH/GN if he ever decides to join. He likes swimming. (c) bikes. You’d be surprised how many gyms have very few bikes. I like bikes. My KNEES like bikes. My Knees do NOT like stairclimbers or treadmills or elliptical trainers. My knees also do not like most lower-body resistance machines. This makes my life difficult. I am a challenge. In any case, many bikes were a must. (d) location. The gym must be easy to get to. No, I mean REALLY easy.(e) affordable. I can’t go throwing money at this. I have to work it into my very tight budget.
Then there were the Wants: (a) long hours. I get insomnia. Sometimes I get a wild hair and actually WANT to go to the gym. For those occasions, a gym with long hours would be great. (b) some pampering stuff – a sauna, maybe onsite massage. That sort of thing. (c) classes. eventually, when I’ve improved my endurance, I will want some classes. Clearly, this isn’t NECESSARY at this point, but it’s nice. (d) variety. I like to switch things up – so a variety of resistance equipment is nice. I compensate for my lack of variety in cardio with variety in resistance. (e) nice people. I could, theoretically, manage in a gym that was full of people with whom I don’t want to speak. Doesn’t sound much fun, though.
So those were the lists. I checked a few gyms, called around. A lot were out of the running on the child care and pool needs. That actually took it down to three possibilities – the Y, American Family Fitness, and Gold’s Gym (yes, the two locations nearest me have pools AND child care). AFF lost out on bikes. The locations I visited had maybe a half dozen bikes outside the spinning class, and the spinning room is closed except for classes. Gold’s has probably twice as many bikes outside the class, and the classroom is open for individual use if no class is scheduled. The Y had 10 bikes or so, so they were borderline. The Y lost out on hours. Both AFF and Golds are open 24 hrs during the week and long hours on weekends. So, Golds hit all the need buttons and several of the “want” buttons.
We’ll have to see how it goes. Lots of thinking time on a bike doing cardio.
