Bodily renovations: the next step
So... It's now been somewhere around five years since I started trying to eat better, be more physically active, etc. There have been various incremental changes along the way, such as getting a bike last summer, but one thing I've been sort of meaning to do for pretty much that entire time (and some while before, really), and yet not gotten around to doing, was joining a gym/fitness club of some sort.
Guess what I finally did? Yes, at long last!
As I type this, I am feeling the sort of ache in my shoulders that says "you just exercised muscles that haven't seen in any action in a very long time." Not sure why it's just my shoulders killing me -- I went through the whole round of weight machines, but maybe that's the part that was most out of shape. Walking and biking have probably kept my legs somewhat stronger, and carrying a small child around at intervals two days a week has probably helped my back a bit, but no real arm/shoulder exercise to speak of until now.
So, I am very happy about this. And the one I joined -- GoodLife at St. Clair and Yonge, which at least four other people I know are or have been members of -- seems pretty cool. Everyone I've encountered there thus far, staff and members alike, seems really friendly, down to earth and helpful. Plus, another GoodLife branch got a stellar review in Xtra a little while ago, so that caught my interest as well.
Ironically, though this is the club I'd been wanting to join for some time, it is not the one I thought I was going to join when I set out on Saturday.
A Tale of Two Fitness Clubs
#1 - A Narrow Escape
I had for some while been getting flyers in the mail from another club that shall remain nameless, which always had these too-good-to-be-true sounding special offers, so I was kind of skeptical of them. But their most recent one had caught my attention anyway, promising an $8/month "pay as you go" no-contract, no-commitment membership. I knew there had to be a catch or several, and inspecting the fine print on the flyer revealed that the $8 rate was only for the first two months. But I was intrigued enough to at least call and ask what the regular rate was. Annoyingly yet unsurprisingly, they would not tell me over the phone, and insisted it was "complicated", and insisted I should come down and talk to the membership manager and have a tour. I grudgingly agreed, telling myself that if it turned out to be too expensive or in any other way off-putting, I could still do the two months at $8 and then cancel, or if I didn't trust them to honour that offer, I didn't have to join at all.
I'll spare you all the details, except to say that while it did indeed look a nice club (almost too nice, which got me worried about the price before I even saw it), it turned out to be exorbitantly expensive. And their membership structure was not "complicated" except insofar as they seemed to be complicating it on purpose in order to try and confuse people and/or pressure them into signing up for long-term contracts despite all the no-contract hype in the flyer. Anyway, I left without committing to anything whatsoever and told them I'd "think about it", which was half true in that I was pretty certain I'd be thinking a lot of things about them, none of them complimentary.
#2 - Where I Should Have Gone to Start With
So on the way back to the streetcar, I thought maybe I'd stop in and find out what GoodLife's rates were, although I was fairly sure I couldn't afford them (that being the main reason I hadn't gotten around to signing up yet). And while they did initially want to take me on a tour and talk about my fitness goals and all that stuff before going through the membership options, when I said I wanted to find out the rates first, they were totally fine with that. They showed me the various membership rates and answered all my questions, and didn't attempt any obnoxious hard-sell stuff or offer any too-good-to-be-true deals that you had to sign up for that very minute or any of that. And they actually had one type of membership that looked affordable even on my budget -- only alternate days and only at the one branch, but really, it's not like I'd be going every day anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff.
So that was Saturday, and today I went in for an orientation on the weight machines, and stayed to try them all out (hence the soreness, which as I discovered just now when getting up for a glass of water is not just in my shoulders after all). As I mentioned, everyone there seems really friendly and nice. And I find it very happy making that several of the staff seem to have odd colours of hair, tattoos, etc. Makes me feel like I'm among My People, to some degree anyway.
Thursday I go in for a Personalized Health Profile or something to that effect -- the acronym is PHP, anyway, which I found absurdly entertaining, since given that it is the name of the major programming language I work in, it makes me think along the lines of:
if (!$muscle_tone) {
$workout_routine[] = $weight_machines;
}Basically it's a health assessment with recommendations of what sort of exercise is best for you. But I am sure that all the way through, my brain will be trying to turn it into code... Anyway, all in all, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing.
Free Trial, with Bonus Ulterior Motive (on my part)
Oh, also -- one of the various new-member perks is that you can name up to five friends who they'll give a week-long trial membership to. I would need to do that soonish, though, so if you're interested, please comment here and let me know. I think it's just at the one branch, though, so you'd probably need to be somewhere convenient to Yonge & St. Clair for it to be useful. Given it's right by a subway entrance, though (literally -- you don't even need to go outside from the subway to get there, just across a hallway), it's probably a pretty convenient location for anyone who takes the TTC.
And in the interests of full conflict-of-interest declaration, I should probably mention that I will get a free gym bag if I can find three people who would like said free trial (regardless of whether or not they actually end up joining). So I am not making this offer purely out of altruism. I do actually kind of need a gym bag, or would like one, anyway. :-)
So... If anyone wants a free one-week trial membership, let me know.
Guess what I finally did? Yes, at long last!
As I type this, I am feeling the sort of ache in my shoulders that says "you just exercised muscles that haven't seen in any action in a very long time." Not sure why it's just my shoulders killing me -- I went through the whole round of weight machines, but maybe that's the part that was most out of shape. Walking and biking have probably kept my legs somewhat stronger, and carrying a small child around at intervals two days a week has probably helped my back a bit, but no real arm/shoulder exercise to speak of until now.
So, I am very happy about this. And the one I joined -- GoodLife at St. Clair and Yonge, which at least four other people I know are or have been members of -- seems pretty cool. Everyone I've encountered there thus far, staff and members alike, seems really friendly, down to earth and helpful. Plus, another GoodLife branch got a stellar review in Xtra a little while ago, so that caught my interest as well.
Ironically, though this is the club I'd been wanting to join for some time, it is not the one I thought I was going to join when I set out on Saturday.
A Tale of Two Fitness Clubs
#1 - A Narrow Escape
I had for some while been getting flyers in the mail from another club that shall remain nameless, which always had these too-good-to-be-true sounding special offers, so I was kind of skeptical of them. But their most recent one had caught my attention anyway, promising an $8/month "pay as you go" no-contract, no-commitment membership. I knew there had to be a catch or several, and inspecting the fine print on the flyer revealed that the $8 rate was only for the first two months. But I was intrigued enough to at least call and ask what the regular rate was. Annoyingly yet unsurprisingly, they would not tell me over the phone, and insisted it was "complicated", and insisted I should come down and talk to the membership manager and have a tour. I grudgingly agreed, telling myself that if it turned out to be too expensive or in any other way off-putting, I could still do the two months at $8 and then cancel, or if I didn't trust them to honour that offer, I didn't have to join at all.
I'll spare you all the details, except to say that while it did indeed look a nice club (almost too nice, which got me worried about the price before I even saw it), it turned out to be exorbitantly expensive. And their membership structure was not "complicated" except insofar as they seemed to be complicating it on purpose in order to try and confuse people and/or pressure them into signing up for long-term contracts despite all the no-contract hype in the flyer. Anyway, I left without committing to anything whatsoever and told them I'd "think about it", which was half true in that I was pretty certain I'd be thinking a lot of things about them, none of them complimentary.
#2 - Where I Should Have Gone to Start With
So on the way back to the streetcar, I thought maybe I'd stop in and find out what GoodLife's rates were, although I was fairly sure I couldn't afford them (that being the main reason I hadn't gotten around to signing up yet). And while they did initially want to take me on a tour and talk about my fitness goals and all that stuff before going through the membership options, when I said I wanted to find out the rates first, they were totally fine with that. They showed me the various membership rates and answered all my questions, and didn't attempt any obnoxious hard-sell stuff or offer any too-good-to-be-true deals that you had to sign up for that very minute or any of that. And they actually had one type of membership that looked affordable even on my budget -- only alternate days and only at the one branch, but really, it's not like I'd be going every day anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff.
So that was Saturday, and today I went in for an orientation on the weight machines, and stayed to try them all out (hence the soreness, which as I discovered just now when getting up for a glass of water is not just in my shoulders after all). As I mentioned, everyone there seems really friendly and nice. And I find it very happy making that several of the staff seem to have odd colours of hair, tattoos, etc. Makes me feel like I'm among My People, to some degree anyway.
Thursday I go in for a Personalized Health Profile or something to that effect -- the acronym is PHP, anyway, which I found absurdly entertaining, since given that it is the name of the major programming language I work in, it makes me think along the lines of:
if (!$muscle_tone) {
$workout_routine[] = $weight_machines;
}Basically it's a health assessment with recommendations of what sort of exercise is best for you. But I am sure that all the way through, my brain will be trying to turn it into code... Anyway, all in all, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing.
Free Trial, with Bonus Ulterior Motive (on my part)
Oh, also -- one of the various new-member perks is that you can name up to five friends who they'll give a week-long trial membership to. I would need to do that soonish, though, so if you're interested, please comment here and let me know. I think it's just at the one branch, though, so you'd probably need to be somewhere convenient to Yonge & St. Clair for it to be useful. Given it's right by a subway entrance, though (literally -- you don't even need to go outside from the subway to get there, just across a hallway), it's probably a pretty convenient location for anyone who takes the TTC.
And in the interests of full conflict-of-interest declaration, I should probably mention that I will get a free gym bag if I can find three people who would like said free trial (regardless of whether or not they actually end up joining). So I am not making this offer purely out of altruism. I do actually kind of need a gym bag, or would like one, anyway. :-)
So... If anyone wants a free one-week trial membership, let me know.