On Saturday 3rd September, I visited the Portobello Green Fitness Centre in West London.
Now it is advertised as a community fitness centre, so i didn't hold much hope for this little gym.
It was very much a gym for those 'get fit' types as opposed to the 'train hard' type.
They have a decent amount of space, I started with 15 minutes on the treadmill, nothing fancy, no TV or anything but, who needs TV when their training? Then i checked out the warm up area for some leg stretching, as it was a Squat Day. The area had adequate space to stretch with other people doing light aerobic exercise on the mats as well.
Right, so all's good so far!
What happens next? I track down the free weights room at the other end of the gym to find this is what i have to use for a squat rack!
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Thanks to http://www.buildingbestbody.net/squat-racks for the picture
I've been taught to squat low and it is clear that the person who was in charge of buying the gym equipment has now idea what a full squat is. Those bars protruding at the front only enable half squats, so what I had to do was this:
Un-rack the weight, waddle 3 steps back carrying 200lbs then do my squats, then waddle forward and re-rack it.
I was surprised to see that they had 2 flat benches though, they were however just low quality benches.
The actual weights were a variety of different solid metal discs from different manufacturers.On the whole the free weights room was rather mediocre.
I was surprised to see a decline sit up "chair" which is used instead of the standard decline bench.
Now I don't use resistance machines, but they had the usual ones: a cable machine, lat pull down, various leg machines, etc... all with adequate space so as not to feel cramped.
I would say on the whole, the gym wasn't a total failure. But it just doesn't meet the needs of those who know what they want from training. Those living locally could do worse, but why pay to use cardio machines when there's plenty of open space to explore.
Chris
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