My Not Very Scientific Approach to Picking a Gym

After deciding to bid Curves adieu, I started researching other workout possibilities.

My criteria for a place to work out are that the gym must not be a meat market, it must not have super hot ladies in spandex and super buff men with no necks (as was my experience a few years ago at Gold's gym, ahem),

it must not have long waits for machines and it must offer a variety of classes, nice machines and a nice facility, be in the north Seattle area and have a parking lot if there is not ample street parking (because I want to stop in on the way home and I work up north), oh, and most importantly, it must not be super freaking expensive.

A couple places that I called were MKG Martial Arts International (but their body sculpt challenge was about 500 bones for 10 weeks and that is out of my price range), Seattle Athletic Club Northgate (about 100 bucks a month, so still out of my price range), and the Shoreline YMCA and Bally's Total Fitness.

I also did a bit of searching on Yelp and found great reviews for the Ballard Health Club, but it's a bit further south from my house and would be an added bit of driving on top of my already looooong commute. So, I nixed it. I also nixed any gyms that got consistently bad reviews on Yelp.

So, what I was left with was the YMCA in Shoreline and Bally's Total Fitness in north Seattle. I checked out the Shoreline Y on Sunday. It was small, but offered classes and the fees were only $50 to join and then $30-something a month. Totally do-able. But the catch? They're moving up to Echo Lake next summer, which is practically in Edmonds.

Yesterday, I tried out Bally's Total Fitness on Aurora. (It's just a little north of Lowe's.) It has a big parking lot, the facility is clean and nice, there are lots of machines, a decent selection of classes AND they were just playing hip hop and not Jesus tunes. The manager that showed me around was pleasant without being pushy. He did get into a bit too much information about his personal life (he said he was homeless and living in his car with eight cats before he started working at Bally's, but working there totally changed his life. Aaron thought that might be part of his new member schtick. I think peeople just tend to tell me stuff like that - I must have a sympathetic face or something.)

Anyway, I'm sick of researching gyms and trying gyms and Bally's seems to meet my criteria, so it's the winner. I'm going to sign up after work tomorrow - $80 to join and then $20-something a month (for one of the budget plans)... so save an elliptical trainer for me!