Gym Review

In my few days away I did manage to get a work out in, and yes at Les Mills. (ooh their little tracking robots will be going overtime now!). I went to the Victoria St property and to be honest I was extremely disappointed. My only prior experience of the Les Mills product is the "Extreme" property here in Wellington which I guess is the Jimmy Choo of the brand.

The little girlie at the desk was lovely, and gave me a lock to use on my locker and a brief talk about the gym. She said there was a women's gym but I explained I usually trained with the boys and only wanted a run and a circuit, so she pointed me in the right direction.

I got changed and had a wee wander round finally finding the treadmills and the "circuit". I decided to run first. My lunch companion had told me she was doing another 1/2 marathon soon, the first in a few years. I realised that the one and only tri I've done was in another decade so decided that I would do the 10k race next month and start training NOW, so jumped on a treadmill and started running. All went well until I hit the 20 minute mark and the machine slowed down and I spent the next 5 minutes fighting the speed control until at the 25 minute mark it stopped completely. Doh! It then dawned on me that they were programmed for 20 minute workouts only. Battled the controls again and got it going and finally managed to complete 8ks.

As an aside, during cool down we were given a little show by a very buff young woman. The treadmills overlook a large completely empty circuit area and at one end is a stretch space. This girl got a floor mat and a medicine ball and placed it in the centre of this vast empty area and proceeded to do an ab workout, she obviously wanted us to look so by God I looked. I almost blew a psychic fuse by intensely willing her to do some press ups.

I then headed to the circuit and this is where the disappointment started. Call me old fashioned but to me a circuit is 1 weight, 1 cardio, or even 2 weight, 1 cardio, with a timer and a buzzer going off at timed intervals. This didn't have that, it was just a string of weight machines around the room and the only cardio was one mini tramp and a step up box, no buzzer. Change of plan then, back to the boy space.

Had a wander and tried a few things, but it wasn't good. Wanted to do lats but the machines didn't have adjustable seats or pads, so once I'd finally done the mental arithmetic needed to convert kg's to pounds and get the weights right, it was just too uncomfortable use. I then just grabbed a bench, of which pleasingly there were quite a few, and did some shoulders and arms. Saw a cable machine so went to use it but it was so tight against a wall so you could only use one side, and then one of the cables was jammed up in the wheelie thing and wouldn't move properly. By this stage I'd had enough and decided to leave without even hunting down my beloved calf lift machine.

I'm now wondering did I miss something. I had seen a sign pointing to studios1 and 2 but assumed they were for pump classes etc so didn't look at them, maybe all the good stuff was hiding there.

I have been given a 1 month free membership by a friend to use, so my research into the Les Mills brand is to be continued.

Addendum: While I was checking this post I got a phone call from Les Mills the Terrace to make a time to come and see them to activate my trial month......I'm sure there's something deeply meaningful and cosmic in that!