The Cheapest Gyms Ever?

photo from gbmnews.com

Gyms. We’ve lost site of their true purpose.  Locker rooms with Bay Rum, moisturizer, and whatever fancy stuff women use.  Since when does working out demand immediate pampering?  I learned some perspective after a year working out in Nicaragua.  There were 3 types of gyms where I lived.

Gym 1: A fancy gym run by a young American that offered yoga, fruit smoothies, basic muy thai, massages, and a serene workout environment.  It was prohibitively expensive for locals.  Only foreigners and the offspring of corrupt Nicaraguan politicans who stalked them could be found there.

Gym 2: In the stuffy garage of a German man’s colonial house.  Standard free weights, some machines, and a few stationary bikes.  $2 a week included water, towels, a work-out shirt if desired, and a on-site trainers.

Gym 3: A dirt floor gym in a dark windowless room the size of a bus. Run by a local former weight lifter whose steroid sales have led to at least one death.   Hand made wooden weight benches, sometimes covered with a sheet, which was stapled to keep it in place.  Dumb bells were warped.  There were no weight plates for the Lat Pull-Down machine; you had to attach a pulley to old engine blocks, brake components, gear boxes, and clutches.  None of the pulleys moved smoothly.  At 4 am Luis would be up, blasting Daddy Yankee. 

     The clientele were gang members, day laborers and guys who ride on a bed of cane in the back of trucks from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean coast for the price of a hard cover book at Barnes and Noble.  There were skinny tweakers, with large basketball jerseys half-hiding handmade tattos and knife scars.  There were huge roid users in long jean shorts and Timberlands with the tags still on.  Almost everyone wore a bandana low on the brow and made steady, unflinching eye contact when you walked by or started a set.   At noon, the music was still blasting, but Luis would be in his bed, behind a sheet, with the TV blaring, fast asleep.  This was $1.50 a week.  No water, no towel, no floor.

Because of the pricing and the absolute sense of menace, I stayed with #2.  It was worth the extra 50 cents.  Back in the US though, $75 A YEAR vs $75 A MONTH is as easy a decision as “would you like a blowjob with that or not?:  Yes.  Yes, I would.

 
The broke-ass gym seekers oral is actually a program run by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (the oral sex is a metaphor, duh).  It is a network of recreation centers across all 5 bouroughs that are incredibly cheap: $75 for the year, $37.50 for 6 months.  Six months is the minimum, but before you cry, remember that is still $20 less than a single month at the Y and $40 less than a month at NYSC, Planet Fitness, Crunch, or any other mid-range gym.  And there is no 1-time joining fee, which can sometimes be $150 (to get around this fee join during holidays because it is a typical promotion.  or, with the economy now, just refuse to pay it and they will probably waive it).  Each recreation center has different facilities, but you can find basketball courts, pools, ping pong, billards, exercise studios.  You can also get your grit on with locals from nearby housing developments and 80 year old men who tuck in their shirts and scream while they do sit-ups faster than you.

I know these recreation centers aren’t for everyone, but I didn’t know about them until recently, and I wish I had. Remember the intitial question.  What do you really need out of your gym? Please don’t say hot people to hit on. They might not have been the friendliest, but the guys pumping scrap metal on a stick, sweating to death in the dirt floored tinder box, were perfectly ripped.