LA Fitness

I have had a mostly good experience *except* the very corporate feel to the personal training packages.
I have been a member off LA fitness off and on (at another location and this one) for probably five years. When this location opened in December 2015, I signed a six month personal training contract. Please be aware of a couple of things:
1. Once your contract expires, they will continue to bill you for personal training unless you specifically ask for it to be cancelled.
2. Your appointments expire within 30 days of your last billing date. For instance, I asked on 5÷26÷16 to cancel my contract. This was done. Then I was told that I had to use up all five remaining sessions that I had by 6÷2÷16.
I understand that this was in my contract, BUT, I find it a little frustrating that there is no room whatsoever to be humans and allow any leniency. I asked if I could have even a few extra days to finish up the appointments and there was a very clear no.
One benefit of the personal training packages is that they do allow visits to roll over. So, for instance, if I didn’t use all 4 of my January visits, then they would roll over to February.
I had a good experience with the personal trainer.
With regard to other aspects of the gym, I’ve done some of the Zumba classes and there are great teachers.
I don’t have a problem getting access to any of the equipment unless I come around 7 – 8 pm. Around that time, the weight areas are especially busy.

If I could give this gym no stars I would. This is by far the grossest, rudest gym I have ever been to.
I was one of the first members to join them back in 2015. Fast forward a few months, my car was rear ended while parked in their lot, which was of course was a «hit and run.»
The equipment in the gym, although new, is not clean. It’s disgusting. All the benches have oil stains on them. No gym etiquette here. None. No weights are re– racked, no dumbbells put back to their place. I feel like people’s babysitter– having to clean and re-​rack their weights on each machine before I begin using it. If you leave your station for one minute, even if you leave something of yours by your station, you return to find someone using your machine. No questions asked. They just go ahead and use it.
A ton of rude, gross obnoxious people, who have never worked out before. Do yourself a favor. If you are looking to get a good workout, Go to another gym. You will skip the aggrevation and rudeness that way.
If you are there to stretch out, don’t mind cleaning machine after machine and babysitting, this gym may work for you.
One more thing for fit freaks– RUN!

The gym is new and fabulous. I didn’t take the fitness evaluation because I’m not interested in personal training. There are lots of machines to chose from, a pool and basketball court I mainly do classes but the instructors are great. Theresa for Zumba, Steve for body works and Colin, Andy and Neil for cycle are fantastic! Andy also does a boot camp that is great too. The downside is there needs to be more classes in the morning for early risers who have to go to work. Other than that it’s well worth it!

I just signed up today so this review is on the «free fitness evaluation» you get when you start.
As to the facility: the place is sparkling clean and brand spanking new, what’s not to like? Its even has that new-​fitness-​club smell.
The executive summary is: if you are uninterested in paying for personal training then the free fitness evaluation has little value. Just go work out. If you are interested in personal training then by all means, go ahead with the evaluation. The guy I worked with (I’ve forgotten his name) was very nice and very knowledgeable.
Here’s the long story:
As with pretty much every other fitness club this evaluation is all about selling personal training. That’s not surprising but you usually get some benefit out of it even if you aren’t interested in the training: you are introduced to some exercises to start you out which will likely include initial set-​ups that you can use on your own. This one, however, is SO focused on personal training that if you don’t sign up its not worth getting the evaluation.
They start with a 20 minute session in which you sit a desk and the trainer/​evaluator goes into detail of your needs. (1 lb of muscle consumes 50 calories per day. 10 lbs consumes 500. 10 pounds consumes 3500 a week. And that’s 1 pound of fat! So you need muscle!) Interesting stuff, but I told the guy up front that I didn’t have a budget for personal training. It’s not that I don’t value it, I just don’t have the money for it. We moved on to the evaluation.
The evaluation itself takes 10 minutes. For me that was 3 minutes of stepping up and down on a step, counting the number of push-​ups I can do in 3 minutes, and timing how long I can lean against a wall with my knees at a 90 degree angle.
And then it’s on to the machine circuit. Okay, this is the good stuff. The trainer dialed in weights for me on a bunch of machines — all upper body — and supervised me through a bunch of sets. This was useful as he corrected my form, timing and breathing. Then on to free weights, again for upper body. More good stuff, and it was a good workout; my arms felt like limp noodles afterwards.
Then back to the desks for the wrap-​up. The wrap-​up was a summary of personal training plans and pricing. Fair enough, but I don’t have the money so it’s all moot to me.
Now here are the points that bugged me: he had shown me upper body circuit settings but when I asked about help with lower body settings or core — nope, you only get that with personal training. Okay, what about the weight settings for the machines I did do? (I didn’t have the presence of mind to write them down when we were there) He didn’t recall them and a re-​set would be a personal training session. And then he wanted to take me to his manager to see about working out a special pricing arrangement on personal training pricing. That struck me as weird: the price is negotiable? Okay, I’ll start my bid at $ 5/​session… I again reminded him of my budget limitation said ‘Thanks, but no thanks!‘
So after all is said and done, I got a 30 minute workout in about an hour and a half spent on site. In retrospect, I should have skipped the assessment and just gone ahead and did my stuff.

A real good gym with kids club so j can bring my kids in while I workout. Also open longer hours than other gyms so you are not rushing to get in after work.

Definitely not the BEST gym I’ve been to but it has all of the standard equipment as well as a basketball court and pool for a decent price (100 $ up front as well as your first and last month so about 160 $ to start) Compared to Encompass (Which is basically across the road), LA Fitness has a cleaner feel (I mean it is only a month old) but at the same time is lacking in the equipment that Encompass has such as an Olympic weightlifting section, etc. I love the locker room area but it is lacking some amenities that most gyms I’ve been to have. For example there is no swim suit dryer, locks, shampoo, conditioner, towels, etc. For being so brand new it definitely does not have what I would expect but overall it’s not terrible and is a great addition to the Natick/​Framingham area gym scene. You can get a good workout here while also not spending all of your money so overall it’s a pretty okay place.

Sadly 3 stars. Why? They don’t have Precor EFX Cross Trainers!!!
The machines are great for cardio and high calorie burn without the damage of running. They are ideal for people who have injuries like myself (no ACL on left) and those who hate running but want to burn the same amount of calories.
Gyms ranging from Equinox to Workout World (BSC, Golds, and Planet Fitness as well) ALL have them! Not to mention that ALL other LA Fitness clubs in MA have them. All but the new one. It’s just odd.
In turn, they have a GAZILLION regular elliptical machines (can’t get the same results as EFX, sorry) and stair climbers not a lot of people use.
The positives are good. The gym is very clean, equipment is well distributed and new. Locker rooms are equally clean, modern, with special areas you can use to blow dry hair (with individual plugs and extra lighting), apply make up, etc. Staff is friendly and there was plenty of parking. The pool area looked beautiful, at least from the outside, as it was closed.
I was ready to have a great workout, and just couldn’t at this new location. I picked my things and drove 30 minutes to LA Fitness Stoughton, where they have 6 Precor EFX machines with personal TVs in each of them. They also have a gazillion Elliptical machines… All of which were not being used. There were 3 of us using EFX…
So. If you like the sluggish, heavy feel of ellipticals, or are a fan of running and climbing stairs, you will enjoy this club and I recommend it.
If you are a fan of EFX, however, don’t waste your time. They don’t have it.
Sincerely,
One disappointed picky, injured lady :(