LA Fitness

I have been a member at LA fitness Hove (formerly Dragons) for the past 4 years. When it was Dragons which it was when I joined, it felt more like a professionally managed club, equipment when out of order was fixed usually within the week and cleaning standards were adequate. Pleasant staff most of which have now left and been replaced with mainly young people who dont care about their job, with poor service and skills (not in every staff members case but in the majority of cases) some of them are not exactly fit and/​or old and it does make you wonder how they got the job! I have had my locker broken into 2 times in 4 years, and reported both cases to the police, the first time this happened about 3 years ago the staff were unable to do very much as understandably no security cameras were allowed in changing rooms. But the staff member at the time who has now left was very helpful, polite and was well known by members and interacted with them, when it happened again a year later. No one really batted a eyelid although one helpful member of staff promised to look and call me in the morning if lost jewellery was found. The bad points f LA fitness are;-
— Poor staff behaviours (staff do not interact with the members just eat food at the bar and chat to their mates)
— Poor cleaning standards (very dirty floors in the changing rooms and showers, unclean dirty jaccuzzi and steam room
— Equipment takes weeks to fix (a shower cubicle has been out of action for 5 months now).
— Opening hours opening times have been reduced especially over weekends to 6pm.
–Theft! Good Points: — Some new equipment has been purchased weights and cardio machines
Good selection of classes at various times during the day
The gym is local Due to the gyms location is the reason why i come here, as its convenient. My membership is past its renewal and I am considering moving gyms as there are many around open longer and cheaper. Anyone thinking of joining this gym, I would advise to go to another Gym and not this one! Adam

My parents have been members of La Fitness (previously ‘Dragons’) for around 10 years and have only recently moved to FitForAll gym nearby; as La Fitness, since under new management, has gone downhill.
However, I wished to join La Fitness (for weight training and cardio) as it has good facilities such as Squash Courts, Tennis Courts, Pool, ect. Having been a member since September I have seen positives from the gym; such as the facilities, the amount of classes availible and some young friendly staff (20%).
On the other hand, I have experienced many negagivtes such as rude, «lairy» staff, new rules being created for friend free passes they issued, and worsed of all the amount of breakages taking overly long to be fixed:
— Sauna … 6 weeks
— Single Cable Machine … 3 weeks
–Glass back Squash court … 7 weeks
— Chest Press … 2 weeks
— Dangerous Untightened dumbells … Continuous
— Upstairs Air. Con … 2 weeks x 2
–Upstairs water fountain (water is warm) … 2 weeks
— Upstairs Cable Cross — 1 week and counting
— Freeweight Leg Press — 5 weeks and counting
— 80% of staff rude — continuous
Untightened Dumbells — This lets me now give you the example of one of my friends who also attends La Fitness — He was using the 40kg dumbells assured that as La Fitness are a safety checked gym he would be safe, however one of them snapped in half narrowly missing the person spotting him and then fractured his wrist… How can anyone feel safe in this environment.
I appreciate that times are hard and a lot of buisnesses are struggalling in the present financial climate, however I think it is ridiculous that a gym of not a very high standard can charge between 30 — 60 pounds a month when the opening hours are poor (having been reduced recently). As they have made such a substancial reduction in the opening hours, I would like to pressume they would fairly reduce all members monthly pay accordingly. I do not understand how they can need to reduce opening hours; if it is because of money then the managers must clearly be doing something wrong as there are gyms such as ‘The Gym’ in Brighton open ²⁴⁄₇ and only charge 15.99 a month.
To conclude, the reason I have spent my time writing this review is because I would be in the gym right now but La Fitness being ‘tight’ have cut their opening and closing times as it is not money efficient for them (i just travelled all the way to the gym to have to read a note on the desk saying GYM CLOSED); this consequents in lots of angry, unsatisfied customers like me. Therefore I look forward to training at a good, friendly gym such as others in my local area (Cheetas, FitForAll, The Gym, ect).
Do not miss understand this review as 100% negativity; La Fitness gym has a huge amount of potential and met the requirements needed when it was Dragons but has been ruined by frankly rubbish managment over the past 4 – 5 years.
Tom Mann

This LA Fintess gym (formerly Dragons Health Club) has a range of facilities including a gym, tennis and squash courts, a pool, sauna and steam room, a solarium, and a bar and restaurant. Its quite small and therefore you get to know the other members quite easily, especially if you do some of the group classes in the studio. The pool is quite small, but it does the job!