Need a really cheap gym? Try out a college?

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Yeah, I found this out today. The closest college to me, apparently has their athletic center open to the public. Indoor track, ice skating rink (awesome for me) weight/exercise machine room (with OL lifting platforms, too, another really awesome thing), pool, basketball court, squash courts, all kinds of really awesome nice stuff, opened to the public to use....for completely free. The facility they have is lightyears better in every way, and much cleaner, than any commercial gym I've been in, and it's free.

Not all colleges are like this, so you'd have to call or ask at the desk or whatever if they're OK with you using the gym at the college. Maybe my college is just particularly nice and gracious to people, but I'm sure at the very least a few other colleges probably do the same thing, have the gym opened to the public. It's basically the same kinda thing as having a library opened to the public, so yeah.

So, for all the people who can't afford gym memberships, this could be something you can look into. Obviously, it takes a bit of "figuring out" maybe more so than some people on here could handle. Like on the website, it said the public skate was 7-1:15, but then I got kicked off at 8:20 for hockey practice, and I'm assuming you need to sorta develop a rapport with some of the people at the college, etc, and obviously be very nice to everyone there and not cause any trouble. But yeah, it's a really attractive option, you can potentially get phenomenal facilities to use for totally free.

Not all college gyms are like that. I work in my school's gym, and we do allow the public in, but they either have to purchase a membership or a guest pass. However, they are MUCH cheaper than membership at any of the gyms in the area, with more amenities than many of them, and we sometimes offer discounts to families of students or alumni. I know a lot of college gyms are like this, but like you said, make sure to call before you go.

Not all college gyms are like that. I work in my school's gym, and we do allow the public in, but they either have to purchase a membership or a guest pass. However, they are MUCH cheaper than membership at any of the gyms in the area, with more amenities than many of them, and we sometimes offer discounts to families of students or alumni. I know a lot of college gyms are like this, but like you said, make sure to call before you go.

I would become a serial killer to be able to find a gym with olympic lifting equipment.

This gym isn't a FULL platform, but it's like, a platform, and the weights, are like, let's say you get a 10, it's the same height as a 45 pound plate, just thinner and lighter, and all the weights are coated with plastic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLC8pOjsk_k It's about like that. The bar looked ALOT higher quality than the bar at my gym, too.

So yeah, colleges...

the cheapest possible gym is one's own body, augmented by boundaries, hanging tree limbs and possibly a jumping rope.

My local university gym charges, and has a range of prices (in ascending order of cost: student, student (other university), retired persons, staff, alumni/corporate, public).

I have found that a local "no frills" gym is cheaper than the alumni rate and does not require a years contract to get the cheapest rate (although it did have a joining fee). It does have less facilities and classes, but I found that I never used these when I was a member of the university gym.

The platform in that video is exactly what I'm looking for. I would buy one for myself, but I don't have any room.

I just found one relatively near me, that only charges $20 a month.
When I was at the Y, it was $54.
PLANETFITNESS

My gym charges $60 a month.

Me and Planet Fitness would not get along. I usually work out in jeans, just as a combo of me being lazy and finding it more comfortable. I probably could not do any powerlifting or Olympic lifting, or anything like that at all. They'd sound the lunk alarm or whatever after a few reps of deadlifting for making too much noise, and I'd get kicked out. I guess it's good if you just want cardio machines or whatever, but I pretty much hate cardio machines and find them boring. Then again, some Planet Fitnesses differ from eachother. Some are just regular gyms that are reasonable, then there's others that really cater to the demographic of people being too afraid to go to a regular gym full of "muscle heads." I don't know, maybe good for a "normal person" but definitely not for me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBRG4RkE51Q[/youtube]

But hey, if Planet Fitness gets people working out, it's nice and all, just for me, I don't think it'd work at this time.

That's actually why I find them so appealing-
the price, of course, but that they seem to go out of their way to make an environment comfortable for "average Joes and Janes".

I think they have resistance machines, but not free weights.
Not sure.

The one near me hasn't opened yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Well for me, I started like the whole "exercise" thing by ice skating, then started to go to the gym just to train specifically for ice skating, then I started wanting to learn other stuff and get more strong at other stuff. So for me, it's like, sport specific training. That was the only way I managed to keep myself motivated for exercising, I couldn't just be like, motivated by looks alone. I had to find sports I liked, and exercise for them. So yeah, not into exercising for the sake of exercise alone, more or less.

And as far as the other people in the gym, well, I'm not their problem, and they're not mine. I put in headphones with anime music, and just do whatever I want. It's a gym, it's a place to become healthier, it's not anything else, and it's not a meat market where I'm there to impress chicks or whatever.

I'm not either. I hate it.
If I could sit on my behind and eat all day and not weigh half a ton, I would.
Now's the first time in my life that I haven't felt hideous, and I'm trying to find a way where I can eat more (and by "more", I mean "at all") and not gain weight. So far, my options are pretty limited to walking miles from home in the cold, or doing workout DVD's in my basement, which have never done much for me.

I think that's the environment FitnessPlanet tries to create, actually- one of non-intimidation.
When I was at the Y, I felt really awkward, and people there weren't very friendly, except for one class instructor who verbally harassed me in front of everyone. I never went into the room with the machines at all, because the door was at the front where you had to walk past everyone to enter, I didn't know how any of the machines worked, and everyone in there looked like a Calvin Klein model. Maybe FP will turn out to be the same way? At least I won't be charged triple the amount for it.

My thing is, though, Planet Fitness would judge me, that's my problem. To me it seems less of "nonjudgmental" and more "look at those silly muscle people!" Like I was reading on a bodybuilding website, this guy walked by a Planet Fitness, and the owner was like "See those guys over there, we won't let them into our gym, ever" or something to that effect. It just seems, from what I read of it, instead of being neutral, it's just judgmental in the opposite direction. My gym, imo, seems pretty neutral. My gym also has a physical therapy place next to it, and you get free passes with PT class, so there's people from the PT sessions in it, too.

Just yeah, I didn't realize not all college gyms are free/very cheap. Just, my point was, college gyms can be free sometimes, and even if they're not free, they're extremely well featured. For me, it's features that sell me on a gym, I gotta check if sometime I'll be allowed in like the gymnastic room of that college. That'd be sweet, I'd love to use the rings, my gym only has the TRX strap thingys.

Oh well, if Planet Fitness works for you and everything, congrats, but yeah.

Oh, and completely unrelated to exercise, but as far as getting past the anxiety of the machines, my somewhat sociopathic friend taught me to not care what random people think. He'd embarrass himself and sometimes me with him, by doing stupid or awkward things, just to show me nothing would happen. So that rubbed off onto me, so I'm much less afraid of being "awkward" in public now, for that reason. My thought process partially because of him changed from "what will people think?" to "what will people do?" Just a thought.

I'm not embarrassed, having not given a shat what people thought about me for quite some time now.
There's just no point in having a gym membership if I don't know how to use anything.

I don't really want to be around a bunch of fit, good-looking people, to be honest.
My self-esteem issues are severe enough as-is.