X-Sport Fitness
I recently had some bad blood with the X-Sport Fitness company, which has made them the newest addition to my blacklist. It's a long story, but the end result is that I will end up being a member of their club for one more year, except now I have a "Power Pass". After a drawn out battle between me and them, I guess that's the best I could do. I won't tell my whole long sob story here, but let me just say that these people are shady motherhuggers and after this year is over, I'm done with this company forever.
So anyways, a couple weeks ago, I went to the X-Sport in Arlington Heights for the first time. And man, is that place nice. I haven't been to Lifetime, or any of the other fancier gyms before, but I felt like high society to be working out at this place. Among the features that impressed me most:
- Basketball court: Not just one, but two full courts. And I rarely see anyone using it, so if I decided to shoot around, I'd probably have 2 courts to myself. So luxurious.
- Swimming pool/Jacuzzi: They're not like the ones at Bally's, which are a little bit old and dingy, and filled with dirty old men. These are shiny new, and filled with clean old men (or no one at all). Plus on the walls they have little waterfalls running to spice things up. Very nice.
- Personal TV Screens: If the hundreds of TV's on the walls and hanging from the ceiling weren't enough for you, every cardio machine has its own little flat panel TV screen hooked up to it. You can control the channel/volume while you jog/bike, and plug in your own headphones and everything.
- Locker Rooms: There's a lot of TV's in the locker room too. And I mean a LOT. Basically every direction you look, you will see at least one TV if not more. Also a nice feature of their locker rooms is that there's dividers between urinals. I always appreciate dividers.
- Internet Stations: Yes, they actually have a spot in the gym with a bunch of computers set up for you to use the internet. When I saw that, it was about when I realized that I was in high society. Now, I haven't used it yet, but it gives me a sense of comfort to know that if the internet at my house went down, I could always drive down the street to check my fantasy teams at X-Sport.
There's probably more cool stuff that I haven't mentioned, or discovered yet, but just the stuff I listed above is pretty crazy if you ask me. Granted, I'm comparing it to an older X-Sport and the 2 or 3 Bally's I've been to, but still.
One other thing I wanted to mention about my X-Sport experience, is the subject of 150-lb dumbbells. I don't think I have seen dumbbells that heavy, until I got to this gym. When I first saw them sitting on the rack, I thought maybe it was a novelty thing. Kind of like when you go to Hooters, and they have a deal for wings with a bottle of Dom Perignon on the menu. Or when you're at the arcade, and looking at stuff you can win with your tickets. It's like you can redeem 5 tickets for some stickers, 50 for a rubber toy, 200 for a coffee mug, or 8 billion for a plasma TV. You know nobody's ever going to save up enough to get the TV, it's just there for show. It's the same with those humogenous dumbbells at the end of the rack, purely a status thing I figured. I mean, who is actually strong enough to need 150 lb dumbbells?
Well sure enough, yesterday when I went, I saw a guy using these giant dumbbells. And he wasn't doing like shoulder shrugs either, he was straight up bench pressing with them, one in each hand. At least about 10 reps per set too. I don't know, maybe some of you guys out there have seen something like this at your gym before, but for me, watching this guy press 150's really blew my mind.
The most entertaining part for me was later on when I overheard him telling his friend "man, that last set with the 150's really wore me out" and I'm thinking to myself, "wow, imagine that". I felt like saying to him "yeah, I guess you're just weak", but I didn't want to risk him not thinking it was funny, and then deciding to break me in half. Come to think of it, 150 is more than I weigh. Scary.
Oh, in case you missed my original point, I'll sum it up again. In conclusion, don't join X-Sport. Just trust me on this one. Their new gyms are nice, but they are a shady company, from top to bottom. If you get involved with them and regret it, don't say I didn't warn you.
