Joining a sports club or a fitness gym is one of the most common and effective way to use use your spare time. It promotes a better lifestyle by being healthy, and it also gives you a sense of community that you can be a part of. Choosing the right fitness gym for you may be easy if you’re looking for convenience and where your friends are at. You may also lean towards to which place is famous or has the best reviews. Budget may also be a big factor to making the choice.
All things being equal, what are those things that could help you choose the best fitness club or gym? Here are some great tips:
The area should be well lit and has proper ventilation
This is often overlooked by most gym goers. Fitness clubs should have proper lighting in their facility. It helps the athletes to appropriately pick and choose the equipment for their training. Imagine that your gym is dark, isn’t that unexciting? Well lit fitness gyms are a factor because it would also affect the athletes mood. The environment is very important to the users that it can make or break their perception of the facility.
This has also something to do with the alertness of the person. Well lit gym facilities have a mood-enhancing effect that helps people to be more active and more energized (https://www.athleticbusiness.com/fitness-training/how-lighting-changes-the-group-fitness-environment.html)
Adequate ventilation is of great importance. When exercising, you tend to sweat more and breathing is of great practice. The exchange of CO2 and O2 has been widely known to be a healthy part of your daily lives. Fitness gyms should have proper ventilation to adequately help customers in breathing in and out of air during training and exercise. Air should properly flow to facilitate recovery to the gym goers and also distribute the smell that a sweating person produces.
Check a fitness facility for their lighting and vents before deciding to sign up to the next class.
Make sure there are clean water fountains
We can’t stress enough the importance of water during workouts. Make it a point to check if there are free water dispensers or fountains when choosing your fitness gym or club. Adequate hydration helps prevent muscle cramps, dehydration and heat stroke.
Studies show that by losing body weight fluid can tremendously decrease performance. (https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/water-for-exercise-fitness#1). We lose water in our bodies when we breath and through sweat during exercise. When your water levels go down, you’d feel lethargic, dizzy and it would really hinder your performance in the gym. With proper hydration, active bodies are able to perform better. Also, the heart doesn’t exert too much effort on getting oxygen to where the body needs it.
Enrolling yourself to a fitness gym with these water stations should both save you money and assure your body’s need for water.
First aid kits are a must haves!
There is a great risk for accidents that causes injuries in a fitness gym. This is usually due to falls, misuse of the equipment, exhaustion, pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, and others. You would love to be a member and involved with a fitness establishment that truly cares about their members and clients. First aid kits, blood pressure apparatuses, stretchers tell you that they do.
Applying a bit of foresight, the facility should be able to manage situations as stated above. This is something both you and the club anticipate. Usual injuries are:
- Fractures – worst case scenario is an equipment falling on toes, forearms, or even necks
- Muscle tears – mostly from the hamstring, when athletes over do treadmill or running exercises
- Skin cuts and abrasions – from pointy equipments, tripping over equipments or falling from exercises
The fitness club should have first aid kits ready when these happens. Being able to have band aids for cuts, alcohol to clean the area of the wound and clean cotton or wipes to wipe the surround area of the wound and potentially clean the blood from the wound. A sling or a brace for potential fractures to secure the injured limb and to isolate the injury. This facilitates immobilization that is usually done upon the occurrence of the injury to further damaging it.
Blood pressure apparatuses or the sphygmomanometer serves a diagnostic tool for sudden change in the athlete’s heart activity. It is important to have this around because fitness clubs usually tend to have patrons would be starters and may not have any physical activity prior to joining. This tool saves lives and it is very important to have it around. Vigorous and strenuous exercises shoot blood pressures up because of the action the body gets involved in. People who are obese and who joined the club to get into a better and a more suitable weight, are at a higher risk.
Having a stretcher around is also an essential need and a point on helping you find the best for a fitness club. It facilitates better transportation of injured athletes from the work out. Keep in mind that your safety should be first and should be the priority for these establishments to secure yourself and concentrate into getting that beach body or being healthier.
Information on how to use the equipments
Most of the gym goers needs to be introduced to the different machines in the gym. Machines tend to have specific muscle groups that they target. When choosing the best fitness gym for you, the facility needs to have ready their materials to teach the customers. There are proper ways to use each machine or tool.
Most fitness clubs have a stick-on literature on the machines vasad. This is necessary for you to be able to maximise the use of those machines in the gym. Here are some examples:
The rowing machine – it’s a machine to simulate the rowing motion and normal users would think that it just for developing muscles for rowing. It’s actually for developing your cardio and endurance at the same time, strengthening almost all of the muscles in the body especially the leg muscles, back, and arms.
The bench press versus the inclined bench press – seamingly the same motion, with just a different of the angle of the bench. Both hits the chest but the flat bench also hits the traps and the inclined bench hits the upper chest and the triceps.
Look for a fire exit
Again, safety first! Facilities need to always think about their patrons. When looking for a fitness club the would be perfect for you, it has to have a way out in case of emergency. Recently in the state of California, a fitness gym closed because of a threat of a fire. (https://www.clubindustry.com/news/stevenson-fitness-among-health-clubs-affected-california-fires)
It may not be often that fitness clubs bursts into flames, but it is better to be prepared rather than suffer the consequences for not having one.
Looking for fitness clubs may seem to be easy for some but these tips are essential for you to have in a gym. Having it is not only about the most convenient and the most affordable place you could find, but it is also about your safety, your health, and your peace of mind.