Hough End Leisure Centre

I’ve been going to this gym for a little more than a year now and mostly I like it as it close to my house and it has a pool and sauna which I enjoy sometimes. But there’s also at least one machine/equipment broken down almost all the time recently so I can’t really have a workout I plan on the day. One of the shower taps in the women lockers has been running water non stop for almost a week and these news about a price increase now are making me think of changing for some better gym around.

I’ve been going to this gym for a little more than a year now and mostly I like it as it close to my house and it has a pool and sauna which I enjoy sometimes. But there’s also at least one machine/equipment broken down almost all the time recently so I can’t really have a workout I plan on the day. One of the shower taps in the women lockers has been running water non stop for almost a week and these news about a price increase now are making me think of changing for some better gym around.

I've been attending the gym at Hough End for almost a year now so my review is mostly about the gym. I would start by saying the staff and PTs are lovely, but a lot of fault relates to the cost of a membership vs the facilities. I am lucky I'm on a student membership but wouldn't justify the full price when this ends, but this is still double my previous gym membership elsewhere. As far as I know, you can't have a gym membership by itself without the full facilities so if you're just looking for a gym I don't think the monthly cost justifies this one. Pros: lovely staff, a lot of racks and a very fair range of equipment, kept clean mostly (sometimes I have black on my hands after using any pull up bars and some weights but find this is normal for busy gyms). Aside from groups of some young kids everyone is super respectful and keeps to themselves in the gym, surprisingly you don't get that everywhere. Cons: A lot of equipment is old and broken (damaged weights), always weights everywhere at the time I attend Cable machines also need some TLC, most of them are rusty, worn .etc Pretty much all of the benches are wonky. If you're looking for the 1.25kg plates they're all under the benches to keep them stable, again the wheels seem to be worn some worse then others For some reason a lot of the racks are not straight/aligned to the wall which is super awkward Some of the rack parts are also worn down, so when the bar is re-racked it's uneven and awkward when finishing a heavy set, some of them so bad you go a bit mad thinking you've put one side on the wrong wrung but it's just so worn down that the bar is tilted The water fountain always seems to be broken and can't fill up water bottle fully While I appreciate it's a community gym, most days at around 3pm the lady's locker room stinks of weed (not sure how the front desk don't notice this) and sometimes there are groups of kids in the gym (with a teacher maybe?) who are extremely disruptive, which is a bit annoying for paid members, of course they have a right to be there as well but would be nice if they were properly supervised Not fault of the gym but the app absolutely sucks. I miss fob access to gyms! I thought at least the app would be useful for timetables e.g. swimming but after a year I still don't understand when I can go swimming, this not making full use of the membership. It feels like although the cost has recently increased there is not enough investment in the gym equipment and gym facilities.