This review is for Life Time in Framingham, MA.
The facility is gorgeous, clean and well-run. The staff is incredibly nice. They have an Aurora program for older members and it is the best conceived, well thought out and well-executed program I’ve ever participated in. The Aurora classes are wonderful and everyone seems to really like them.
The personal training is abysmal. When I joined I was told there would be a discount for signing up for multiple sessions. Nope. Is that fraud? Then when I was talked into signing a contract, the trainer told me she would add an extra session for free. That never happened. Is that fraud? I was told I would be able to use the hydro massage machine after each personal training session, but out of five sessions I was only able to use it 3 times. Is that fraud? One time the woman in charge of personal training for the gym put her own trainee on the machine for double the time and that left me out in the cold. The woman in charge also tended to not respond to requests from me asking how much it was going to cost. No price transparency. She mostly sends out form emails.
Lastly, I found the three trainers I encountered to be slightly condescending. During the first three sessions I felt like I had not challenged a single muscle and felt like I had not done even a minimal workout. I was told by the woman in charge that they were “assessing” me for three hours. The last two sessions were just ok.
It appears that Life Time pays trainers based on their paper qualifications and not on how much the trainees like them. If you join a gym for the personal training, I would definitely not join this gym. It was difficult even getting the trainers to teach me how to use the machines. They wanted me to do ridiculous floor exercises when the main reason I signed up for personal training was to learn how to use the machines. There is no one else in the gym to help you do that.
In one class, someone (not me) brought up the subject of personal training. Everyone (all women) agreed that the personal training was awful, so it’s not just me. The personal training business model seems to be dreadful, the management of personal training is dreadful, and the trainers are not great. At Life Time, personal training is about liability management, not about helping people get stronger. For the record, I’ve done a lot of personal training in the past at other facilities and it was vastly superior to the training for which I paid a fortune at Life Time: $150/hr!!!!
I would not even bother with the first free session since they just use that to get you to sign a contract. You won’t get a workout or get to know the machines.
But the gym is great if you avoid the personal training!
MI
Michael
Gainesville, VA club is so nice!
This review is primarily for the LifeTime in Gainesville, Virginia. We have also been to the clubs in Centreville and Ashburn, and I visited the club in Tampa Florida when on a trip. The LifeTime experience, it is so much more than a gym, it has improved our health so much since joining two years ago! The clubs are beautifully maintained, and depending on size have swimming pools as well as exercise floors, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi. Gainesville has two studios dedicated to yoga and others for cycle and other classes, all included in the membership. They provide many ways to spend lots more money if you choose LOL, like personal trainers, pilates and a very nice cafe open early morning to evening.
