Howdy,
I’m moving to DC, got a place in Arlington off the Orange Line.
Can anyone recommend any gyms or places to buy weights in town? Anyone else training in DC?
Thanks in advance
Gold’s is not bad. Depends on what you want to do.
Like he said, it depends on what you are looking for. I have been unable to find a suitable gym to use that is friendly to oly/power lifters. Most of the places are ideal for bodybuilders though.
I use Washington Sports Club and it sucks. They have octagon shaped plates and no squat rack.
I recently went back to school at GWU and I am trying to get in ‘nice’ with the coaches and exercise science people so that I can use the only real gym I have been able to actually find. It’s loaded with squat racks, bumper plates and everything that is good in this world. But alas, I still haven’t been granted access.
Northwest DC is packed with gyms in the area between F Street, U street, 22nd street and 14th street. Most of them are great, although the Washington Sports Club franchises seem to focus more on wowing people with countless useless machines than on freeweights. Straight bodybuilders usually stick with Gold?s, gay bodybuilders are at Results. Outside of Northwest DC, there?s a massive Results in Capitol Hill that everyone down there raves about.
If you need to buy equipment, look for a Dick?s sporting goods or Sports Authority, they?re all over the suburbs. There are very few places to buy gear in the city, and they?re pretty pricey due to the high rents.
I train at both Tyson’s Gold’s Gym and Tyson’s Fitness First. Golds is big, has a lot of equipment, and generally leaves you alone. Can get crowded but that tends to be more motivating than annoying (to me).
Fitness First is smaller but the management is cooler and there are a lot of bodybuilders (mainly natural) and some powerlifters that train there. Fitness First is usually pretty empty. Neither place is very good for OL but PL both are alright.
If you’re at GW, you have to go to the GW Lerner Fitness Center. There’s no squat rack that I can remember (used to work there), but at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday there are some A-1 college cardio bunnies. The girls that worked there were cute too and maybe they could help you get into the real gym.
Thanks for all the advice guys.
I’m going back to school at GW too. Where is this nice gym? I’ll have to try to gain access to that one too, let me know how it goes.
The main gym on campus (I forget the name) has one squat rack from what I remember from my tour of campus, but I could be wrong. I’ve got a feeling that gym will be constantly packed though, so I was thinking about getting a membership at a place closer to my house, or just buying equipment myself (probably the later).
Thanks again for all the info about gyms in the area, I’ll put it to good use.
The guy that I talked to at GW was an exercise science major and his idea was to start an oly lifting club, that way we can get access to the sweet equipment. There are two places with sweet equipment. One place is where the exercise science major study and train and the other place is where the basketball team trains. Both have better stuff than the other gym.
I forgot where the sweet places are located. I don’t know the campus that well because my summer classes are being held at Virginia Square in Arlington and I won’t have any on campus classes until fall.
The other gym, I guess it’s called the Lerner fitness center is the same as an state-of-the-art average-joe lifting club, basically it sucks and it’s got a bunch of lifting and cardio machines but all of the weights are octagon shaped etc… It’s better for body building. It’s got TONS of expensive, nice-looking shit, but it just happens to not have the few things I want… Bumpers, squat racks, GHR chairs etc…
For all you guys wondering about GW, I am a varsity athlete there and I agree, the old-school gym in the smith center is pretty legit, you can do whatever you want in terms of power/oly. The only problem is, they wont let you in the smith center if you are not an athlete unless you are fucking someone in there and even then its not a sure thing.
Its not a matter of who you know, but who you ARE. They dont even let the varsity athletes into the main weightroom unless its a “team workout.” Lerner center is not bad if you figure out what times it is not crowded, ive seen people do squats and deads there in addition to oly lifts. And plus there are so many hot girls doing cardion at all times during the day, if you want to get anything accomplished it can be difficult to concentrate. Just my 2 cents
[quote]beebuddy wrote:
The guy that I talked to at GW was an exercise science major and his idea was to start an oly lifting club, that way we can get access to the sweet equipment. There are two places with sweet equipment. One place is where the exercise science major study and train and the other place is where the basketball team trains. Both have better stuff than the other gym.
I forgot where the sweet places are located. I don’t know the campus that well because my summer classes are being held at Virginia Square in Arlington and I won’t have any on campus classes until fall.
The other gym, I guess it’s called the Lerner fitness center is the same as an state-of-the-art average-joe lifting club, basically it sucks and it’s got a bunch of lifting and cardio machines but all of the weights are octagon shaped etc… It’s better for body building. It’s got TONS of expensive, nice-looking shit, but it just happens to not have the few things I want… Bumpers, squat racks, GHR chairs etc…[/quote]
Cool, the oly-club sounds like a great idea (especially if it leads to the gym), if you’ve got the motivation, get the ball moving and I’ll sign up.
[quote]MapShooter wrote:
For all you guys wondering about GW, I am a varsity athlete there and I agree, the old-school gym in the smith center is pretty legit, you can do whatever you want in terms of power/oly. The only problem is, they wont let you in the smith center if you are not an athlete unless you are fucking someone in there and even then its not a sure thing.
Its not a matter of who you know, but who you ARE. They dont even let the varsity athletes into the main weightroom unless its a “team workout.” Lerner center is not bad if you figure out what times it is not crowded, ive seen people do squats and deads there in addition to oly lifts. And plus there are so many hot girls doing cardion at all times during the day, if you want to get anything accomplished it can be difficult to concentrate. Just my 2 cents [/quote]
Thanks for the info my friend. Any heads up on the better times (less crowded times) to get into the Lerner?
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Cool, the oly-club sounds like a great idea (especially if it leads to the gym), if you’ve got the motivation, get the ball moving and I’ll sign up.
[/quote]
That’s the idea. I’m pretty sick of trying to get 200+ lbs. back down after a clean and jerk. It’d be so sweet to just throw it down! Less injury too.
I’m gonna go look for that guy at Lerner and see if we can set something up for the fall. If all goes well there will definitly be a post about it here.
[quote]beebuddy wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
Cool, the oly-club sounds like a great idea (especially if it leads to the gym), if you’ve got the motivation, get the ball moving and I’ll sign up.
That’s the idea. I’m pretty sick of trying to get 200+ lbs. back down after a clean and jerk. It’d be so sweet to just throw it down! Less injury too.
I’m gonna go look for that guy at Lerner and see if we can set something up for the fall. If all goes well there will definitly be a post about it here.[/quote]
Oh man! That sounds like some good stuff so let us know how it goes. I go to school at AU and was thinking of making a weightlifting club (I’m a bodybuilder) but realized like no one has the same goal there.
Also, since I’ll be living off campus and the varsity gym (power racks and bumper platforms by the way) is open at random times whenever the teams aren’t in there which makes it hard since this year I’ll be living off campus. Time to find a real gym (not that WSC shit).
AU’s gym is available at certain times!? Do they check student ID’s? I live very close to AU and this would be even sweeter.
[quote]beebuddy wrote:
AU’s gym is available at certain times!? Do they check student ID’s? I live very close to AU and this would be even sweeter. [/quote]
haha yea they check ID’s to get into the fitness center. But, they don’t care whose it is so you can use a friend’s card or even stand around and ask for someone to swipe you in to the desk.
The times the varsity room is open are posted and change month to month but really the teams sometimes come in at other times and they’ll kick you out without caring so you’ll have to make sure on certain times with the coach. Where do you live?
New Mexico and 42nd roughly. My wife might get a job teaching at AU so maybe she can get me a pass or something cause it sounds like GW doesn’t customarily even let anyone use the varisty gym.
GW’s Gym has opened. See you all around