Strange as it may seem, even though I’ve been in this country since I was four, I haven’t had much experience with the Y. When I was very young I remember going there a couple of times, but not often.
I think my parents might have balked a bit at the “Christian” in the title, but I’m not really sure. That could just be conjecture.
Now I am considering joining them to get some exercise and more adult activity. The local chapter charges about $50 a month for an adult, which isn’t outrageous, but I’d like to know more about it before I jump in feet first.
I’ll go down there and check it out myself, but in the interim I thought I’d get a feel for people’s experiences. Anything you want to share is welcome. Some questions:
Is it very kid-friendly? By this I mean, to the detriment of adults?
Is it generally a hangout place for teens or do serious adults actually go there and exercise, bike together, etc.?
Is it mostly friendly, approachable, etc?
Do women get hit on a lot or can you just do your own thing?
It’s fun to stay there, for an afternoon. And it would prepare you for being in the Navy, what with the big pools they usually have. You could also build up your muscles in any Y that has a weight room.
Oh darn, i guess I did ref 3 diff VP songs. Double darn it all.
I’ve been a member of my Y for about fifteen years now.
Is it very kid-friendly? By this I mean, to the detriment of adults?
Kids and adults are pretty separated at my Y. There is a child care area, a youth area, and kids aren’t allowed in the free weight area where I spend most of my time.
Is it generally a hangout place for teens or do serious adults actually go there and exercise, bike together, etc.?
I go there to lift. I don’t see or interact with a lot of teens unless they are lifting as well.
Is it mostly friendly, approachable, etc?
The free weight area tends to segregate into the hard core gym rats, and everyone else. All the personal trainers are over with the “everyone else”. They get most of the attention from management - whenever the Y upgrades the equipment, they get another half-dozen elliptical trainers rather than the 85-lb. dumbbells I have been asking for for years.
**Do women get hit on a lot or can you just do your own thing? **
It’s more of a family place than a pick up place, although my wife gets hit on occasionally. I and my compatriots are off doing our own thing rather than trying to get lucky with the housewives.
I think it definitely, definitely varies by location. And not region I mean the actual building. I don’t know anyone who goes to the one in my neighborhood or what it has. Maybe raquetball? The one in the town just to the south has a weight room, pools, a big gym with gymnastics equipment, etc.
All of the things you ask may be true or false at any location. You’ll have to go yourself to find out
I’ve been at quite a few of the Ys in the St. Louis area, and each one has its own character. You’re much better off just visiting and asking for a tour – they do that all the time. When you do so, ask about using the facilities as a guest to get a feel for whether the fit will be good for you; most of the Y associations will have some provision for that.
In general, the Y tries to plan activities for kids, so there’ll probably be a fair bit of kid activities going on. Likely to be confined to particular areas, though; the pool might be half-overrun by daycampers, but usually the weight rooms or aerobics rooms aren’t.
Most of the ones I’ve worked out at, it was groups/classes/activities of younger kids, but by the time they were at the tween or teen ages, they mostly were in small groups of friends, not mobs. The mobs were usually of older retirees in the middle of the day.
Adults and kids are well segregated. Teens do hang out (dunno what “serious adult business” you’re conducting at the Y) VERY friendly and approachable. I’ve never really seen women get hit on.
It will probably depend on the season. Our local Y’s are among the most popular choices for summer daycamps. So the kids and staff would be congregating on the premises for at least part of the day, before and after their field trips. They wouldn’t be using the weight and exercise equipment, but they probably will take over the pool at least once a day on weekdays.
If you exercise during early morning or evening times, you would probably have the place more to yourself and the other adults. Just watch out for the old ladies. They are very territorial and fierce and have quite good muscle tone for their age.
I loved my Y (I’m a 35 yo female). I ended up dropping my membership, however, because I could get one at LA Fitness for a fraction of the Y’s fees. That said, I loved the Y. (If I hadn’t saved so much, I probably would still be a member there.)
Their pool was ridiculously large, not only in length but also in width. Even during typical lesson time, they still at least 1 lane open for lap swimmers. It’s very people-friendly; I saw really fit folks, really large folks, old folks, young folks, everyone in between. (There even was a group that escorted and supervised developmentally-disabled adults on certain nights of the week, which I thought was nice.) And I like their community involvement.
There is a day-care, and you’ll see the supervisor taking the kids around the facility sometimes, but it’s pretty segregated. (My Y had a family changing room; I never saw anyone under the age of like 15 in the adult changing room.)
I never got hit on. People were definitely friendly, but I never got any sort of creepy vibe or felt that anything was inappropriate.
I belonged to the Y as a kid, and we had a beautiful facility which has since been sold off and is now a community rec center. At that time I was interested only in using the pool, or participating in activities along with my friends. We all belonged to the “Fun Club”, a summer day camp in which we went on outings, played ball, and so forth. Besides the pool we didn’t use the indoor facilities much except for the craft room where we made lanyard keyfobs, ashtrays, pressed copper reliefs, and other “camp-like” products.
As an adult, I briefly belonged to a Y with the intent of working out mainly with weights, before moving on to a health club. In that regard, my experience suggests that Y’s are a bit archaic, because a huge amount of floor space is given over to the basketball courts. I didn’t actually find a set of Indian clubs, but if I had I wouldn’t have been all that surprised. There’s simply not that much room left over for weight machines and free weights, and I found the equipment in this area to be rather limited.
Not what the OP is asking for, but my experience with the YMCA anyway:
I used to work in a library that was next door to the main YMCA. The staff parking lot was behind the library and clearly marked as being for library staff only. The number of people who parked illegally in our staff lot in order to avoid walking an extra, I don’t know, maybe 50 yards to get to the freaking Y was astonishing.
ETA: To be clear, there was no shortage of free parking, so it wasn’t about avoiding feeding a meter. It was pretty obviously about avoiding the walk.
We’ve (wife and two kids) have been members for a few years. There are two local branches within striking distance. Both are very family friendly ( to the point that the kids like going so they can play in the supervised kids areas while we work out or tie tennis lessons wherever). One location is in a wealthier part of town and seems to have newer equipment and more exercise classes, but both places feel well kept and clean. At $35/month for the family I consider it. Good value. Our Y also does monthly “parents night out” where we can drop the kids off forn few hours for a small fee $20, which includes their dinner). I’ve put our Lifestyles membership on hold since we joined the Y - they offer everything we need, withnthe additional benefit of summer camps, swimming lessons, etc
I was going three times a week to work out a few years ago. There were some serious weight-lifters, and some like me who were there to use the bikes and do some resistance work. There was also a senior chair-exercise program in one of the rooms, and an aqua-cize class going on a couple times a week. Usually, the pool was under-used. The basketball court was almost always empty. I remember one younger woman who was a serious athlete who worked out every day. I never saw anybody hitting on her.
There are two Y’s about equal distances from our house: a large, newer facility with heaps of modern equipment, classes, racquetball courts, and other amenities; and a much smaller, family Y. The first one is in a fairly well-off neighborhood, and the second is in a working class neighborhood.
We belong to the second one, and really love it. My main purpose in going to the gym is to use the weights, and our Y has about all the free weights i need, as well as a bunch of newer, Life Fitness weight machines. My wife does some weights, and also some cardio on the elliptical machines. I occasionally do cardio on the stationary bikes if i don’t feel like running outdoors.
It’s cheap (less than $50 a month for the two of us), and i like the fact that it’s a neighborhood Y, with lots of local families. Spanish is spoken more than English in the weight room. There are some pretty decent sized guys lifting weights, but very few full-on powerlifter or bodybuilder types. There’s no yelling and screaming, or throwing weights around, although some people still need to learn how to put their goddamn weights back and wipe off the benches.
There are plenty of kids around, but they’re not in the way. They are usually in separate areas, like the daycare or the pool. Kids under 13 aren’t allowed in the weight room.
Some people who like to swim for exercise sometimes complain that the pool doesn’t have enough lap time. The pool is often blocked out for aquarobics, or for kids’ swimming lessons. That doesn’t affect me, but if you’re the sort of person who wants to exercise by doing laps, your times could be somewhat restricted at our gym.
Yeah, no-one hits on the girls and the women at our gym either. Nor does anyone stare or make fun of the newbies and the fatties. Everyone just worries about their own workouts, and recognizes that everyone needs to start somewhere. It’s a pretty easygoing environment.
ETA:
One other great thing about the Y is that many of them will honor your card if you’re visiting from elsewhere for a short period. When i was last in New York, i was able to use the Upper West Side Y for free for a week, just by showing my San Diego card.
They are doing a pretty thorough job of de-emphasizing the Christian these days. Sort of like the Fried in KFC, except that in the YMCA any type of Christian identity was drummed out decades ago, at least in the US based branches I have been a member of for the last 15 years or so.
Before that I used to belong to the Jewish Community Center. I’m not Jewish, but everyone was very friendly and we had a fair number of non-Jewish members, probably between 5 and 15%. If you did your swim, tennis and workout, there was no difference from the racquet and swim club a few miles down the road and this was more convenient. This was also a somewhat more mellow and kid friendly place, but the kids didn’t run wild. They did have cultural and religious activities (mostly for kids) but that didn’t bother me or anyone else.
This is going to vary widely by location. I’ve been a member of three Ys in three different metro areas, and have visited five or six others. There is a huge difference in focus.
The three I have joined are all sort of like swim/tennis/fitness clubs with a greater emphasis on kids activities than the average for-profit version, and no bar or restaurant beyond a small coffee kiosk or snack bar. But during the weekday mornings and after 7pm or so on weeknights, it’s almost exclusively adults. During the weekends its kid city.
There is very little hitting on going on that I can see. There are fewer single young adults than the typical fitness club. That might explain it.
But like I (and others) have said, the experience is going to vary widely by facility. I have been going there 3-4 times a week for about ten years now.
Absolutely. There’s basically no obvious religious component to our local Y, despite the fact that a considerable proportion of the members are observant Hispanic Catholics. The place is considerably quieter on Sundays, and a few of the guys i know from the weight room go to church with their families on that day.
One funny anecdote about the name YMCA:
Our Y, a couple of years ago, had an open forum where members could come along and talk about things they would like to see happen in the place. Some wanted more kids’ activities; some wanted more weights in the weight room; some wanted more open swimming hours in the pool.
One old curmudgeonly guy started complaining about how many women used the club, pointing out that the “M” in YMCA originally stood for “men’s.”
A woman in the crowd very quickly pointed out that the “Y” in YMCA stood for young, and that this particular curmudgeon’s wrinkly old ass would not qualify.
Well, thank you all. I will go and check out the two local Ys. Part of the problem is the downtown one is, well, downtown, and it’s so hard to park. I’ll try the Troy one first.
I am especially looking to use the pool. I MISS SWIMMING. My SO doesn’t swim at all.
