Comparing the quality of fitness centers

Overthinking a simple decision can be messy.

This can happen in all sorts of situations where the decisions don’t come down to flight or fight. We’re not talking about debating whether to jump out of a second-story window to escape a fast-approaching fire. For the logical among us, many of life’s choices are simply a matter of weighing the benefits of one option over another.

I got carried away with over-reckoning an outcome recently in the process of choosing a fitness center. You’d think there would be more important things to worry about. There are. But I became obsessed with analyzing every possible benefit and drawback to each of several candidates.

It’s not my first rodeo; fitness centers have been part of my existence for decades. Some have been better than others. There was the now-closed downtown YMCA which, although beloved, didn’t have air conditioning on the third-floor weight room with the indoor track.

Little Rock’s municipal fitness center, with its gorgeous indoor and outdoor pools, was terrific until somebody slashed my car’s tires while I was swimming laps, which discouraged return visits.

A privately-owned west Little Rock facility was spotless, with a quality array of weight machines and cardio equipment, competently taught fitness classes, a sauna and steam room, fluffy towels, powerful hairdryers, and halfway decent free coffee. Its only drawback was that its lap pool was outdoors; although it was enclosed by a bubble in cold weather, users had to make a dash through the elements from the main building to the bubble entrance. That got old.

And there was little to complain about in an inexpensive bare-bones facility in Riverdale with 24-hour admission, lots of free weights, Cybex machines, treadmills, ellipticals, recumbent bikes, rowing machines, slightly frayed blue towels, and a few TVs usually tuned to the likes of “Good Morning America” when I was there. It closed, a victim of covid-19.

Moving across the river to North Little Rock led me to a huge city-run facility that supplied its members (all of a certain age) with aquatics, an almost unimaginable array of classes (from yoga to step dancing to computer basics to knitting), a competitive pickleball program (harder than it looks), weight and cardio machines, pool tables (one of my favorite perks), table tennis, and an indoor track. When it shut down in March 2020 because of covid, I cashed in the remaining months of my membership.

The many months since then have been spent lifting dumbbells in the garage, walking the dogs much farther than they’d like to go, and obsessively bicycling—occasionally falling off, scraping elbows and knees—on the Arkansas River Trail. It’s not the worst fitness regimen, but it’s not equal to the results obtained with a well-equipped gym. And it can get pretty cold out there in January, even with layers of Under Armour, earmuffs, and puffy mittens.

So I’m on a shopping expedition. So far I feel like Goldilocks; each prospect has advantages, but there’s always a troubling potential deal-breaker in the mix. Nothing so far feels just right.

Returning to the North Little Rock city-run center felt like a reasonable choice until I revisited it recently. Pluses: inexpensive, and within two miles of my house. Minuses: Too many members in the upstairs exercise room and on the indoor track, too many swimmers vying for space in the three-lane lap pool (which really could be a couple of degrees warmer), a sometimes chaotic parking lot with inattentive drivers behind the wheel, restrictive hours, an over-abundance of holiday closures, and undemanding exercise classes.

A Little Rock chain with a location downtown (an easy bike ride from my house), with 24-hour access, loads of well-tuned cardio and weight machinery, a glowing lineup of huge TVs facing treadmills, and not much of a crowd turned out to be disappointing because it has exactly one shower for member use, no free parking, a higher monthly price than its west LR location which has group exercise classes (the downtown shop does not), and an irritating lack of response to its website’s invitation to get answers to questions via email.

Then there’s the almost-perfect candidate: A North Little Rock facility (with two companion gyms in Little Rock) with a just-right indoor threelane lap pool and whirlpool on the side, a locker room with sauna, lots of mirrors and excellent lighting for those who tidy up there before going to work, endless rows of recent-vintage strength-training equipment and free weights, a high-ceilinged basketball court, racquetball courts, spinning bikes, treadmills, ellipticals, recumbents, challenging group classes, and a terrific sound system spewing music all day long.

The cost is reasonable, and it’s open when I need it. So what’s the problem (you knew there would be one)? It’s a tense 15-minute crosstown drive along a convoluted, heavily traveled route that heads directly east into the blinding morning sun. That’s a tough way to start a day.

Maybe I need to take advantage one more time of the free-use trial periods offered by all these facilities. If I wear myself out enough at them, there’s a chance the dithering will stop and the solution will be clear.