The Saints are Coming

This is the most popular video on You Tube right now.

Elmwood Fitness Center - 3 months in

We recently got a huge spike in hits and I found that we were linked on the new orleans live journal page. People have questions about joining gyms and our post with our gym review drew them here.

The gym review post has also driven a lot of traffic to this blog in the past so I figured I'd post an update.

First things first. In my original post I said it was located in One Shell. It's located in the concourse which is the smaller building beside One Shell.

Now some updates. The staff is awesome. In my first post I thought they seemed a little standoffish (is that a word?) but they aren't. Everyone is super nice. We feel really comfortable around them.

As far as the cardio room - we still love it. There are tons of machines and I've never been there at a time when there wasn't a machine available. There are some times when the ellipticals are all taken - but that is really rare. In fact, every time we wanted to use the elliptical there have always been two to spare. Treadmills are never taken. Not once have I seen them all in use. The same goes for the bikes and stair steppers. I don't think those are that popular at all. I've been at all times of the day and never seen more than two people on those things.

The weight room is more popular.

My only complaint is that there is only one squat rack. There is a smith machine beside it but now that I've been lifting for 3 months I'm officially a gym snob. I look at it in disgust. There aren't a lot of guys doing squats in the squat rack. They like to do shrugs and other stuff on it. I think I've seen about 5 guys doing actual squats in my entire time there. I really don't think they can justify adding another rack but it is the only piece of equipment that I have to wait to use sometimes.

The rest is usually open. There are always plenty of benches and dumbbells. There are two lat pull down machines so there's usually one open. The rest is pretty sparsely used. There are only a couple of Swiss balls but I've never had a problem getting one.

The music is really hit or miss. Sometimes they have some good motivational stuff. Most times-not so much though. I heard "hanging tough" by the new kids on the block one time so you can judge what kind of place it is by that alone I guess. My advice -bring an Ipod

The crowd is definitely not intimidating. There aren't that many stereotypical bodybuilders. There's always going be a couple of really strong guys but not that many. The ones I ran into are always really cool. There's a good mix of women, older people, thin people and fat people. We both feel really comfortable working out there.


So, to make a short story long, that's the update. If you have any questions about the place feel free to email me.