Matt Damon
October 25, 2017 07:43
I have been a member at Benefit for years and not only has it been an affordable gym option but I've made some good friends up there in the process. The equipment is a little dated but it can easily get the job done, it's convenient and at $10 a month let's all be honest it's an absolute bargain. You don't have to wait long for equipment to free up like you may at some of the more cookie cutter gyms.
Gary is a great manager and the other employees up there are always polite and willing to help you if you need something. Gary always makes sure to say hello to you at some point during your visit and makes time to converse with the members. I know tons of people that are current or past members that have nothing but great things to say about him. He and his employees do a good job of keeping everything clean and as up to date as they can with limited resources provided by ownership. Hopefully with Lane 4 buying out the shopping center this will improve and ownership will invest money into updating the equipment but in all fairness I will say again that for $10 it's kind of hard to complain. Yes, there is an annual fee attached that everyone is clearly made aware of at sign up and around the time of the fee needing to be paid. If you are surprised by it like one earlier reviewer mentioned about a year ago that's on you for not paying attention.
I do feel obligated to respond to the review that "Julius" posted (don't hide behind some fake name if you're so upset that you're willing to call someone out by their name to try and hurt their reputation), as I couldn't disagree more. Gary has been nothing but accomodating to the members up there. I was a member long before he took over as manager there maybe two years ago and the difference between how things are up there since he has been there and before has been for the better in every aspect. Your complaint about the squats being banned is inherently flawed, you even said so yourself, "squatting using the smith machine". If people reading these reviews are wondering what this means here is the quick story. The gym doesn't have a squat rack which is hardly Gary's fault, he manages the place, he doesn't own it. He allowed members to take the plates off the front of the smith machine and use the pegs as a makeshift squat rack. They allowed this as a courtesy assuming anyone that shifted it forward when you racked the bar would at least be willing to move it back so other members could still use the smith machine AS A SMITH MACHINE. Signs were posted asking politely that if it was shifted to move it back. Multiple times. These signs were ignored. A select group of people ignored these requests so this FAVOR of using the smith machine as a squat rack was taken away. Simple enough.