Marino Recreation Center — Attraction in Boston

If you're going here, then you're an NU student, so price is "free", though I think adding a rec fee to the tuition is a bit unreasonable.

Equipment is well-maintained, clean, and relatively modern. There's a couple basketball courts, a field hockey arena, an indoor track, and a few aerobics rooms in addition to a reasonably equipped weight area and a TON of varied cardio machines. Classes and training are offered as well, but I haven't done either.

The big problem is that it's not able to serve as many students as it does. The hours are actually really good for a uni gym (5 AM?!), and the space overall is big enough, but the balance is off. There are always plenty of open cardio machines and rarely open power racks and benches.

This isn't helped by equipment often being broken and/or missing attachments, rules against deadlifting outside of the racks, and having only one toilet per floor. Also, forget Olympic lifting, there are no platforms or bumper plates, and they're not very tolerant of noise.

Overall, if you have access to Cabot and want to lift, go there. If you don't, strongly consider Squashbusters when it's open; it's smaller, but proportionally better balanced and less used. Otherwise, Marino isn't bad, it just shoots itself in the foot in a...

This gym is absolutely terrible. If you enjoy your workouts taking 2+ hours, with at LEAST 50% of your time spent standing around waiting for a machine to open up, this is the right spot. There are 17000 students at NEU, and one actual gym, with three floors of cardio equipment, and an extremely overcrowded weight section that is about 1/6 the size of the cardio section. It’s gotten to the point where it’s nearly unusable. Not only is the lack of equipment the problem, but they don’t have any variety compared to other gyms. Also they charge all students an additional rec fee on top of the...

This recreation center has a lot os positives and negatives. Although the atrium is beautiful and looks stylish, it makes the gym feel small and disconnected. The fact that they have 5 squat racks and 4 bench presses for 20,000 students blows my mind. The free weight section is always packed to The brim during the school year so it’s not even worth going most of the time. Although I have my issues, I do like that they have 3 basketball courts, heavy bags, a spacious locker, and a SAUNA. Cool place but i probably wouldn’t be going here if it wasn’t included...