LA Fitness — Attraction in Hyde Park Township

This is, without a doubt, the worst gym i have ever been to. When I first joined the gym around 8 months ago I was never given any sort of orientation of the gym layout or even breakdown of gym rules. Instead, I was pressured for most of my registration to add on personal training, which I refused. For several months after that, I received what seemed like a call every other day in the middle of my workday from a sale rep pressuring me to add personal training to my subscription. The salesperson even went so low as to insult me and insinuate that I was out of shape. I don’t know what kind of messed up sales strategy LA Fitness staff is practicing, but insulting your customers into spending their hard earned money on an overpriced service isn’t an effective strategy. Moreover, what others have said about staff at the gym being generally rude or disinterested and on their phones is true, resulting in a gym that often is unclean and disorganized. I also had a bad interaction with now two instructors at this gym. The first was in late 2023. I was asked by an instructor whether I would join her class. I said, “No, thank you.” I was still recovering from surgery and was still doing very gentle exercise. The instructor did not like my response and glared at me. Later, when I realized I had forgotten my water bottle in the class room and went in to get it, she yelled at me, “Get out! There is a class in here!” It was rude and annoying, but ultimately I let it go, just as I let everything else above go. Until now.

What happened to me at a group class today takes the cake. I usually prefer to do my own workouts because I suffer from two torn ACLs and a torn meniscus, and I don’t want to risk re-injury. But I decided to give the Power Circuit class a try with EJ. Everything was going fine until I noticed that one exercise, sprinting in a circle, was starting to bother my knees (as side motions tend to di with ACL complications). I noticed that two other women had chosen to also not do the circle sprints and were instead doing another exercise with weights. I decided to take out my jump rope so I could still do some high intensity cardio exercise. The trainer ran over to me and told me to put my jump rope away. I explained that I had knee injuries and that the circle sprints were hurting me. He brushed off my concern and said jump rope was worse for my knees than the circle sprints, which is totally false. When I refused to rejoin the circle sprints the instructor started yelling at me in front of the entire class, “AND YOU STILL AREN’T LISTENING AND BRINGING YOUR OWN EQUIPMENT INTO MY CLASS!!!” This behavior was rude, disrespectful, and honestly, disturbing. It is completely unprofessional for an instructor to act in this way towards a member, and it is also unprofessional to try to pressure a member to perform an exercise that they have explicitly stated is bothering them and that potentially could cause the injury.

What is even more disturbing is that when I looked at online reviews, I discovered a very similar bad experience with EJ from another woman member, Kamisha from 2023. And clearly the gym leadership has done nothing to address this instructor’s inappropriate behavior since then. As soon as my gym membership ends, my husband and I will be signing up elsewhere. I can forgive a lot as this is was not the only problem I have had with this gym but staff creating a toxic work out environment is where I draw the line.

One thing I should add is that the front desk personnel was very nice to me when I told her my experience and even offered me a tissue as I was in tears. This is the kind of staff that should be valued and offered advancement in the company, but unfortunately, it seems like LA Fitness only cares about squeezing ever last little penny out of you without regard to the major issues present in its gym, including the wellbeing of...

I joined LA fitness mainly for the water aerobics classes. I live in Oak Lawn and frequent the Alsip, Oak Lawn and Morgan Park locations. I wanted to try as many of the clubs as possible so I can experience a different workout with different instructors. I just got a glimpse of the gym area because I was running late due to me not being familiar with where to park and the heavy morning traffic. The lady at the front desk was very polite and helpful. The club did appear to be clean including the locker room and pool area. I gave only 3 stars based only on my experience in the water aerobics class. This was the craziest class I ever attended. I know every instructor teaches different and has rules but wow! I was about 10 minutes late but I wasn't the only one so maybe that irritated him. I grabbed some weights and he yelled drop those and use the ones I threw in the water. I'm looking like ok calm down. I got in my space and picked up the weights and joined in. He had broken weights in his hands then he started slamming his weights together at me and I'm looking around like what's going on and he didn't say a word just kept slamming the weights together. I said I don't know what that means. Then he said put the weights down. I just shook my head and put the weights to the side. As he walked away, he made the comment coming in my class late....I didn't hear the rest. I said excuse me and he ignored me as he should have. I asked the gentlemen next to me am I missing something here. He said we don't talk in here and neither does he. Just follow along. I wondered why everyone looked at me like ooooh no you didn't just talk in class. I'm like ok I've been to classes where no talking is allowed not a big deal. But I have never ever been to a class where the instructor doesn't talk throughout the whole class (especially to newcomers) and corrects your form and communicates with you by slamming weights together. I also found out that slamming of the weights together means there is a new move coming up. There were pieces of plastic flying all over the place. It was later explained to me that he doesn't talk because he needs to focus on the exercises and the music is playing. Really? So, I won't be attending this class again but thanks for that girrrl you won't believe what happened to me...

DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON PT Concerned by the negative reviews, I had an extensive discussion with Anthon before investing in a PT package of multiple sessions. I was reassured the management was fixing the issues with PTs. If It is doing so, it’s doing so at my expense. I have been assigned to now my third PT in about three months, because the previous PTs have been fired. I had a relatively small amount of sessions because many times PTs were too busy or cancelled the sessions. Several problems with booking occurred (trainers messing up with meeting times, forgetting of showing up or … not showing up because they were fired, with Anthon pretending they were late/could not make it for the session and proposing to change PT). Anthon was aware no consistent training plan was possible, yet he did not have a clear communication and explicitly discouraged me from spending the sessions I bought on PTs he knew were likely to be fired. Given the bad management and lack of a clear communication, I asked to get the PT package reimbursed to stop receiving such a low quality service. I was denied a reimbursement. Today I went through a third re-assessment of my physical abilities by a third PT, and will exhaust the sessions because I have no chance of getting back my money. I hope this PT won’t be fired next week. I strongly discourage anyone from investing money in the PT service. The gym facilities are adequate, but you’d be better off training on your own. The “master trainers” that are supposed to be highly qualified and skilled, and are therefore so expensive, so far proved to be no better than any decently trained PT. It’s not rocket science.

The sauna hygienic standards are abysmal, with people entering the area with trainers and dirtying the floor...