Life Time — Attraction in Sugar Land

I am a Lifetime Diamond member and usually go to their tennis club at the Galleria which is clean, well run and has a wonderfully helpful and friendly staff (not to mention great tennis pros). The athletic facilities at this Lifetime in Sugar Land are definitely good and even at peak hours when I was there you could get a bike, treadmill, bench, TRX, whatever. Classes looked ok too from what I saw and while I didn't have any interaction with staff aside from swiping my membership card they seemed engaged with the patrons. However, this is not the point of the review. Two stars showing above and I am being generous. Why? The men's shower area is horrendous. Actually, that's probably not a strong enough word. Disgusting is more like it. The floors in the changing and shower area were covered in hair, dirt & slime and there were towels with fecal matter & brown stains just slopped on the common floor in the shower area. I saw guys fully clothed and naked coming in/out of the steam room some even wearing their gym shoes! No shower or bath attendant in sight who would be responsible for keeping the place clean and tidy like a normal club... It was horrifying. I use the Lifetime facility at the Galleria often - 2-3x per week minimum - and they always have an attendant in the locker room area keeping it clean. Now I've been to Lifetime Sugar Land before and it's never been great in the shower area, but what I saw today in was contemptible and utterly disrespectful to the patrons. This is a huge club that gets a massive amount of traffic. I get it. It's a lot to keep after and they are busting up against capacity limits (which is why I hear they are going to develop a new one down Hwy 6 in Mo City). But that shouldn't matter. At a minimum the shower area should be cleaned every 15-20 minutes during peak hours. I have no idea what the head count is going in/out, but if it's under 50/hour I'd be surprised. This looked like it had been neglected all day. I didn't read the other reviews here, but I wasn't surprised to see 2.7 stars rating and judging from that score I suspect it's a lingering problem at this club. So in sum two stars b/c the actual exercise facility is nice and well-equipped and adequately staffed, but zero stars for the mens locker room (I would love to go negative here, but that would be unfair to the upstairs and elsewhere and I'm not even going to factor how much you have to pay LT for the privilege to use the facility because at that point we are talking a hugely negative number LOL). Seriously... If you are the management at this club and reading this take action. And if you are LT corporate and reading this well I would be asking some difficult questions to...

If you're young and want to get a cheap workout with the basics, maybe with a buddy, significant other, or spouse, this is not the place for you.

My general impression is that it caters to older folks who may or may not have younger children. More pickleball and no basketballs? Great! My knees have been terrible for years! Young kids gallivanting in the swimming pool totally ignoring the safety notices plastered everywhere? Big plus. I feel a little dumb being the only one who seems to actually follow them, but that's my business. The Kids gym actually has more than one overworked employee to watch umpteen dozen kids! Parents' Night Out! Not having to hunt down a sitter is a benefit. The phrase "Parents may leave gym" on a flyer is a big dose of happy. The family locker room seems grungy and more rank compared to the guys' which is weird.

It's a wasteland for 13-18 year olds since there are few extracurriculars to do once you grow out of the kids gym, but maybe that's the idea. They all seem to end up at cheaper gyms where their friends let literally hundreds of them work out free in the summer. That's why I stopped going in the first place. I imagine they make up for the revenue loss by raising their monthly membership roughly a gold doubloon every now and then.

And hey, a couple of hot tubs, a dry sauna, and a steam room? That's like a third of an Asian bathhouse. Get an ice room, a dry room that'll leave you medium rare, serve Kimchi, ancient eggs, tea, tofu and bulgogi at LifeCafe, and we're set.

Some of the best features are that they don't annoy you with higher pressure sales tactics, lack of customers and employees trying to lowkey hookup, and the cost of entry keeps the Gen Z'ing down to a minimum. People don't rerack the weights frequently enough, but this seems endemic to all large gyms nowadays? That is a Gen Z thing. A couple of signs to remind it's good etiquette couldn't hurt, but maybe they'll feel that being pressured about courtesy microagresses on their safe spaces.

One thing to especially to improve however is I constantly see people who have not the foggiest idea how to safely work out, never mind doing proper reps. People used to correct this as a matter of course, but no one does. I understand employees not volunteering to do it because liability, but aren't the basic introduction courses included? I mean, they offer us towels when we look extra sweaty. Maybe there should be signs. "For the sake of your hospital bills please take the introductory class!" We might see less people hobbling out of the gym because they've been doing who knows what.

It's probably...

Sure they’re welcoming while they’ve got your money and access to your member fees. But when you want to cancel because you live half an hour one way and have found a gym home 5 minutes from your house, then they become hard core jerks. I went out there in-person to cancel because they said it was required. (Ok that’s their first mistake. Way to treat your customers like a number and a raw piece of meat and not like the busy professionals and family heads they are).

When I arrived, they instructed me to go take a seat in the lobby so an account executive could meet with me to discuss why I wanted to cancel. I don’t need help making such a simple decision in my life and I certainly don’t need to be hassled by a hard-sell to stay at a gym that is dramatically inconvenient for me to attend given my recent move placing me 15 miles further away than I was before.

I was met with eye rolls and snide, under their breath remarks from the sales staff when I said I didn’t want to have to go through a sales pitch and was told I had no choice and firmly reminded, “To be seated and wait!” I said I would wait right there. The sales staff showed how ridiculously unprofessional they truly are and how lacking this place is of the elitism it believes itself to exude. No, thank you. You exist because of your members. So treat your members with the respect and the consideration they deserve. They deserve better than to be manipulated by your people or hassled because they found a better deal. Those sales staff members probably won’t even work there within a year. You know how turnover is with companies like this with a super competitive business model that pushes the professionals out and allows the slimy used car salesmen types to ascend the ladder. It doesn’t help that I also recently learned that corporate is being sued by women for discrimination and gross inequities in pay. In a day and age where many successful businesses have shown that no matter what business they are in, if they’re to be successful they realize their business IS the people that they’re doing business with, Lifetime is showing that their success is self limiting and likely to be falling off more and more as boutique gyms like a orangetheory, CrossFit and F45 take more of the market share.

If this club and Lifetime as a whole can figure out how to treat their customers like valued assets and not like a piece of cattle as well as treat their employees -of all genders- with equality, my guess is they may recover from their quarters of sliding off. If not, they’ll soon become like the many gym chains that came (and went)...