Crunch Fitness - Aurora — Local services in Aurora

I moved to the Naperville/Aurora area in 2009 and have worked out at Xsport, Planet Fitness and Crunch. I started at Crunch in July of 2021 and canceled my membership in April of 2024.

Pros: Lots of equipment at Crunch: 3 sets of dumbbells, 3 squat racks, 2 benches for bench press. All of the standard gym machines are here and more. They have a “jungle gym” with heavy bags, dip stations, pull up bars, etc. They have a turf area with all kinds of accessories like foam rollers, medicine balls, platforms to jump on, do hip thrusts, split squats, etc. The locker rooms are pretty clean. Crunch definitely beats Planet Fitness in the weight lifting equipment category! Crunch has everything PF has and more. Not as busy as Xsport (from what I remember).

Cons: Too many high schoolers. Nothing against the age group, but they tend to cluster in groups, oftentimes sitting on equipment they’re not even using. And they act their age. You know what I mean (goofing around, hitting each other in the junk, taking shirtless selfies, live streaming their workout - these are all things I’ve seen). It can get annoying. While they have a lot of equipment (a good thing!), floor space can be tight. Especially around the machines/free weight/pulley area. Crunch has a “no bags on the floor” policy, which would allow for more space, but no one enforces it. Which leads me to my next point. Their employees don’t seem to care. As I mentioned, the “no bags on the floor policy” is not enforced. Nor do they do simple things like greet you. Most of the time, they’re on their phones, talking with each other, talking with the other kids at the gym, hanging out in the office or working out. I very rarely see anyone doing any real “work”. The treadmills and bikes are outdated. Compared with Planet Fitness, the cardio equipment at Crunch seems much older. At Crunch, you can’t enter your weight on the treadmills or bikes to get a more accurate calorie burn. Last is the parking lot. The Crunch parking lot is littered with potholes. Some are pretty serious. I hit a pothole on a rainy day in March of 2024 (just thought it was a puddle). The pothole cracked my hubcap and dented my rim. When I told Kamal, the manager, about it, I was told two other people “blew out” tires on the same pothole. I was offered no apology, no compensation, no free t-shirt or water bottle, no free month, not even a “that sucks, man”. Nor was there any notice to members, as in, signs around the gym saying “Be careful of the potholes in the parking lot” or a notice of warning on their Facebook page. I think that’s pretty negligent on their part. They knowingly have potholes in their parking lot causing damage to people’s cars and they don’t let their clientele know. I tried contacting “corporate”, in addition to multiple conversations with Kamal, and that got me nowhere. The generic contact phone number on the Crunch website asks you to contact corporate through their website, so I did. I got no response. That was the last straw for me.

Bottom line, Crunch is a good gym for weight lifting, and that’s about it. I’d recommend Planet Fitness for their cardio equipment and space. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend Crunch to anyone serious about working out. It just has a “no one gives a f–k high school hang out” vibe there. Which is unfortunate, because it wasn’t like that when I first joined. The staff (and my guess is the ownership) has changed for the worse and it shows. Plus, there’s the issue with the parking lot. Which is a huge issue in my opinion. No one needs to go to the gym and have their...

Pretty happy with this gym for its location and for the price. I've been going here since a month after their opening and I can safely call this gym my second home.

TL;DR: the facilities are clean and pretty well-managed, but the gym gets a little busy at peak times and availability of machines and cleanliness suffer as a result. It's a great place however, and should suit many customers effectively.

Here's a run-down from my ~1.5 years here:

The locker rooms are clean and well lit, but sometimes I find that the scale doesn't work or I'll find that the soap dispensers are in the middle of being refilled and are not operational. That's not too much of an issue for me, but it happens.

The main gym is pretty good, all of the equipment is new/relatively new. There will be a few machines here and there that are out of service, but that's expected. Mirrors surround the entirety of the East-facing wall of the gym, with the exception of the very right-hand side where an emergency exit door doesn't allow the squat rack users for an immediate side view of their form. You have to step back a bit to see yourself over there.

There are a plethora of machines, I'd say around half of the gym, devoted to cardio. A quarter of the area are strength machines, and the remaining quarter are bench/olympic squat racks and free weights. I wish they had a larger devotion to the latter since the area does fill up during peak hours and many of the benches can get filled up pretty quickly.

The dance room of the gym is spacious, and the equipment is moderately clean. Exercise mats, dumbells, and half-stability balls are available in a backroom. The exercise mats tend to have a thin layer of residual sweat, but that's expected, so make sure to bring your own mats if you're planning on taking any Zumba classes or anything of the like. You're allowed to go into the dance room during off-hours when no lessons are in place, but you're not allowed to use the aux and speakers in the room. From what I can hear during my workouts, those speakers can get pretty loud during lessons.

Crunch also has a hydro-massaging and tanning bed area available for higher-membership members. I've never personally been in there, so I can't vouch for the quality of those.

Finally, availability of the gym is pretty ok, but make sure you pay attention to their Friday-Sunday hours. They close earlier and open later during those days. I go very early (5am) during the weekdays and fairly early (7am) during the weekends, so the hours correspond to what I need, but make sure they...

Just went in with my mom (who has a membership) and cousin because she was told by someone who works there that she could bring in 2 guests for the month of January. I don’t have a membership, but I thought this would be the prefect time to try it. I had my gym clothes on and drove in from Naperville. At the door, I was turned away by David the manager (wearing a blue shirt) who said that my mom could only bring in one guest and the only option I had was to sign up for a membership. It seems my mom got some misinformation about the 2 guests. So then I asked David “since I am already here, can I just come in and give it a try?” I was then told by David “you have already tried this gym before, haven’t you?” Now, I think I came in one time before with my mom in the summer of 2017 so David must have a great memory if that is what he was referring to. Anyways, David did not seem to want my membership and so no problem, I will not join. There are a lot of gyms out there who I am sure would let me try the gym for one day. I wanted to put this out there just in case somebody was thinking of going in to try the gym. Make sure that time you try it out, you remember how it is because there will not be another chance (according to David). Thanks a lot for reading this and have a...