Crunch Fitness - 81st Street — Local services in New York

I second the reviewer who called this probably the worst gym in America. I have been all over and this is probably the worst I have been in. 1). Their renovations have impossibly crowded the weights together where it is uncomfortable and unsafe to work out. 2). They wasted valuable space for a massive sitting area. Why? People don't come to the gym to sit. And space in a premium in NYC, you need every inch you can get! 3). They don't have adequate pins and weights for the equipment. I will be on the squat rack or smith machine and someone comes and steals all the weights from me. Then I have to go and try to scrounge up some more somewhere. 4). This place is impossibly dirty and messy all the time. The crowd that works out here is some of the rudest, most uncouth dregs of society. So they don't clean up after themselves. At least half my work out is tidying up weights behind neanderthal men. 5). I cannot work out on a piece of equipment without men standing aggressively over or by me and wanting to know when I will be off the equipment that they want. This happens so frequently that I feel I cannot even enjoy a workout in peace. 6). Their D-rate trainers don't know a lot and I have seen them giving people downright terrible advice - telling a petite size 0 girl that they would help her with her weight loss goals to cut bodyfat. What? Not to mention there is one trainer who wears so much cologne that I can smell him on the other side of the gym and as soon as he enters, I have an asthma attack. These are only some of the many glorious things you will encounter if you work out here. You get what you pay for. You want the cheapest pricing in the hood and you work out with the dregs of the city. I am biting the bullet and going somewhere where I get a much better and more...

The trouble with gyms in NYC (Manhattan specifically) is either you pay $300 for Equinox or less than $50 for Planet Fitness or Blink and you’re left in the middle with either NYSC or Crunch.

My issues with this gym are as follows: Weights, plates, cable attachments never get put away or get organized overnight or during the day.

I must throw out others gym goers paper towels or wipes 3-4 times during the hour I’m there if I’m feeling polite. I know the staff goes around picking things up but there are certain members with zero regard for others.

A majority of the gym goers and some trainers don’t wipe down equipment when they’re done. (It takes less than 30 seconds)

I get there are space constraints but the variety of equipment is so so. It would be great to have a hack squat machine, a preacher curl station, some additional hammer strength equipment.

To certain trainers - get off your phone while training clients, they pay you for your time not so you can text in the middle of their set.

Avoid the 4-6pm if you can it’s just too crowded in the free weights areas and I find myself wandering the gym over twice to find any free piece of equipment.

I’ve been going here since October and I’ve still had some great and mostly good workouts here. I’m sure they’re feeling the financial strain like many other businesses but there’s a lot of little things this place could do to improve the experience.

This may sound like a gripe session but I think a lot of the staff cares or at least tries. It’s relatively clean, most of the equipment works and they fix things in a timely manner. For the $90 I pay per month id hope for more but I don’t feel like I’m...

Broken AC in summer, stale chemical-meets-sweat smell year-round, and management that ignores repeated complaints — this Crunch Gym is hot, stuffy, and poorly run.

The open workout floor in summer is a wall of heat, the AC either broken or “set” to 72 degrees in peak heat like that’s remotely acceptable. I’ve complained at least ten times. Every time: “Thanks for raising the concern, we’ve made note of it.” And then? Absolutely nothing.

Last time, I suggested the cheapest fix imaginable — install a fan — and was told they “can’t do much” because corporate has to approve it. So yes, corporate bureaucracy is apparently what stands between members and $50 worth of moving air.

And when it’s not boiling hot, it’s the smell. Every time I walk through my front door, my wife says, “You smell like gym.” Not sweat — gym. Whatever they use (or don’t use) to “clean” leaves a stale, chemical-meets-sweat cloud that clings to you long after you’ve left.

Crunch’s motto is “No Judgments.” Maybe it should be: “No Airflow. No Fresh Air. No Accountability.”

UPDATE: I spoke directly with the General Manager, who said, “Critical online reviews hurt us more. I wasn’t aware of any such issues — please send me a note directly so I can take care of it.”

Since then, I’ve spent over a month emailing both the General Manager and their Operations Manager — and yet not a single acknowledgment or response from the GM. Not even a sentence. It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of lip service with zero follow-through. Is there any accountability here at all?

Meanwhile, the AC and airflow situation remain exactly as bad as when this...