American Barbell Clubs — Local services in San Jose

I love this place, the people who work here, and the people who work out here and I only ever go here as a guest thanks to my gym friends. Gym goers have a strong sense of community and take care of their gym and each other. Case in point, our friend overheard some older ladies not being able to read the numbers on the dumbbells and our friend Lance used a light colored sharpie to manually write in the numbers on the dumbbells all on his own accord. As far as equipment goes, I really like this contraption that mimics a basketball hoop but for strength training purposes. They have weighted balls here so I would imagine a basketball player could gain strength and accuracy using this. Also they have this angled trampoline where you have to estimate the strength and trajectory of your throw kind of mimicking someone throwing a ball at you. You have to be careful because of the ricochet effect of throwing against the trampoline contraption. Go slow and learn this and don’t just go ham or you might get bopped in the face with that heavy weighted ball lol ;-) Super fun even for non basketball players. They also have monkey bars and this football player looking machine which I am bonkers over that is called the “Power Squat” that I have not seen in any other gym. This used to be a Gold’s Gym according to our friends so maybe that’s why people are more well behaved here and not...

I have trained at this gym and it's sister locations since about 1998 or so, Jerry McCall has been the owner for some years now and I want to give him credit for being able to preserve the hardcore atmosphere as much as possible while expanding his brand and improving on the older Gold's business model. The staff at AB are polite and helpful and the gym is well kept, it's clean and has plenty of drinks in the cooler. The weights go up to 150lb dumbbells ( I have not seen anybody use them in my life yet) and the equipment is modern and in good shape. Whatever you might want to use if a machine is not at one location it's probably at one of the others. Mr. McCall described himself once as a "dyed in the wool" bodybuilder and I am grateful he has stuck around to keep the gyms a place where bodybuilders like myself can feel at home. The price is very reasonable and it's hours of operation are pretty good, I would say American Barbell has the best gyms in the south bay area. If anything, it would be nice if there were more of them. Hope somebody finds this review useful take care...

Edited review: I felt misinformed about how cancellation works with their gym memberships. It resulted in me being charged I believe unfairly. When I tried to bring it up, I did not feel listened to. I felt like they used a lot of legal talk that enabled them to charge me for longer than I thought would happen. I thought it was canceled, so I did not use it. But I was still charged anyway. Rather than giving a refund, they highlight the fine print where it says I agreed to this apparently. Make sure you read the fine print I guess. It doesn't matter what people say, it matters what is on paper. Well, alright then. If that's how you want to do...