Crunch Fitness - South Tampa — Local services in Tampa

I used to use the MacDill Air Force Base Gym, because it is free... but like any free gym it is always packed, particularly at times when most military personnel have time to workout out, like early in the morning, or later in the afternoon. I like to work out early in the morning, so I specifically asked about how busy this gym is early in the morning before I joined. One of the desk managers (employees in black polo shirts) told me the gym is practically dead early in the morning. The gym is actually much busier early in the morning than she lead me to believe. I frequently have to wait to use equipment in the functional fitness area or the squat rack area.

Also, since joining I have been bombarded with texts and e-mail about all of the gym's latest enrollment options. I am already a member, why am I getting these?

The gym offers sessions with personal trainers, which is great if you can afford it. If you cannot, you frequently have to wait for trainers to finish using equipment with their clients before you can use it. The functional fitness area might as well be closed off from regular members so trainers and clients can use it exclusively. At least that would be honest.

This gym has certain pieces of equipment that are highly in demand with no redundancy. The hex bar is a great example. This gym has one. One morning I could not find it, and I did not see anyone using it so I asked the desk manager where it was. He did not know, and he could not be bothered to stop what he was doing to look (he was loading drinks into a refrigerator... which is a closing-time task, not a first-thing-in-the-morning task... no one wants to buy a warm drink from a refrigerator). I spent 20 minutes looking around the gym before coming to the conclusion that it simply wasn't there. I asked another employee if the gym had any plans to buy a second hex bar, and he assured me they do not. He did make a point of writing down my contact information so the general manager could contact me, but the general manager never did.

Finally, the gym's locker rooms have a huge design flaw: the air in the locker rooms is completely stagnant. So you can go to the gym, get in a workout, go to the locker room for a shower, and immediately start sweating again when you step out of the shower. The gym has spent a lot of time and money on renovations, but they did not install a single fan in the locker room to help you stop sweating when you finish working out. I am not sure why they did not take a cue from the MacDill Air Force Base Gym, and install large industrial fans (not ceiling fans) above the lockers to keep the air moving.

Overall, this gym offers a variety of equipment that you will mostly wait to use, apathetic employees and management, and amenities that don't quite measure up...

The space and the equipment is 5 star worthy. The price and access to gyms across the nation is unparalleled except by Planet Fitness. They have rogue bars, a bunch of squat racks and deadlift platforms, bumper plates, a cross fit area, a boxing area, great resistance bands, tons of cardio machines, and many classes to chose from and tons of elite equipment.

The reason I gave two stars: They only have two bench press spots, so there is always a wait to use them. Probably because their membership is so cheap, there are lots of teenagers roaming around in packs, performing every exercise wrong and holding up the spaces while they rotate 5 inexperienced kids trying to bench/squat/deadlift and chit chat simultaneously. This is the number one reason- There is a personal trainer named Linda- the absolute worst part of this gym. She will come up to any gym goer, even not her clients, and give unwarranted and incorrect advice improperly correcting people's form without being asked. She will come up to you with your headphones on daily and pick apart the degree at which your elbows are at during an accessory exercise, whilst teaching her clients to quarter squat and ignoring the aforementioned packs of teenagers doing absolutely everything wrong. I confronted her about the unwarranted advice and she got aggressive and yelled in my face, then walked away and proceeded to talk crap about me to everyone in the gym. Not very professional. Now when she sees me with my headphones on, she mumbles insults but is too afraid to say anything to my face when I take my headphones off. I walked up to her after she insulted me and asked her what her problem with me was, and she just stood up and walked away from me- completely ignoring me, although she had no problem talking crap while I had my headphones on and couldn't hear her.

I talked to other personal trainers and apparently I'm not he first and won't be the last person to complain about how rude and aggressive she is. But they don't fire her - because she pulls a lot of clients for the gym.

She's obviously a very sad weak and petty human, and she is a terrible Representation and ambassador to this otherwise perfectly good gym.

Their motto is "no judgements" but that's just a line. There's more judgements flying put of Linda's mouth than any other gym I've ever been to, including several Golds Gym in Florida and California.

All in all, I'm happy that there are no contracts with this gym, because I was very uncomfortable here. In fact, I cancelled and signed up at the crunch in Hillsborough and I am much happier there in a more positive...

So I’ve been coming here since they opened back in 2016. I travel around the area a lot and I’ve been to about a dozen different Crunch locations. This is by far the best, and it’s not even close. Since the newer GM (Nick) took over this location, they have gone from a good cheap gym to an exceptional overall gym.

The place is always sparkling clean, unlike other crunch locations. I’ve been to several where the showers have been consistently downright disgusting. These are always clean, stocked, and free of any mildew, build up, mold etc. The locker room and sauna are consistently clean and never smell bad. Their janitors do an excellent job and I even see Nick constantly walking around sanitizing equipment and putting weights away.

The clientele is courteous and respectful for the most part. I rarely find the obnoxious lifter throwing their weights around or the guy blasting music from his phone. Most of the people follow general gym etiquette and are pleasant to be around.

Since re-opening after the closure for the pandemic, this location has been the best crunch ive been to at making me feel safe and healthy. Like I said earlier, the staff is constantly sanitizing and cleaning, and most of the gym guests wipe down after themselves. It never seems to be ridiculously crowded either, unlike the hillsboro or channelside location.

The real kicker for me is the overall maintenance of the equipment and the building itself. If a machine or piece of equipment goes down, they are incredibly fast at repairing them. They even make upgrades and repairs to stuff that doesn’t necessarily NEED it. For instance, this week (11/9/20) they just completely redid the men’s sauna. It’s gorgeous in there now with new wood and benches. And even before that, it was consistently working and working well unlike other crunch locations where it would be down for weeks at a time... this location constantly updates their shower equipment too and the shower curtains never even get a little bit gross. I feel very safe here.

I wrote this hoping that Crunch corporate would see this and give praise to Nick and the staff. They are awesome. If only every other crunch operated this way. Worth every penny of my membership I’ve had for...