A fairly reasonable Gym, membership is cheap but unfortunately it seems to have become…read moreover-subscribed. from 10am up until about 9pm there are typically over 60 members (reaching 100 at peak times) at the gym.
They have a deal with NCP for reduced parking costs but unfortunately the Orchard St NCP closes at 8pm until 8am, so you can only make use of the offer for a limited time of the day.
Despite stickers on machines and signs, lots of members don't bring gym towels and leave the machines dripping in sweat (I've even witnessed a few of the trainers off-duty doing the same), meaning you have to use your towel to wipe up some other person's sweat which isn't very appealing. I brought this to the attention of a member of staff before and the attitude was that he was fed up of asking members to bring towels.
There aren't enough weights machines there - 2 bicep curl, 2 tricep extension, 2 ab crunch, 2 chest press, 2 shoulder press, 1 pec fly, 1 chest extension/delt fly, 1 hip adduction, 1 hip abduction, 1 calf press, 2 leg press, limited free weights area and a few other machines for legs as well as the multi-function cable machines. These are all very popular and, when busy, you can spend ages waiting due to groups of lads doing circuits or the body-building crowd spending hours in the free weights area, tying up the benches and the single smiths machine.
If you primarily want a cardio workout gym, this is ideal, since it has more than ample amounts of bikes, cross-trainers, treadmills etc, but if you are looking for a weights gym, you'd be better off looking elsewhere - unless you have a lot of patience and don't mind paying for longer parking.
Due to the lack of free parking in Swansea city centre, if you are trying to do 5 x 1 hour sessions a week, the total cost for the gym membership and parking (£1 an hour at the multi-storey at St Davids) soon mounts up and, on average, going here costs me over £35 a month - the same amount you would spend monthly at a less over-subscribed gym with free parking.
