Gym Survey -- Derek Jeter

Gym Survey -- Derek Jeter Gym The Derek Jeter Gym in New York City is part of the nationwide 24-Hour Fitness chain of full-service gyms. As the name implies, the facility is open 24 hours a day and it is affiliated with Derek Jeter, long-time New York Yankees baseball star. Curiously, there was only a single photograph of Jeter that I noticed anywhere in the gym. It is a very large and high-tech facility with many rows of aerobic machines like elliptical machines, stationary bikes, and treadmills.

The weight room is large and high-tech, but there are only one set of each dumbbell and only a single bench press, which is very unusual, especially for such a large full-service gym in New York. A large amount of the gym floor is taken up by the personal training areas where professional trainers working for the gym train their clients. There are numerous rooms for aerobics like step classes, Pilates, and spinning classes.

Use Patterns between 5:30 PM and 8:30 PM The gym is not as crowded as one would expect during this time which is generally peak-use time in most gyms. That is a good thing because with only a single set of each dumbbell and only a single bench press, a crowded free weight area would pose something of a problem. On the nights that I was there, there were only a few dozen people in the entire weight training area and it did not seem particularly crowded.

The aerobic machine areas were more crowded, but even at peak times, there always seem to be some of each type of machine available, which is also somewhat unusual for gyms in New York City.

There are signs on the machines asking users to restrict their use to 20 minutes during peak hours but because there was never any shortage of machines, I did not see anybody observe that rule and most people just continued to use the machines as long as they wanted, often for as much as an hour or more. By far, the most trafficked area of the gym were the personal training areas, which were always quite busy.

Generally, gym members who use trainers make appointments with them and spend approximately an hour or an hour and a half working with their trainers on a one-on-one basis. In many cases, they do the same types of workouts as members who workout independently, but they do so under the guidance and instruction of trainers. In my opinion, the floor layout did seem designed for the benefit of the trainers, including the fact that the front entrance provides a direct-observation vantage point of the main personal training area.

That makes sense, since the gym does make money from booking personal training sessions and the front desk area all but requires prospective members to watch the personal trainers in action. Generally, the majority of members I observed work out by themselves and many of them have headphones of some sort.