Ginormous!!!
This Gold's is IMPRESSIVE. I had no idea of what to expect for this Gold's location. I was pleasantly surprised with the newness, selection of equipment, cleanliness, and size of the Teterboro Gold's. This facility is 44,000 square feet according to the website. I was amazed to discover something new to wow me in every section of this gigantic gym.
The Teterboro Gold's is a stones throw to the Teterboro Airport tucked away in a hard to find industrial park with poor signage. There's no turnstiles to climb through at the entrance, where we checked in with our travel passes and had to leave our licenses. The lobby area has in addition to the membership offices, a retail workout apparel section, 4 individual rooms for tanning, a cold drink fridge, a fresh juice/smoothie bar, and a daycare facility for kids! So the baby-mama's can drop off their rugrats while burning off some calories. Gold's has made it impossible to make any excuses to get healthy with the comprehensive services they offer.
Pass the lobby to a large area for abs, which is flanked by the tanning booths on the left and a huge cardio machine section on the right. There's' at least 40 to 50 treadmills, elliptical machines, and stair steppers in this section. After the abs area, begins the buffet of weight machines. The back of the gym contains the free weights and serious iron. This gym is amazing because they have all the standard stuff plus a bunch of specialized machines that would be great to train with.
What makes this Gold's special are the specific studios dedicated to different disciplines: The GGX Studio can hold at least 50 people for group classes. I wish the San Mateo/RWC Golds had a studio like this. Beyond the weight benches, is the Kickboxing Studio. There's a half a dozen heavy bags of different varieties and two speed bag stations. There's also an 8,000 square foot ETS (Elite Training Systems) Studio, which looked like it was the length of a football field with astroturf. I assume that since this location wasn't too far from the New York Giants stadium that professional athletes train in here.
My favorite studio was the "Cardio Theater". It's maybe 1000 Sq/Ft with about 30 cardio machines (treadmills, stairsteppers, recumbent bikes, and ellipticals) and a large 15 foot projection screen playing movies to distract you while you're working out. The movie "300" was playing at the time. I'd love to come back specifically for this feature of the gym to catch up on my movie watching, with the guise of working out!!! =P
Downsides?
- no bottle/can recycling
- no paper towels or cleanser to wipe down equipment
- having expectations of similar facilities in California. Redwood City and San Mateo don't stack up to this facility in terms of size and variety
- not sure how Gold's stacks up to other clubs in the area like NYSC, 24 Hour Fittness, Bally's and Equinox...
FTR! suckas!!! However, it will be awhile, I imagine, before NJ catches on to Yelp even in 2008... read more