Review of McDaniel's Gym

 Last Thursday was the first time I used McDaniel's gym.  On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best, I'd give it...well, allow me to explain first...

The Facility

This is the font of the gym.  Those doors are exit only.
The entrance is around the other side.  I think that's stupid.

This has to be the smallest gym I've ever been in, and I've been in quite a few.  It had two floors, but for real for real, it was unnecessary.  The gym is part of the building the houses the basketball courts, classrooms, and Exercise Science & Physical Education  department, which also includes all of their fancy sciency-ness stuff.  Essentially the gym appears to have been built as an addition to the building itself; it's much fancier than the rest of it...unless it got the funding for an upgrade and the rest of the building didn't.

It's got a 100% glass front that faces the parking lot.  That's great for people like me who get the privilege of parking in that lot.  The real gag is that all four doors are locked from the outside, thus the gym can only be accessed from the side door used as the main entrance for the entire building.  Not sure what the purpose was for that, other than to make people walk in front of the front desk welcome man for the building.  But since he usually ain't paying attention, safety can't possibly be a factor.  Plus the gym has it's down check-in table, thus I was hella annoyed after discovering this.

The view from the 2nd floor is d'licious

On the first floor you have the weights, free and machine.  The machines are in one section and there's a separate room where the free weights are.  The top floor has all of the cardio and ab stuff.  It was surprisingly sparse up there for a school with a football team...

It stays open until 11PM which would be awesome if I lived on campus.  SMCM should take note of this.

The Equipment

The equipment was average, nothing special to report there.  What really interested me was the clear emphasis on weight training and the de-emphasis on cardio.  The cardio area was tiny.  And I mean it had 4 elliptical machines, 4 gazelle thingies, and 8 treadmills.  That's really not a lot if you think about it...I've seen that many Mexicans pack into one car.  They had a couple flat screen TVs in the area, but nothing fancy.

This is the cardio area.  Got this from Google...
the machines are arranged differently now.

I've moved away from machine weights for the most part, so I didn't really go over there.  What I really liked about this place were the multiple squat racks they had.  These were real racks...manly racks...racks on rack on racks.  There were 6 of them and one assisted one that got no love was off in the corner.  Each one had it's own platform attached to it that was padded on each side so it wouldn't sound like the apocalypse was happening every time someone dropped the bar.  This is a blessing for deadlifters because I can focus my energy on doing quality 1x1 instead of worrying about quietly lowering the weight to avoiding public shame.  A deadlift is just lifting the weight, ain't nobody say nothing about putting it down...

Aside from that, it was pretty ordinary.  It looked kinda old though, much older than the rest of the gym...like maybe that was the original gym and the other parts were newly renovated areas/additions.  Some of the free weights looked like they were part of the original gym, and you may take that however you want...

The People

It wasn't crowded at all, which was good because I really don't feel like being bothered with crowds after driving for 2 hrs to get there an sitting through 2.5 hrs of class.  Overall, it was mostly white, frat-looking boys and skinny, wealthy freshmen 18 yr old white girls.  in other words, children and brutes.  It could be worse.

But of course those are just guesses.  I didn't see any brown girls, and the only brown boy appeared to be a football player.  All the white girls kinda looked the same...either freshmen or sophomore...preppy...skinny...and sans yoga pant - I'm sure that last part will change with the seasons.

Everyone was pretty nice though.  No one actually spoke to me, which doesn't really bother me all that much.  I'm sure I stood out to them, between this chocolaty skin and these muscles.  Everyone stared though.  I'm not sure if that was because of the muscles or the fact that I'm brown, or the fact that they've never seem me before.  It's likely a combo of the three.

2012-2013 team

I saw the women's basketball team on my way in. They stared at me...I'm not sure why since I wasn't dressed like I was about to play ball.  I thought it was funny so I stared back.  One guy stared so hard when I walked by he actually turned all the way around to watch as I walked by.

*SN*  Guys, ladies have the same perif vision you do, meaning we can see you look at us from a lateral angle.  You ain't foolin' nobody.

Real talk, maybe I give off an unfriendly black hottie vibe.  Wouldn't be the first time I've been told that.

The Overall Feel

Overall, wasn't too bad.  I could get used to it.  I'm still surprised how small it is though.  Maybe there's a part 2 somewhere on campus I'm missing?  I'll look at the map later, although I don't think I am.  It seems a little inadequate for a school that has undergrad and graduate level exercise science programs...and 21479 sports teams.  But whatevers; maybe they like to share.  The equipment is fine, there's just not a lot of it.  Odd.

The best part about it was the fact that it wasn't crowded...in fact, it was surprisingly sparse considering the time (6:00-7:30PM).  Maybe everyone was eating dinner?  Who knows.  We'll see if next Thursday is different.

Rating

7.5/10 - It'll do for the time being.  I only have to be there once a week this semester, so we'll see if things change in the spring.  I feel like I should give it an 8, but something about it feels empty...like it's missing something.  Maybe it's because I'm used to using a real gym now?  But it's pretty good as far as small college gyms go.