Helen Newman Hall

Positive experience: It's good place if you want to do cardio and weight training. You can not do dead lift here.

Positive experience: Somewhat crowded, only one bench for bench press, and two squat racks. Also not able to do standing overhead press at the squat racks.

Fantastic experience: Helen Newman Hall has a great swimming pool, 2 basketball courts, 2 great dance rooms, and workout facility, and a bowling alley! It’s really cheap to swim and bowl so it’s a great place for recreations. For students swimming is free, I believe basketball is free, and bowling is pretty cheap ($3 a game. Plus on lots of days there is one free game!). It’s a great place to go if you have free time and wanna do something fun with friends!

Positive experience: Convenient gym. As an overview: There is a free weight area, ~10 treadmills, ~15 ellipticals, 4 stepper machines, and several stationary bikes (with 2 special ones where you can chase the dragon). The free weight area is small but there is space enough. There are 4 free-weight benches, 2 squat racks, and 1 bench press. There is also a repertoire of machines and a cable machine as well. The stretch / mat area is also small but there is one. There are small lockers for your personal belongings inside the fitness center itself. The music they play is sometimes boring, basically the same pop songs every day. One thing to consider is the time that you go... this is a university gym so expect it to be crowded with undergraduates at certain times of the day. It is quite empty during the summer, though. This gym is strangely silent. I don't think I've spoken 5 sentences to anyone here in the 8 months I've been going.