The Wandering G... 的个人资料The Wandering Gypsy照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
|
7月17日 All I wanna do is spin!!!!I haven’t been to spin class since June 30th, two days before I left for Korea. Things have been chaotic since I arrived! I am only now on the search for a gym where I can continue with my strict, and perhaps obsessive, workout regimen. In Newfoundland I would go to spin class three days a week, yoga twice a week, and I had a personal trainer in addition to that. I am seriously missing that now and my body is definitely feeling the effects of not working out. I don’t have as much energy as I used to and I’m not sleeping as well.
Today I made my first real effort in finding a gym that offers spin class. My old gym in Sungshin Women’s University area, Pop’s Italia Gym, had spin, so I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to find somewhere to go in the Jamsil area. I tried finding their website to see what locations they have in the city but didn’t have much luck. I then asked one of the Korean teaching partners, Lize, to help me. She managed to find a phone number for Pop’s, but they have now closed. She explained to me that spin class is not popular in Korea and that many gyms were going out of business as they were just too expensive for the average Korean to pay for. There used to be a California Fitness chain in Seoul, which offered spin and yoga, along with many other classes. They went bankrupt though and had to refund all of their memberships a few months ago. I will admit, gyms in Korea are costly. I paid $700 for a year membership at Pop’s back in 2005, and that was when there was a special rate for joining. Their normal price was $900 for a year.
Lize told me that there were a couple of smaller gyms in the Jamsil area, but they only had treadmills and a few weight machines; and true to Korean belief that the more you sweat the better your workout will be, no air conditioning. This does not appeal to me in the least.
Lize then started searching on-line and managed to find a gym just up the street from our school called O2Zone. They didn’t offer spin, but they did have many different yoga and aerobics classes, a swimming pool, a large weight area, and several cardio machines. Their membership fee is 1,980,000 won per year (approx $2,000). She even walked with me to the gym just so I could check it out. The gym seemed a little old and I got the celebrity stare when I walked in from all of the Koreans in their matching uniforms. It wasn’t terrible though, so this gym is still a possibility. (Side Note: Gyms in Korea provide you with workout clothes so you don’t have stinky laundry to do at home. I’m pretty sure their uniforms won’t fit me so I stocked up on workout clothes before I left Canada).
We then walked back to the school and Lize mentioned that there was a Bally Total Fitness in Apgujeong, which is a 30 minute subway ride from Jamsil. I started to get my hopes up as she dialed their number as this would mean I would have a spin class. Unfortunately, we discovered that they have now closed.
I have one more option at this point that I will be checking out on Saturday with Lize. DoubleHMG is another gym in the Apgujeong area that has good facilities. They don’t offer spin, but they have Pilates and several other types of classes. It will cost about the same as O2Zone, but a lot of celebrities go there as well. That should make things pretty interesting!
I’ll keep you informed on my never ending quest for fitness in Korea . . .
DoubleHMG http://www.doublehmg.com/ 引用通告此日志的引用通告 URL 是： http://mtchurchill.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C00BC30F2484CFBD!1682.trak 引用此项的网络日志
|
|
|
