Leaving gyms while wiping sweat from faces and necks may be acceptable for some health club members on occasion. After all, they could be headed home to mow their lawns, or wash their cars or perform some other sweat provoking tasks. However, many members don't care to leave gyms sweaty and won't be caught doing so under any circumstances. These members totally depend on locker room facilities to refresh themselves following their workouts; and therefore, need fitness clubs to provide adequate locker room facilities.
Thing is... health club locker rooms are not home bathrooms and whereas health clubs may be capable of providing enough cardio equipment, weight lifting devices, and classes such as cycling, swimming, and kick boxing, to accommodate a couple hundred members or more at once, locker rooms are only capable of adequately accommodating small portions of these members simultaneously. As a result, members may, at times, find themselves feeling locked in like sardines when utilizing health club locker room facilities. Furthermore, since all health club locker rooms are not created equal, the number of members locker room facilities may accommodate from one location to the next may also vary.
One of the biggest problems with overcrowded locker rooms is seating. Inadequate seating occurs when clubs place benches that seat two people with their bags; or four without their bags, in areas surrounded by twenty to forty lockers. Sudden influxes of members needing to change in one of these locker rooms can send members competing for seats as if they were playing a losing game of musical chairs. Even if clubs have three or four benches per locker room, the most people that could sufficiently seat themselves at a time would be six to twelve. This couldn't be more obvious than when twenty to forty swimmers enter the locker rooms, dripping wet from swimming class; to find less than half of them can seat themselves. Younger health club members finding themselves in this position may not be too annoyed because most of them, having youth and flexibility on their sides, will have no problem standing to dry, lotion, and dress themselves. Thing here is that many elderly people attend swimming classes because water workouts are easier for them than more popular exercises. Many of these club members' lack of youth and agility require them to be able to seat themselves while dressing. Furthermore, the simple act of sitting after a pool workout is a "luxury" many older members look forward to following their workouts. For these reasons, health clubs could better accommodate patrons by providing more benches in order to allow more members needing, or simply wanting, to sit down to be able to do so while utilizing club locker rooms.
Another area in which health clubs could use a bit of improvement is in the number of enclosed shower stalls they provide for patrons. Currently, health clubs may have as few as eight shower stalls available to the same couple of hundred members able to workout at a single location simultaneously. Whereas there are a few showers women can use to rinse off along the wall in areas where they enter and exit pools, these showers are not curtained and therefore not private. This may be okay in the men's room, but since most women prefer to shower in private, health clubs could do to add more enclosed shower stalls so as to allow more women to shower at the same time. This would reduce the occasions in which women must either race for a stall, or wait for a member to vacate a stall, in order to shower.
Fitness clubs could also improve their locker room facilities in the area of hair drying appliances. Some clubs that actually used to provide hair drying appliances for their members have dismounted and removed them forcing women to bring their own or to leave the gym with wet hair. The second option could be very icy on cold winter days.
Taking the appliance provision problem a bit further, even when women plan to use their own equipment at health club locker rooms, they may occasionally have to deal with the fact that the number of electrical outlets clubs provide in locker rooms can only accommodate a few women at a time. As few as two outlets may be offered at vanities where four or more women could use appliances at the same time if more outlets were installed.
The fact that health clubs provide locker rooms to their patrons is definitely a step in the right directions; and the fact that they do provide some seating, showers, outlets, and appliances (at some facilities) is also a step in the right direction. It would be nice; however, if health clubs improved in the number of provisions they offer so as to accommodate their loyal income providing members more efficiently.