What Makes a Good Gym? Gym Etiquette Matters More Than You Think

BAK TOO SKOOL!

You wouldn’t accept basic standards being missed at your kids school – you shouldn’t expect them to slide at your gym either

You noticed that abysmal spelling, didn’t you?

Of course you did. Because standards matter.

And while we’re not going to start correcting anyone’s spelling at Real World Fitness, September and the back to school, post-summer rush seems like a good time to talk about some of the standards that make a gym a genuinely good place to train.

Not just how many treadmills it has (we have 3) and not whether the dumbbells go up to 50kg or 60kg (ours to 55kg). Not the colour of the lighting, the number of followers it has on Instagram or whether there’s a machine specifically designed to train the lower-left-hand corner of your right glute.

We’re talking about what should be the fairly basic stuff, that is usually ignored by the big gyms.

Putting weights away. Not occupying three pieces of equipment at once when the gym is busy. Being aware that other people are training around you. Not treating the gym as your personal film studio. Looking after the equipment. And generally behaving like you’re an intelligent human sharing a space with other humans.

None of this sounds particularly exciting, and maybe a couple of decades ago, didn’t even really need talking about, but spend enough time training in bigger gyms and you realise it makes an enormous difference.

A Good Gym Isn’t Just a Collection of Equipment

Equipment obviously matters.

We’ve spent years building the equipment selection at Real World Fitness and we’ll continue adding to it. We want good racks, good benches, enough plates, sensible machines and enough variation that people can train properly.

But equipment alone doesn’t make a good gym.

You could put £500,000 worth of equipment into a building and still create a horrible place to train if nobody can actually get on any of it.

That’s where gym culture starts to matter.

If someone is sitting on the only piece of equipment you need for twenty minutes scrolling through their phone, it doesn’t particularly matter how expensive that machine was. If every bench has a bag, bottle and hoodie sitting on it while its owner is doing something somewhere else, having plenty of benches doesn’t help much either.

And if you have to unload someone else’s plates before you can start your own exercise, that’s not really an equipment problem at all.

It’s a standards problem.

Most Gym Etiquette Is Just Basic Consideration

There are lots of supposed rules about gym etiquette online, and some of them get unnecessarily complicated.

We don’t think it needs to be. Most of it comes down to being reasonably considerate.

If you’ve finished with something, put it back.

If somebody is obviously waiting for a piece of equipment, don’t spend ten minutes sitting on it looking at your phone between sets.

If you’re using several pieces of equipment at once, be prepared to let somebody else work in.

If you’ve left a bench covered in sweat, give it a wipe.

If somebody is halfway through a heavy set, don’t walk six inches in front of them.

And if you’re filming yourself, remember that everyone else in the gym hasn’t automatically agreed to appear in your video.

None of those things should require a big rulebook. They’re simply what happens when considerate people remember that a gym is a shared environment.

Busy Doesn’t Always Mean Better

There’s an odd assumption in the fitness industry that a packed gym must be a successful gym.

Commercially, perhaps it is.

RWF – a calm, uncrowded Nottingham gym – even at peak times

From the point of view of the person actually trying to train, we’re less convinced. There is obviously going to be some waiting in any gym occasionally. Someone will sometimes be using the bench you want. That’s life. But, there’s a difference between occasionally waiting for equipment and having to redesign your workout every evening because everything is occupied.

If you’ve allowed an hour to train and spend fifteen minutes of it waiting around, that’s a quarter of your session gone.

Do that three times a week and the inconvenience starts adding up.

It’s one of the reasons we’ve deliberately never tried to cram as many memberships as possible into Real World Fitness. We absolutely could sell more memberships. If we dropped our price from the current £45 to £30, we’d double our membership within weeks. And I’d hate it, and you’d hate it.

We choose not to. We’d rather have a gym where the people paying to use it can actually train.

Your Phone Isn’t the Problem

Phones get blamed for a lot of bad gym etiquette, but we don’t think phones themselves are the issue.

Most of us use them while training.

Your programme might be on your phone. You might be recording your weights. You might change your music between sets. You might reply to a message. Nobody cares. I often work between sets, replying to clients or potential customers, or tweaking things for articles etc.

The problem is when a two-minute rest becomes twelve minutes while somebody disappears down an Instagram rabbit hole with no awareness that another person is waiting.

The same applies to filming. Recording a lift to check technique can be genuinely useful. Plenty of our members do it, but there’s a big difference between briefly recording your own set and arranging tripods across a walkway while everyone else tries to navigate around you.

Again, it’s not really a rule about phones, it’s consideration.

Put Your Weights Away

We probably can’t write an article about gym etiquette without mentioning this one.

Just one example of how leaving a bar loaded could render it useless for a newer, older, or weaker lifter.

Put your weights away. Now, at RWF we don’t really have this problem. I can’t remember the last time anyone had to unload someone else’s squat or deadlift. It just doesn’t happen here because we’ve set that standard so high, it’s genuinely a stand-out thing if anyone does it.

I train at a couple of other venues too (a change of venue when you’ve been working in your own gym for 12hrs is needed sometimes!) and it’s no exaggeration to say I can spend 10 minutes tidying the gym before I start. That’s poor.

We don’t just keep the gym tidy because gym owners enjoy looking at beautifully organised weight trees.

It’s because the next person might not be able to move what you’ve left behind.

Leaving four 20kg plates on a leg press might not seem like a big deal if you’re strong enough to move them easily. For an older member, a beginner or somebody training around an injury, removing those plates can be harder than the exercise they came to perform. You might have actually prevented someone else from working out.

There’s also a practical point. If plates are left everywhere, nobody knows what’s actually being used.

A tidy gym isn’t about being obsessive. It simply makes the gym easier for everyone to use.

Good Gym Culture Isn’t About Being Intimidating

For years, some gyms almost took pride in being intimidating.

They were serious gyms for serious trainers. New people were expected to somehow work everything out themselves and avoid getting in anybody’s way while they did it.

We don’t think that produces a particularly good training environment.

Experienced lifters and complete beginners can train perfectly happily in the same gym.

Someone squatting 200kg doesn’t need to be bothered by somebody learning to squat with an empty bar next to them. The beginner doesn’t need to feel as though they’re trespassing in somebody else’s territory either. Most experienced gym users are actually extremely helpful when the environment encourages that.

A nod, a smile, moving a bag out of someone’s way or answering a quick question about whether you’re finished with a bench doesn’t cost anything.

Those tiny interactions are what create a gym where people feel comfortable.

Standards Work Both Ways

There’s another side to this.

A gym can’t demand good standards from its members while ignoring its own.

Equipment should work. Things should be reasonably clean. Broken equipment shouldn’t sit around indefinitely (that’s a tough one, if you’ve ever tried to order parts!).

The gym shouldn’t sell so many memberships that people can’t train, and if someone repeatedly behaves in a way that makes the gym unpleasant for everybody else, the gym needs to be prepared to deal with it.

Rules written on a wall don’t create culture, but what a gym tolerates creates culture.

We’ve occasionally had to have awkward conversations with people over the years. We’d rather do that than have dozens of other members quietly become irritated by behaviour that should have been dealt with.

Fortunately, those conversations are rare, and most people are perfectly reasonable.

The Best Gym Might Be the One You Barely Notice

A really good gym session can be surprisingly uneventful.

You arrive.

The equipment you need is available.

You train. People around you are friendly without bothering you.

Nobody is trying to turn the place into a nightclub or a film set.

You finish your session and go home.

Nothing particularly exciting happened. A gym is ultimately somewhere you go to train. Everything about the environment should make doing that easier rather than harder.

Gym Etiquette at Real World Fitness Nottingham

Real World Fitness is a small independent 24-hour gym in Nottingham, and we’ve deliberately chosen not to become a high-volume gym.

Our membership numbers are capped because we want members to be able to use the equipment they’re paying for.

We have people training with us who have lifted weights for decades alongside people who had never touched a barbell before walking through our door. We have younger members, older members, competitive lifters and people who simply want to stay strong enough to keep doing the things they enjoy.

They don’t all train in the same way. They don’t need to. The important bit is that everybody gets to train in an environment where they’re treated with a little consideration.

Put your weights away. Look after the equipment. Be aware of the people around you. Say hello occasionally. Maybe even smile at each other.

Basic stuff, really.

Want to Try Real World Fitness?

If you’re thinking about changing gyms in Nottingham, you can try Real World Fitness free for seven days before deciding whether it’s right for you.

Your first visit is by appointment so we can show you around properly, explain how everything works and make sure you know where everything is. After that, you’ll have 24-hour access during your trial.

Come in, have a few normal workouts and see what the gym is actually like to use.

No crowds. No pressure. Just great training.

If you’re in Nottingham and thinking about working with a personal trainer, this is the perfect opportunity to see what professional coaching can do.

Book your FREE personal training session and discover how expert guidance, a structured plan and genuine accountability can help you build strength, improve your fitness and achieve lasting results.

There’s no pressure and no hard sell. Just the opportunity to experience personal training for yourself, ask questions and see how we work.

After one session, you’ll know whether we’re the right gym, the right coach and the right approach for you.