Finding the perfect gym in Toronto can be challenging, especially with so many options to choose from. Whether you’re looking to build muscle and fitness, improve your cardio, reduce pain through exercise, or become part of a fitness community, the best gyms in Toronto offer unique features that make them stand out from the rest, no matter what each one’s specialty might be.
In this blog, we’ll explore five key attributes that top-rated fitness centers in the city consistently provide. These essential elements help to ensure a world-class gym experience that helps you reach your fitness goals. If you’re searching for a gym that meets your specific needs, read on to discover what sets the best gyms in Toronto apart!
1. Make sure your gym is clean!
The best gyms in Toronto do their best to ensure you have a clean exercise environment. This means employing the right amount of cleaning staff and systems to suit facility needs as well as creating a culture among members and clients that respects the facility, treats it well and recognizes that there are others who use it and deserve to exercise in a clean environment.
Many gyms in Toronto are notorious for having workout, changeroom, shower and washroom facilities that are far below acceptable levels of cleanliness. Owners and managers of the best gyms in Toronto realize that skimping on the supplies and staff necessary to maintain an appropriate level of cleanliness is unwise, and that the cost-savings in the moment from doing so are eroded far-too-soon by the reputational damage done by unkempt, unclean, unsafe space.
The very best gyms in Toronto go a level above, enforcing the role of cleanliness to all team members and gym members, creating a culture that both respects the gym space and its clients.
2. The best Toronto gyms build community
Another prominent feature of the best gyms in Toronto is the sense of community they carry. While the idea of “community” often involves events and deliberate efforts to engage members in fun activities, really, community starts way before that.
Community means telling members “You belong here!” in all of gym operations. This looks like things such as:
- fostering a safe, friendly and accepting environment;
- staff members being willing, open and happy to tend to clients’ and members’ needs to the best of their abilities; and,
- being open to addressing clients’ and members’ concerns, and learning from them to help the gym become the best exercise environment it can be.
- A space that welcomes and supports members of all ages and fitness levels.
Community also lies in the simple things, like people across staff and members knowing each others’ names and making the standards of behaviour for staff and members alike open and accessible to anyone who wants to know them. You are likely to find that the best gyms in Toronto have community embedded into how they operate implicitly in addition to the efforts they make to engage members, clients and staff in special community-building events.
3. Team competence
This is a big one. In some ways, it is the biggest factor that separates the best gyms in Toronto (or any city) from the rest. Competent team members working on site – personal trainers, member sales people, group fitness instructors, managers – makes a huge difference in separating great gym experiences from good, mediocre or bad ones.
In our view, competence in your gym looks like 3 things:
- knowing what you’re doing in member / client service and exercise;
- conveying experience and guidance while doing it to help members and clients solve their exercise problems; and,
- delivering it in a way that lets every gym client and gym member know that they have been heard, that they matter and that they are getting more than their money’s worth in their exercise experiences.
In this context, true competence puts the member or client at the centre of the service. Whether it’s matching him or her with the right Personal Trainer or Group Fitness class / instructor, carrying out the actual exercise service, or simply listening in an active, deliberate way to determine whether or not the gym is the right place for the person to be (ie. honestly answering the question: “Can you help me solve my exercise problem?”) competence is likely the largest factor that separates the best gyms in Toronto from the rest.
4. A focus on exercise
You can read this as “concentration on exercise”. Seeing that you might wonder, doesn’t every gym focus on exercise?
Allegedly, yes. In reality, no.
Many gyms have alternate focuses, with exercise as a side-dish. Full disclosure here: this comes with the idea that exercise must produce health. If your physical activity comes with a significant risk of producing injury, then it is no longer exercise. That is not to say that it is bad or wrong – maybe some good quality exercise at a top-tier gym could help prepare (or repair) you for such activity. Whatever your goal is, go for it!
However, the best gyms in Toronto concentrate on exercise that produces health and helps your body function better in a holistic way. Competition, mandated intensity, an inappropriate social scene on the gym floor and other focuses serve to detract from the kind of high-quality, healthy exercise that the best gyms in Toronto have to offer.
5. Care for gym members
The amount of care that is evident in the best gyms in Toronto certainly sets them apart from the rest. While no person or place is perfect, the best gyms in Toronto do their best to intervene in issues that would negatively affect member and client experiences before they happen, or else respond to them in the timeliest and most effective ways possible.
On the other side of that coin, it also looks like creating above-and-beyond exercise experiences proactively and whenever possible. This looks like doing things such as:
- Responding to member feedback in a way that addresses any raised concerns and adapting from such experiences to ensure that they do not repeat.
- Effectively dealing with members who, knowingly or unknowingly, have a negative affect on the facility (eg. they behave inappropriately or have bad hygiene practices).
- Giving genuine thanks in words, actions and tokens of gratitude for referrals and continued business for long-term members.
- Continuously investing back into the facility to make sure that the equipment, amenities and overall exercise experience are continually being progressed to create the best member experience possible.
At Striation 6, we strive to live up to these standards and would love the opportunity to show you why we are one of the best gyms in Toronto. If you are new to exercise or are otherwise interested in checking us out, click here to leave us your contact information and one of our team members will reach out to you within one business day. We hope to have the opportunity to help you feel, function, look and live better through exercise.
Diamond-Level Toronto Personal Trainer & Co-Founder of Striation6
I help people experiencing pain and who might confused or concerned about how to exercise in safe, effective manner using Muscle System Work and providing customized, fun and effortful exercise that makes bad stuff in your body feel better and the good stuff feel great.
As the founder of Striation 6 and an Exercise Professional with more than 20 years of experience, it is important to me that I set the example of our Mission: to help as many people as possible feel, function, look and live better through exercise.