Blink Fitness

I have been going to Blink Astoria for about 4 months now and I am so happy I joined!
The manager David Aigen and the staff are exceptionally friendly and welcoming every time I walk in or have a question. The ambiance is always positive and uplifts you no matter what! Its such a lively and energetic gym with constant movement that I am so shocked at how clean and neat it stays.
I am not really a gym person but after joining Blink and training with Saquan I feel so motivated to continue on this healthy lifestyle. Saquan is a great trainer and I am learning a lot about different body strength techniques and exercises. Definitely worth the money!

I’ve been to several Blinks, and this is by far the worst. The layout of this gym is awkward, the free weights section is always a mess, and there never seems to be a water fountain where you need one, but I could live with those issues. Why two then? It’s dirty — especially the men’s locker room. I couldn’t give this place one star because no matter how bad a Blink Fitness gets it’s still better than the best Planet Fitness.

Miss my old gym. Small, stinky all machines always being used up. Not enough small Dumbbells but what do you expect for 20buvks a mnts

I have been attending this gym for about a year and I have to say that I am not satisfied with it. Manager David Aigen whom I approached one day and asked him nicely if there is something that they can do about people using the machines for over thirty minutes knowing there is one per gym. His response was unfortunately there is nothing that can be done and if there was just like on the streets where there are signs which say no parking people don’t follow them and then he smiled. That was not a response I would think a professional manager would say to a gym member.
I just walked away and even my friend whom was with me could not believe his response.
For the past couple of days there have been no wipes anywhere within the gym to clean off the machines. When my friend approached David and asked if he could get paper towels or wipes he stated we have them but we haven’t put them in the dispensers and smiled. The machines have sweat stains, making them not want to be used. There should be staff wiping them off frequently instead of having 3 of them stand in the front doing nothing. One of the staff members that was standing with David gave my friend a dirty paper towel and said use this for the wiping of the machine. How disgusting is that and to have the dignity to give a dirty paper towel to a gym member. As a popular and well known gym I would expect more from the staff. I have seen others complain about this as well.

I am a very loyal Blink customer and will recommend it to anyone, no matter the location. I have been to many different locations in NYC/​NJ and am always really happy with the customer service. Blink staff — especially in the Astoria location — always go out of their way to help you, even with the little things such as lending you a lock if you’ve forgotten yours or giving you directions to places in the area.
I came in for a personal training consultation w/​Leander who specializes in weight lifting and nutrition. He is extremely motivating, passionate about his clients, and is super knowledgeable about fitness in general. I have yet to ask him a question that he didn’t know the answer to, or at least wasn’t willing to find out the answer to immediately.
The best part about working with Leander is that he seems to know intuitively what his clients are looking for. I never had to explain what kind of results I wanted — he just «got» it immediately and helped me get to work. Of course, communication is key when working with a trainer, but there’s also something special about a trainer who is so in tune with what potential clients are looking for. Needless to say I bought a package with him and always look forward to our workouts — and definitely recommend him to any and all!
In general the gym itself is generally pretty crowded, but always clean and manageable. The layout is nice and pretty big compared to other locations in the city. But the huge selling point is the employees themselves!

I am relieved to say I finally found the gym I have been looking for.
I have been a member of NYSC (frequenting many locations), Planet Fitness and now Blink.
Blink is super clean, friendly staff, CHEAP!, enough machines and doesn’t smell!
There are no frills like steam room or sauna, no towels or group classes. But for me, I prefer to go to boutique style group training such as actual yoga studios or actual bootcamp gyms, so to have a gym just to get a quick workout in for $ 15 is well worth it. I’ve attended group trainings at some of the nicest full-​gyms, and still prefer boutique studios anyway.
The crowd is fine– not too meat-​heady and also, everyone looks like they either want to be in shape or are in shape, so no one super sloppy and no one overly cocky. There are some kids there, I think maybe the age is 16 to get in? But I don’t mind it, never had an issue.
I’ve had personal training here and it was affordable and I definitely saw the difference! They work it out for you so you could do half out sessions instead of hour sessions which honestly, is too long for me :)
Only reason it’s not 5 stars for me is the stretch area is just not big enough. Especially on weekends and during peak hours, there’s really only one area to stretch and it is hard to find a spot to be comfortable.
There’s a few corners that I believe they could turn into 2^nd stretch areas, so until they do — I can’t give you 5 stars!

Easily the worst gym I’ve ever been to and I’ve been to quite a few. Weights all over the place. This gym is saturated with high schoolers that don’t know a thing or take lifting serious. Curling in the squat rack, weights all over the place… selfies galore. A disaster. If you go for the cardio equipment, your fine… anything else, don’t go here

They are promoting that there’s no commitment at all, but when you try to end up the membership, they will force you to pay additional 1.5 month says that’s final pro-​rate, which doesn’t make sense at all.
They don’t even mention that there’ll be a pro-​rate period to charge you in the end no matter when the membership is up. What the most absurd thing is that I’ve told the staff I don’t want any commitment contract that’s why I was introduced to sign up an expensive one.

This place is a disorganized mess. I received a free training session when I originally signed up. I scheduled a time, showed up, and lo and behold, the trainer never showed. The gym didn’t even have the trainer’s phone number to call him and see what was going on! I waited and waited, and they assigned me to a different trainer, who was definitely there at this time. I just had to wait an additional 15 minutes. For whatever reason, he didn’t show up either. I had to go back to work, but the woman at the front desk was nice enough to give me a few free training sessions for the mishap. When I returned though, the manager said giving free sessions was against their policy and took them away. My advice — skip this gym all together.

I have been a member of this gym for several months now.
I joined this gym because I needed to find a treadmill for the cold weather season.
The price for this gym is only 10 – 15 bucks a month, please remember this is what you pay and don’t expect Equinox.
With that said it is a great value. As I mentioned I only joined to use the treadmill and I have never had to wait for a treadmill. They have other cardio machines which I use infrequently and have never had to wait for those either. Whenever I am on a machine I do notice that the free weights and bars are heavily used. I will say this gym is clean and I have no complaints in reference to that.
All in all this is a good value for what you pay for.

Advantages:
Really like this gym overall. Facilities are great. Large open space with exposed piping, high ceilings, and colorful walls. Clean and spacious locker rooms. Machines all new-​looking. You can bring a guest in with you for free. Prices are very affordable.
Disadvantages:
I didn’t like the layout of this particular Blink gym. Half the weight machines were downstairs and the other half upstairs. Inconvenient when I’m trying to do all my weights-​related training at once. They don’t have my preferred brand of elliptical Precor, only Life Fitness. (They do have some Precor adaptive motion trainers, the machines where you can adjust the stride.) And the biggest reason I gave this gym 3 stars is there is no wi-​fi! For me this is a deal-​breaker because I don’t want to use all my data to watch movies or stream music while I work out.

Great place for me ! I work across the street and the staff leaves me alone !
It has all the necessities I need, can’t ask for anything more !

Ok first off, this gym is $ 15-​$ 25 a month. Stop complaining. If you want a high quality gym, go pay for it.
Now to my review… when it gets crowded, it gets CROWDED. Not Blink’s fault, but still. It can definitely put a downer on your workout waiting for weights, or feel like you’re being rushed off one machine to another when others are waiting. I do think they could’ve removed some cardio machines for free weights… but I digress.
As an earlier review stated, if you come here during non-​peak hours, it’s a pretty good work out. The air doesn’t feel sweaty, and you feel pretty good with just enough people working out near you, but not a lot where you feel claustrophobic.
Bathrooms and areas are pretty clean, but that may be more of a reflection of the neat and tidy cliental than the staff itself.
Why 3 stars? Its good, not the best, not the worst. I keep going back, so that says something right?

$ 15 Bucks a month, how can you go wrong! Gym is well maintained with plenty of space, 2 floors of cardio & weights. There is a small mat area for stretching & abs. Street metered parking located right outside the gym.
Majority of the members & staff mind there own business, witch is a plus. I frequent this gym often in the mornings, it has never been crowded another huge PLUS!

I love coming to blink! The environment is good love the atmosphere, Everyone is nice and caring. Trainers good and professional .
A big thanks to my trainer Mr. Gerald Gomez for his best workout!

This isn’t my *favorite* blink local, BUT it’s the closest to my bf’s house so I go fairly regularly and it’s close enough that on the weekends when I am totally uninspired to venture out of Astoria, (and why would one need to venture out of queens on the weekend) I will actually GET to the gym! It’s relatively clean, but it doesn’t have wifi like other locations! booooo
The staff seems uninspired and more than once one of the guys has been at the check in desk eating dunkin donuts… not helpful when I am trying to be willful and skinny…
a couple of the lockers in the woman’s locker room have been busted for awhile and towards the end of the day the bathrooms look a little rough. Also, the squat racks always have a line booooo.
other than that, I wish they had better channels on the individual cardio machines, but I am embarrassed to put that in a review for a gym as I should probably be more concerned with working out than watching tv. so lets pretend I didnt say that. :)

I’ve tried a few gyms in Queens and LI over the last few years and I have to say, I’m not disappointed here. Let me clarify– I needed a basic gym with working, clean equipment and no hassle. This fits the bill. The location is amazing. It’s literally at the entrance of the R train station. If that’s your train, this is gold.
I don’t expect top-​notch service for under $ 20/​m, so no surprise that the staff here are not helpful, and not even friendly at that. But again, that doesn’t matter to me.
I hear it gets crowded here, but the first time I went was early on a Saturday around 11 and it wasn’t that bad. I’ve been to plenty of gyms where you have to sign up and wait 20 minutes to use a machine. That’s beyond lame! This, I can handle. People don’t bother you, you don’t bother them. (I guess that included the employees as well. haha)
Besides working machines, ventilation is key. I need to be able to breath non-​contaminated air (i.e. not the person next to me’s stank sweat breath/​BO, thank you very much). Ok it’s not really contaminated as much as it is just not pleasant, but Blink does a fine job of keeping the clean air going.
Yes, you get what you paid for– a no frills gym. If you want to pay the same and go to a less clean, more crowded and pretty much smellier gym… by all means– it’ll free up more machines here.
Overall I’m happy here and plan to keep coming back. I actually like this location better than the Jackson Heights location.

At this point it’s safe to say that half the neighborhood works out here. I often run into friends working out every week. Since most of us work 9 – 5 hours, the gym is insanely packed after 6pm but thankfully begins to slow down around 9pm during the week.
The machines and equipment are still great but the locker room quickly becomes disgusting during this rush hour. I almost thought I was in Planet Fitness for a moment *cringes*
On a plus side, the free training session is absolutely worth it. Trainers are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their job. I took advantage of my free session and finally learned all about lifting with good form and how to work all those confusing cable machines. Blink offers affordable training sessions and just started offering all level aerobic classes at a decent rate too.
Still a great value and locations are opening up just about everywhere. Just stay clean!

Environment: ⁴⁄₅
Employees: ¹⁄₅
Cost: ⁴⁄₅
Accessibility: ⁴⁄₅
Total: ¹⁷⁄₂₀
Synopsis: I called, in advance, to see if they had kettle bells. The heaviest they had was 18 lbs. Strike 1. The person on the phone was rude and hasty, as if they were «so busy.» #basic But even after all of this, I decided to go down anyway and check it out. It is an extra 5 – 10 minute walk for me to get here, in comparison to New York Sports Club.
Upon entrance, the personal trainer was at the front desk. What are you doing? I asked him if there was a guest pass so I may check the gym out. He said…“maybe there is one…” Omg, are you serious! If you don’t know what you are doing, why are you even on the frontline? Talk to the hand! Someone who knew what they were doing finally stepped to the plate and assisted me. But. she had a nasty attitude/​demeanor. Yea, I am done with this. F this noise!
Environment: This place is 5x nicer than the crap hole Planet Fitness. However, I wasn’t able to really «assess» the place as I didn’t pass the front desk to look around. But from what I saw, it looked pretty good. I would have stayed here if the people weren’t so douchie.
Employees: Explained in the synopsis. Bad customer service. Do you know who I am? Zero stars!
Cost: $ 20 a month isn’t bad at all, if you ask me. Just do not go out one day out of the week, so you can pay for your membership. That easy.
Accessibility: For me, it is more out of my way, but if you have access to the R train, this would probably be your better bet! Walking from the N/​Q train can take about 5 – 15 minutes, depending on what stop you get off.

Another update after 6months.
The cleaning is getting better but i do not understand their way of cleaning…
I was very irritated by the way they were dusting the machines.
How? You would ask me. And i will tell you.
They are dusting while people are working out… Dusting RIGHT NEXT TO THE MACHINES you are on or even your machine sometimes!
I don’t get it. While working out, you are breathing heavier than ever. And to dust while people are going to breath it in more, isn’t it a common sense to try to AVOID dusting the machines that are being USED?
I don’t get why they DO NOT HAVE a schedule in cleaning or clean when they close or before opening… Why is cleaning and HEAVY DUSTIG going on while people are crowded at the gym?
I took some photos.
If you see it carefully, the dust stick has chunks of dust… It seems like they never clear out the dust stick as well. So over and over we are breathing in.
But besides from that, people are considerate and machines work well.
Yes, it is an affordable gym. But at the end of the day, people come here to work out. Certain things should be common sense and a priority when it comes to maintaining a gym.