Sport & Fitness Edge

Expensive, not very clean. Some of the trainers feel the need to completely take over when training. The only gym I have ever repeatedly been asked if I was using the weights or machine while I was in mid rep. This is unacceptable. Etiquette lessons are highly recommended. Pool is highly chlorinated. The only plus for me is some of the trainers are fantastic and they offer a wide variety of classes.

I’ve been a member of the Edge for most of the 10 years or so I’ve lived in Vermont.
I’ve recently started doing the spin classes 3+ times a week at the Essex location. The instructors are supportive, knowledgeable and varietal. The classes are genuinely fun. I haven’t tried the other classes yet but Body Pump looks good.
The gym is everything you’d expect. Equipment is generally in working order, and there is usually a PT available to answer questions.
The pool is the best in the area and not usually too busy. There is a slide, open to members 2 nights a week — you’ll want to avoid those times if you value your sanity! It can get busy and very loud during those times.
There is a climbing wall open two nights a week that offers a fun distraction from the norm, free for members.
If I have one complaint it’s that at certain times of year (winter mostly), the locker rooms get a little grimy and could use more frequent cleaning.
Overall membership is a very good value. Staff have been responsive to suggestions.

This facility could be amazing but the cleanliness is a major issue. I now only use it for swimming but the facility is dirty. It shocks me that the owners don’t understand that one of the foremost issues in a health club is maintenance!!! My advice to the managers would be 1. Do not allow muddy winter boots in the locker rooms or around the pool deck 2. Require everyone to wear a bathing cap in the pool (the clumps ig hair floating by are revolting) 3. Invest in a full time maintenance crew to continuously clean the locker rooms (I often see front desk people in the ladies shower picking up clumps of soapy Dhaka from the drain) professional cleaners are needed. The club needs maintenance (warn carpets, ceiling tiles falling in women’s shower, rust around ladders at pool and dirty pool deck, cruddy dirty lane lines) and 4. Use an automatic pool vacuum every night To pick up hair, band aids, lost gum in pool.

Now that I have been to a few of the group-​fitness classes, I want to raise my rating to 3.5, or even a 4. The instructors here a wonderful.
Now, I do like most group-​fitness classes that involve step or weights or aerobics. Here, they are better than usual. I especially love the «Body Pump» weight class, led by the indefatigable Kim. Kim gives great alignment and posture instruction, and she sings pretty darn well, too.
As a certified yoga instructor, I dread and fear almost all gym yoga. In my many years of going to gyms and doing yoga, I have only found two yoga teachers who both taught in a gym *and* really knew what they were doing. Cat is one of the two.
I am usually appalled by how little the gym-​yoga instructors know and how they never correct their students who are dangerously close to throwing out their backs or damaging their knees. Some of them don’t even look at their students!
But Cat knows her anatomy, she knows her yoga, and she knows her students. I’ve only been a few times, but she knows my tendencies and my weak points. I love how she is mindful of students with special concerns (which she has memorized and never forgets) and gives them special cues or options without making them feel singled out. She is funny, clear, encouraging, and enthusiastic. And she gives fabulous adjustments. She teaches a «gentle» yoga for all levels (yes, even the brand-​new beginner); a more vigorous, flexi «flow» yoga; and, apparently, a kick-​you-​in-​the-​butt power yoga class. (I have only been to the first two. They are both wonderful.)
These instructors are so great, you almost forget how ghetto the building can look…