EP Fitness - Montwood 11705 Montwood Drive, El Paso, TX 79936

"I recently moved from Dallas to the El Paso area. I have been a gym rat for many years since the mid 1990's. I was a member of several gyms over the years including Bally Total Fitness, Blast Fitness as well as LA Fitness where I was a member for 10 years before I left Dallas. I had to cancel my membership since there are no LA Fitness locations in El Paso. I have been looking for a gym. Although I use to lift heavier weights when I was younger I am not necessarily interested in a power lifting gym. I would be content with something similar to LA Fitness. Since I live in Horizon City there aren't many options close to where I live that are affordable or don't require long commitments to join. Planet Fitness is about $10 per month but they have virtually no free weights and that is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to perform bench press & squat on a smith machine. So I decided to try out EP Fitness at the Montwood location since that is the closest one to me. It seems to be similar to LA Fitness and only $10/month. After setting up a 7 day free pass to try out the gym I came in this morning. About 30 minutes into my workout one of the associates informed me I could not have my gym bag on the floor. I had a small gym bag and it was under the bench I was using. I have carried a bag at many gyms to hold my towel, wallet & phone. I prefer not to leave my belongings in a car or the locker room. In past experiences at other gyms I have had my belongings stolen out of the locker room even when the locker was secured with a lock. I have also had the unfortunate experience of having my car broken into at the parking lot of other gyms. These unpleasant experiences have made me a bit paranoid. I prefer to carry my phone, wallet & towel in a small gym bag. It's unfortunate your company has this policy. You cannot guarantee my possessions will be safe in your locker room. You also cannot guarantee my car won't be broken into. I don't believe a small gym bag is unreasonable to have with me while I am in the weight room. Further at the time I initially spoke with the employee who signed me up for the 7 day pass she never advised me about this policy. Aside from this bad policy I would like to point out the weight room is disorganized. While I understand employees can't constantly watch how gym patrons treat the equipment or rack the weights it is sad to see how the dumbbells are so haphazardly placed as to make it hard to locate the weight I am seeking. I would find one 20lb dumbbell and then had to locate another 20lb dumbbell on the other side of the rack. I could never find a pair of 30lb dumbbells which I wanted to use for certain exercises. It seems many of the dumbbells were missing. In addition to this there were no safety collars for the barbells. I searched across the entire weight floor and found none. This is potentially dangerous in situations where a lifter is using heavier weight & needs the collars to secure the plates. As far as the locker rooms are concerned the lockers are the cheap wooden variety that can easily be broken. So using a lock is a moot point. All in all I can say after only using one of the 7 free days allotted I will not be coming back. I understand the old adage you get what you pay for at only $10 per month. But even at $10 per month your company should do better. There should be complete gym equipment. Missing dumbbells & collars is unacceptable. A senseless policy not allowing a gym bag on the floor next to the piece of equipment a patron is using is entirely unreasonable. Driving 24 miles round trip, or more depending on traffic, from Horizon City just doesn't make sense given the above noted conditions."

"Would give 0 stars if I could. Signed up alongside a couple other mom friends cause of the deal with the daycare. The first day was already a red flag because they wouldn’t let my preteen daughter carry her baby sister. Siblings aren’t allowed to help with siblings. The second day they changed rules that kids can’t have Any of their own toys or even their phones. Like our kids have their phones for safety reasons. I don’t want them with strangers without a phone. Even a daycare. They need to be able to call me immediately if they ever feel uncomfortable. Also they told us on day 1 that we could keep a sleeping baby in their car seat out on the floor with us away from the equipment. Then on day 2 they said no. The third day they insisted on taking a sleeping baby out of the car seat in order to do a neck strength test. When we told them that if they pick him up and wake him he’ll cry the whole time and we won’t be able to work out they said it’s policy and has to to be done. I asked if they are medical doctors to be performing tests on a baby they said no. So are y’all illegally practicing medicine in there too? Also we asked why it wasn’t done on the first day and they just said “sorry they should have done it” even though it was the same lady before! Lastly they’re missing equipment, many machines are broken, and they have it advertised that certain amenities are available that don’t exist. There’s no toys or games in the kid zone, no theater room as advertised, no game consoles as advertised, it’s basically a big empty room with a tv. And the lady in there named Olivia is extremely rude and condescending. The people running this place are clowns that like changing rules and making parents’ life difficult. Don’t waste your time or money. Pick somewhere else that actually values customers."

"I love this gym location, but I would like to see changes in some things. First the temperature control in the gym, it literally feels they have the heater on specially in this hot summer. Secondly the old weights that you have to grip really tight to put in the squad bar, the other ones that have three access holes to grip them from are better and less dangerous from dropping on our feet. Lastly I would charge the rock music playlist the put while we work out specially the heavy metal rock music it’s super annoying."

"To sad you won’t allow kids to workout based on their size. Also last time I came restroom are still gross and some machine don’t work."