Spindles

I’ve recently joined the Spindles Gym, and whilst it will never win any awards for style (or for its changing rooms), it’s really not a bad little place.
For the low low price of £20 per month, you get to play about with a really nice range of up-​to-​date equipment, including numerous cardio machines and a wide array of weights. Plus, from my first impressions, it seems to be the gym of choice for a wide range of people — from housewives and bus drivers to students, meaning you won’t be made to feel inferior by a load of model-​esque sculpted gym bunnies when you pull your flabby form onto a treadmill (or at least, this has been the case in my experience anyway).
The Spindles Gym also appears to have a decent sized pool, a sauna and (rather pleasingly) a steam room, so you can sit and blast all of the crap out of your pores whilst listening to their piped CD of various Liverpudlian bands Greatest Hits. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that Spindles is possibly the only place you’ll be treated to Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘Killing Moon’ whilst you’re on the cross trainer.
Rather intriguingly, Spindles also offers something called a ‘Russian Shower’ on their leaflets. I’ve yet to discover what this is, but preliminary queries appear to suggest that it involves having a bucket of freezing cold water thrown over you by an overweight and decidedly grumpy slavic person. So you might want to avoid that.

Spindles Liverpool is based in the basement area beneath the landmark Adelphi Hotel. I joined this gym as a student and I’ve stuck with it for four years. The swimming pool is only half size and the equipment is fairly limited, however there is a great community atmosphere on this gym, unrivalled by some of the big name gyms in Liverpool.
Although the gym is fairly small, it has running machines, cross trainers, a free weight and machine weight area, a sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi. You can purchase protein shakes and smoothies, you can also attend plenty of classes such as Pilates and Yoga as part of your membership. You can opt for a personal trainer if necessary for motivation once or twice a week.
Membership is inexpensive, paying £30 for six weeks as a student membership! The staff are excellent, when I joined they wrote me a full training programme as part of my induction and have been nothing but helpful ever since. The location is also brilliant, being bang in the centre of town!
I would recommend going in the daytime if you want to spend a long time on the machines, as the gym busies up between 6−9pm! Or get there when they open at 7am Mon-​Fri if you want the gym/​pool pretty much to yourself!

Spindles Health and Leisure Club is by far the cleanest place in The Adelphi Hotel — this may not seem like much of a boast, considering the general state of the rest of the building, but actually, it’s really not that bad in there.
There’s a wide range of equipment, both cardio and weights, as well as a sauna, jacuzzi and the gem of a pool tucked away to one side. It’s not a big pool, and it doesn’t have a deep end, but it is usually kept at a nice temperature and is very rarely so full that you can’t actually get some lengths in. For an added bonus, there’s a great big plaster copy of the Venus De Milo at one end, and rumour has it that it used to be the turtle tank when the hotel used to make it’s own turtle soup.
The showers are passable, although if you are in there first thing in the morning, you do sometimes need to remind them to turn the hot water on. And every couple of months, for reasons which still escape me they swap the changing rooms around for a couple of days — presumably so the men get to appreciate that a changing room needn’t smell like ‘that’ and have a genuine excuse for ‘accidentally’ walking into a room full of naked women.
In general, the staff (bless ‘em) are not the sharpest tools in the box. They’re usually friendly enough, but given the wages/​staff conditions in the hotel I wouldn’t expect them to go the extra mile for you.
So to sum up, considering it is run by Britannia, it’s astonishing how good it is. But if you are after a central, no frills, clean, good value gym, with a pool, it’s worth checking out.