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Gym and swimming pool

Radworth Leisure Centre

By the Thornyholt Roundabout

A woman in black gym kit between sets at a squat rack loaded with orange-ringed bumper plates, in a dark gym with an orange stripe round the walls and SWEAT IS JUST YOUR FAT CRYING painted across the back wall.

Radworth Leisure Centre does two things, one on each floor. Downstairs is the swimming pool. Upstairs is Garage Gym, done in the style of the budget chains: black walls, a black ceiling hung with LED battens, orange as the only accent colour, and slogans painted big enough to read from the far end of a treadmill.

The floor is laid out in zones. Ten treadmills, seven rowers, two leg presses and two chest presses, all of them Garage Gym’s own, and three squat racks on platforms with the bumper plates stacked beside them. Then the dumbbells and benches, a rig, the kettlebells, a strip of green turf with a weighted sled on it, and a mirror wall for anybody who has forgotten why they came.

A dark gym floor with a black ceiling and long light battens, a strip of green turf with a weighted sled on it, a kettlebell rack and plyo boxes, and a long run of windows looking out at a car parts shop across the road.
The sled lane, and the view of Blow Off Autoworks for anybody resting between sets.

The walls do the shouting. SWEAT IS JUST YOUR FAT CRYING runs across the back, NO PAIN NO GAIN goes up by the free weights, and over the dumbbell racks: IF YOU’RE STRONG ENOUGH TO PICK IT UP YOU’RE STRONG ENOUGH TO PUT IT BACK. Out of the long window, Cutshaw & Shutt and Blow Off Autoworks look on from across the road.

It opens at six in the morning and shuts at ten at night. About a quarter of the town are members, forty of them, teenagers and grown-ups, and the busy times are the ones you would guess: seven till eight before work, five till eight after it, and nine till eleven on a weekend morning. Come mid-afternoon and you can have a squat rack to yourself.

The members put the work in. They run on the treadmills, row, press, and squat with the bar across their shoulders, then sit on the bench between sets or stand with their hands on their hips getting their breath back. And they sweat: it beads and runs down their skin, and their kit goes darker in all the places you would expect.

Downstairs, the pool hall has a main pool with lane ropes, starting blocks along one end and ladders down the long sides, a learner pool for the little ones, lights set under the water and seating for anybody watching. The stretching mats upstairs look down on it through the viewing window, and the changing rooms are shared, the way they are at every leisure centre in the country, so the gym crowd and the swimmers queue for the same lockers.

Every lift the members do started as a written description, turned into motion by NVIDIA’s Kimodo and finished in Blender until the hands actually gripped the bar. If you came looking for a gym simulator, this gym is for the town: your own character stays the shape he is.

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