City's newest fitness centre aims to provide welcoming environment for the whole family.--PHOTO JUSTIN SEWARD
One of Medicine Hat’s newest fitness centres is not just your everyday come-and-go facility.
The focus of Badlands Training Centre is to create a place where community members and families can gather without having to be rushed out right away.
“This isn’t a gym where you work out and you leave,” said general manager Dallas DeMan. “It’s a gym where you work out and you are welcome to stay.
“We’re not pushing you out the door waiting for the next class to start. We are here to have a smoothie with you afterwards, or you may want to jump on our 40-foot climbing wall.”
The climbing wall has eight routes, each with an auto descent.
“You can climb up, you don’t have to have anyone on belay, which is a climbing term where you’re hooked to a rope. This is an automatic descent where if you let go of the wall, it just brings you down nice and slow.”
DeMan says there is climbing for all ages.
Instructors are also available to teach those climbers who want to advance to the outdoors.
DeMan says someone interested in coming in for fitness activities does not need a specific membership to a yoga class, a spin class, a gym or a climbing wall.
“You just belong to one place and some of the classes,” said DeMan.
A full membership allows access to child-minding, a spin studio, rowing studio, various yoga, a dance workout studio, high and low fit and a POUND workout.
“And that doesn’t include low-intensity training on our main floors,” he said. “On floor one, we have 2,300 square feet to do a low-intensity workout. On floor 2, we have 1,400 square feet. We have 1,500 square feet of turf that (is) bigger than some people’s gyms, (and) you have (a lot) of room to do your own little workout and not bother anyone. Is that concept different? Yeah, I would say it is. There (are) not a lot of gyms like it – it’s really neat, come for a tour and check us out.”
Badlands Fitness Centre also offers a 20-foot-by-20-foot boxing ring on the upper level with trainers.
“One gentleman fights in the Mixed Martial Arts industry and another one is an Olympic boxer,” said DeMan.
“So definitely we have top-level training here and it’s just wonderful. It morphed into that, we didn’t expect to have that built, but when we’ve seen what we can do and the space we had and we we’re like, ‘What are we going to do there?’ It had plans to be something else before and it moved into that.”
DeMan touched on how valuable the training team is to how the gym operates.
“We’re here to improve your life (and) health,” he said.
“We want you come here so you can get up and down the stairs and do the laundry, pick up your grandchildren, be healthy, be fit for life and make it lifestyle.”
DeMan says there is more than 130 years of experience with the Badlands training team, are who all certified.
More information can found at badlandsview.com.
Badlands Training Centre is located at 12 Gehring Rd.
