I can honestly say I have had mixed feelings about Steve's Gym after coming here for about 6 months but overall, it has definitely been a good experience. I was hesitant to sign up because the owner, Steve, does not believe in 'one week trails', but his gym is literally walking distance to my house so I gave it a shot. To be clear, I never signed up for any personal training with Steve, just a membership to use the gym.
First, his gym is a classic (think Arnold and Muscle Beach Era) underground spot to train, which I consider a plus. Although all of the equipment looks as though it is from the 80's (I believe this is when he opened the gym) everything still works and I love the old school bodybuilding posters on the walls.
Second, Steve seems like an OK guy, he's probably never been accused of talking someone's ear off, but he's friendly and knowledgable about training. He runs the place himself and uses the gym for personal training from 10am - 5:30pm on weekdays.
There was only one incident where I wanted to sign up for the semester at URI (he charges $100/semester for students) but there was one month until the next semester began.. so he charged me the full $50 for that month in between. I felt as though he was just trying to squeeze as much as he could out of me (which he succeeded in doing) but I try not hold it against him because I understand he has to pay the bills.
I would have rated Steve's Gym 5 stars because I love the old school theme, and there were literally times (around 6pm) that I could walk to his gym and have the entire place to myself! I loved this part about his gym, but the only reason his gym only deserves 4 stars, in my opinion, is the limited hours of operation. On weekdays he is open from 10am - 8pm, Saturdays he is only open from 10am - 1pm, and he stays closed on Sundays. The weekday schedule was tough for me working until 4pm, usually getting home around 5, and then having to rush to the gym to get a complete workout before the gym closed. Then, it is tough to get in on the weekends because he is only open for 3 hours on Saturday and closed on Sunday.
Overall, I would recommend Steve's Gym to anybody looking for a quiet, local place to train with few distractions as long as you don't need state of the art equipment to work out. ~Superior
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