Richie’s Gym

This is not Planet Fitness or Blink. It’s dirty and gritty. The sound of steel it’s better than the sound of rubber. Just the place for hardcore bodybuilding. There’s a boxing room as well.

If bodybuilding, powerlifting or just lifting heavy things is something that interests you, this gym is the real deal.
It has one changing room and one shower, very few cardio machines, weights are all over the place and their other locations are extremely spread out about Brooklyn and Queens. However, they have every machine and rack that you’ll need to make gains, and all of it is in fine condition. Many of the people who lift here know what they’re doing.
I cancelled my NYSC gym membership after spending some time here. It works for me.

This is probably one of the dirtiest gyms I have ever encountered. Freezing cold, out dated equipment, disgusting locker rooms and some drop out guys training here who decided to tell my friend who is a professional bodybuilder how she should be training… lol!
The Richie’s group are not known for their frills or cleanliness but this one is on another level.
ringworm is I believe an added extra if you stay too long.

I came back to brooklyn for a visit and wanted a gym that I could go to while I am here. Ritchie’s was the answer. Ritchie’s lets you work out for 5 dollars a day. Beyond perfect. Nothing is fancy here. It is old style brooklyn. There is nothing quite shiny and much of the weight equipment is vintage but it all gets the job done. Love this place and would recommend to anyone visiting or residing that needs a low cost no frills place to sweat.

Been coming here for a while now. You cant beat the prices and the members are just plain motivating. The only reason they only get 4 instead of 5 is because they close too early for me (11pm weekdays, and 6pm weekends, when it should close at 12 am weekdays, and at least 8pm on weekends). Its a serious gym, and non serious ppl should stay out. lol

This gym is for serious lifters.
Nothing there that isn’t needed. It would get 5 stars if the members and employees took better care of their gym. Dumbells and plates are thrown all over the place, pretty unorganized. There are some broken machines downstairs as well.
Other points are that there aren’t many flat benches. Seems like you can drop weights and clang them around and no one really cares. However i’d imagine that you can’t drop weights from over head, I don’t see any bumper plates or anything that would accommodate that.
But in honesty, I like this gym. Full of serious lifters, old equipment, and cheap as hell. 2 months for 40 bux. Thats nuts. If you’re looking for a social gym, this isn’t it. Looking for a zumba/​pilates class? Wrong place. Know what your doing and just want to lift? Perfect.

Its cheap and it has everything. Two floors. Lots of equipment. If you want fancy, go somewhere else!

I awoke the other morning and couldn’t shake the feeling that my life was missing something. Immediately, I set to fill that hole and signed up for foreign language lessons, started shopping organic, mended old wounds with friends and family, and volunteered to clean up the local park. What a waste of time that weekend was! None of these dumb things helped stave that empty feeling.
But lo! What’s this? Returning from the park, I heard an angelic chorus drifting outward from the second story windows of an unfamiliar building; the sounds of men grunting, weights slamming down on the floor, and the top 10 hip-​hop songs of the minute were exactly the things my soul yearned for. I sprinted up the stairs in jubilation, eager to feel whole again, eager to feel like a man with appendages that I could be proud of.
I felt immediately at home at Richie’s, as I’ve always felt like a roided-​out Puerto Rican at heart. Sadly, the rest of me feels like an underweight skeleton-​ghost hybrid. Yes, I am not only the token scrawny guy at this gym but also the token white guy. To that end, I’m proud to diversify the place with my hilarious off-​kilter white boy-​isms, such as being the only person who re-​racks and not slamming my weights down to the floor or bottom of the stack with the sort of triumphant grunts that would make female tennis stars blush. Oh, I’m such a card!
So okay, the etiquette leaves much to be desired, but I must also note that I’ve been approached by other gym-​goers on three separate occasions and given unsolicited bits of workout advice. Yeah yeah, I get it; I’m such a scrawny eye soar that y’all want me to bulk up already so you don’t have to secretly grimace at me anymore. Jerks, all of you! I’ll just have to spite you by showing up 3 times a week and working my ass off for absolutely no gains. That’ll show you!
And furthermore, where are all the women? The guy-​to-​girl ratio is about 50-​to-​1 here, and this is almost a deal-​breaker for me. The main reason I even go to a gym is with the hopes that I’ll get to ogle a sporty babe in spandex straddling the giant blue ball. Half the fun of a workout is angling myself strategically to use 3 mirrors so I can gaze unnoticed while pretending to use the ab coaster.
But hey, the price is good. For a six month membership, I spent the same amount I would have for just the startup fee at a chain gym, and those chain chumps keep trying to solicit me with expensive trainers and programs. Look, if I wanted some genetically superior meathead to boss me around, I know some underground spots in the LES. I mean, uh, know of them. Of course.
This is the best gym in Sunset Park by virtue of being the only gym (I’ve heard that Pulse and those other jerks don’t have women at all, so they don’t count). It’s far from perfect, but you could do so much worse.

I love this place. No pretension, so cheap, the most incredible deal! Not a bunch of rich judgmental people. Women may be a minority but we’re not absent. We’re all in our own worlds. Great selection of protein drinks, smoothie bar, plenty of machines in good condition (try Gleeson’s if you want to see run down machines!), heavy bag room with it’s own sound system, and on. Sunset Park asset. Hood feel? Small business feel.
None of the commercial sleek, equinox clean, equinox steam room, but for the price? Incredible.

Yep, I back what Cher says. It’s pretty much crap if you’re female — and not just because it’s got that whole lurid creepy eyeballing vibe to it. There are no mats, no stretching room or space to stretch in, no physio balls, no classes, no soft hand weights, no bands, nothing. Wait ! I spoke too soon. There is a room that is all set aside for special purposes — but you have to like boxing. It’s just a big punching bag, and reserved for training sessions only. Yeah, that’s the kind of place this is. No stretching mats, but a punching room.
I had to do the workout-​before-​work thing for a little while and just gave up — the womens’ locker room has largely broken doors on the lockers, and no where to sit while you take off your pants, put on your boots, nylons, etc.
When you take a shower, you risk flooding the entire bathroom floor, and people who need to pee must walk past you and that flimsy curtain. Which sticks to your body. Unfortunately.
There’s one mirror, and that’ s obviously a problem, but the real worst part, for me, a post-​surgical knee trauma patient, was the three flights up you have to walk to check in.
They are steep flights, and basically, it just wasn’t worth the wreckage on my knee for those few sessions of nutritious cartilage care to hike the mountain. My boyfriend likes it though — and it is a deal, with current prices at $ 20 to $ 35 per month.

Is the gym I attend and its as good as it gets. Its a homey type gym, the members reflect the demographics of the area, predominantly Latino. The gym has free weights as well as machines. The gym has two floors, upstairs is for the upper body and downstairs is for lower body. It has a protein shake bar, TV’s and the music tends to be in Spanish/​hiphop. Its pretty much a no bullsh*t gym, you come here to workout, not get a towel and a sauna, and or some infommercial style aerobics class. NO! This gym offers a cheap membership,(A six month membership goes for $ 99 dollars).
PS-​Avoid coming in after 5 P.M. since it tends to get packed from wall to wall.

It’s cheap. thats the only good thing I have to say about this place. The gym is old!.. the weights even older! and average cardio machines. Trying to work out in the evenings is very awful gets more packed then grand central station! Full of cavemen/​brute types. Long waits for the machines and weights. NOT RECOMMENDED!

Ummm… i only go to this gym because it’s walkable distance from my house. I cannot think of a more ghetto gym with a bunch of hispanic guys TRYING to workout for the ladies. If you are a woman who wants to workout in this place, beware of all the horny lads who turn their heads and start to talk to you. And if you’re a guy, please try to pick up and read a book before you start to lift seventy pounds to impress the girl in the white tank top whose nipples are showing through her shirt because of the A/​C. And please don’t overdose on the cologne. We ladies don’t want to smell you from across the gym room unless you’re hot. While all the guys are pumping or trying to pump iron to look like classic neanderthals, I lightly run on the treadmill and sing «Maneater» softly as a workout incentive and a clear warning. To add to the other reviews, workout in the morning and give your best death stare to keep your focus on your routine.

Hard to breathe in this place after work hours. Gets waay too crowded and feels too stuffy.

Well, its my gym because its about a block from me. The cardio machines are up to date, the rest of the place not so much. The floor is shabby and uneven in some parts, and the weights are from many, many years ago. Still, its a good meat and potatoes gym, they cram a lot of stuff into such a small space without it feeling too cramped. Lots of testoterone, so anytime a woman walks in weights are dropped, and eye muscles are flexed. Its very neighborhood feel, coupled with the loud jabs in Spanish, the fuzzy tvs, the decent shakes, and the drawn rendition of Arnold doing a bicep forearm flex on one wall and Ronnie Coleman’s likeness drawn on a wall downstairs make this a hilarious place to work out if you are into weights and pumping some iron. Most people in here don’t know how to work out properly; there’s actually a disproportionate number of bicep machines and bicep curling as evidence to this; but its got all the weights, benches, machines that a guy needs to bulk up.
Very crowded in the early evenings which tapers off as the night wears on, its good to go in the mornings when its empty.
Oh and watch out, people toss weights. You might lose a toe.
The rate: 15 dollars a month. That’s right. 15 a month. no joke.