I recently got a complimentary workout at Fitness First Eastwood and availed of it last Tuesday. I’ve never worked out at Fitness First before and I wanted to try it. My current gym is Gold’s Gym (I decided to get a membership after trying it out last year) and I was curious about the differences between these two popular fitness franchises.

Note that my observations are based on my experiences at Gold’s Gym Galleria, Gold’s Gym Glorietta, and the single workout at Fitness First Eastwood. I certainly won’t try to generalize for all Fitness First branches.

First up are the nice services FF has that Gold’s Gym doesn’t. FF offers its members free VCD rentals (1 disc per two weeks, I think), and has a refreshments counter where you can drink up on free juices, iced teas, and coffees. A really good service they have are the free treatment sessions (i.e., massage). As far as I know, Gold’s doesn’t offer this for free to its members.

Both Gold’s and FF offer the standard steam and sauna rooms, group classes, and power cycling rooms, though it seems that FF has more classes, which are really popular among its members.

The real downside to FF is that they don’t offer towel services. This is one thing that I’d come to really like from Gold’s Gym. I don’t want to be bringing bulky towels everytime I work out, and I dislike bundling wet towels in my bag after a gym visit. I knew this beforehand so I was fairly sure that I won’t be switching to FF anytime in the foreseeable future.

In addition, I already got a really, really good deal from Gold’s Gym. I only paid 31,000 pesos for my lifetime membership, got 19 initial months without monthly dues, and only pay 900 pesos every month thereafter. The membership includes an unlimited number of sessions and I can practically visit any Gold’s Gym branch in the country (good thing that the Alabang branch finally opened recently).

Fitness First is, however, a really popular brand. People enroll in FF because they have many more branches, has better services than Slimmer’s World, and probably because they feel Gold’s Gym is too expensive. I can safely say that unless you have company discount promos from FF, you’re probably better off with the packages of Gold’s Gym.