Don’s Gym Kata, Phuket
Opening Hours: Mon – Sat: 8:00 – 21:00, Sun: closed
Cost: 200 baht per day, 600 per week.
Location
Don’s Gym Kata is well-located, level with the centre of Kata beach. It lies halfway between the main road to Phuket town and the beach road, so it’s close to most accommodation. You’ll find it’s correctly located on Google maps and easy to spot the sign outside. However the door I initially thought was the entrance isn’t, but if you make the same mistake I did, you will see a sign on the door redirecting you to the next door on the left. (The entrance I found was actually to some apartments.)
Facilities
This small to medium-sized gym actually represents the biggest I have found in Kata. Being a small beach town, it doesn’t have the same gym offerings as the much larger Phuket Town. The good news is that Don’s Gym Phuket has aircon switched on (yay!) – but it is set to 25 degrees. Whilst you’ll notice it’s considerably cooler than outside, it’s still pretty sweaty! You’ll find free water here though (cold too!) so you can rehydrate easily.
The gym is fairly spacious (ie not cluttered) and has a good mix of cardio, weights and functional equipment.
You can rent a towel for 20 baht and they looked like large, decent quality ones. You’ll also find one shower and toilet for each sex; the female one was clean and spacious.
Weights
Don’s Gym provides a good mix of free weights and resistance equipment for upper and lower body. You’ll also find plenty of floor space around the equipment where you can do your weight training. The dumbbells were composed of discs and unlabelled, but I’d guess they go up to around 30kg. There’s a full set of them and all were neatly racked when I went at 8:30am on a weekday morning. You’ll also find several adjustable barbells here.
For your legs, you’ll find a Smith machine, squat rack, leg press, extension and curl. Additionally you can use a standing squat machine.
Upper body equipment comprises a wide set of cable crossovers, pull up bars, a combined lat pulldown / row, a loadable row and a pec fly. You’ll also find a bench press rack here.
Additionally they’ve provided a hip extension bench, inclined abs benches and several weight-training benches, along with a hanging leg raise.
Functional Training
Although they haven’t provided a huge variety of equipment here, you will at least find a few gym toys and somewhere to lay your mat and do your training without being in anyone’s way. I didn’t see a specific floor area as such, but equipment is spaced out so it’s easy enough to create some. I found a small number of lightweight kettlebells (no more than 8kg), a couple of step boards, a Swiss ball, BOSU, medicine ball, abs rollers and a foam roller. You’ll also find a few mats of reasonable quality to work on.
Cardio
One of the aircon vents is directed at the cardio equipment (you start to notice these things after using non A/C gyms!), which was welcome relief and reduced how often I needed to mop sweat off myself. As I’d forgotten my towel and was using the T-shirt I’d walked there in, I was quite pleased about this.
I found four treadmills, four Spin bikes, a rower and a crosstrainer. It’s all good quality equipment and worked well.
Summary of Don’s Gym Kata
Don’s Gym Kata is a very viable training option here in Kata. As well as being the biggest I found, it’s well-situated near accommodation, is semi-air-conditioned and caters well for cardio and weight-trainers, whilst providing some floor space. The weekly rate here costs a reasonable 600 baht, ie three day passes. (I went to one gym elsewhere which charged 6.5 times the day pass rate for a week!) I’d happily return here.
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