Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA, Encinitas
200 Saxony Road, 92024, Encinitas, CA
Magdalena Ecke YMCA Class Schedule
Opening times: Mon – Fri : 500-2200 , Sat and Sun: 700-1900
Cost: Two free passes per person
Location and Entry
Magdalena Ecke YMCA is located a few kilometres east of Encinitas, best accessed with a car, which (unusually for me) I had access to here! Luckily I was staying with a friend who kindly lent me theirs. A brave move, since I’m not used to driving on the right-hand side of the road, let alone on multi-lane busy roads. So, I have great respect for her having the guts to get in the car with me to give me a “driving lesson”!
Facilities
The gym splits into a cardio room and a weights room, and the weights room divides into three areas. These can broadly be summarised as 1. Free weights and cables 2. Functional equipment and floor area (with a synergy area between these two areas) and 3. A “Family Training Area” which consists mostly of resistance machines. You’ll also see some cardio machines in the free weights area, just to confuse matters.
Like most YMCAs I’ve been to, the floor/functional training area is large and very well equipped with numerous kettlebells, TRXs, medicine balls, Swiss balls, resistance bands, foam rollers, stools, mats and BOSUs. You’ll find plenty of floorspace too for walking lunges, burpees or whatever else takes your fancy.
TRX – A Superb All-Body Workout
The barbells go up to 110lbs, although I could only find a set of straight bars. They’ve also got numerous adjustable bars including two squat racks and one Smith machine. Additionally you’ll see a variety of benches including inclined ones with racks. Dumbbells go up to 120lbs, with many weights duplicated, along with an additional rack of lightweight dumbbells.
I found the cardio room well-equipped with treadmills, bikes, arc-trainers and ellipticals, steppers and one or two rowing machines.
Classes
I did a step class here (Tuesday morning from 9:05-10:05) taught by a friendly Rebecca. The medium-sized studio comfortably fits around 18 steppers. To my delight, the class was choreographed, fairly fast, and I would say it is suitable for intermediate steppers. It was well attended, without being too busy. The routine was fun, although at times I personally would have preferred it if she had simply demonstrated the next move instead of just describing it in detail whilst we did a holding pattern. This would have been easier for visual learners and those of us who can step, but know the moves by different names. But all in all, well worth going to if you’re a step fan!
See the full Magdalena Ecke YMCA Class Schedule here.
Summary of Magdalena Ecke YMCA
Whilst I commend the YMCA for its policies of welcoming everyone from all walks of life and reasonably priced rates, the downside to this is that Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA gets very busy, even in “off-peak” periods. I worked out at around 10am on both Tuesday and Thursday mornings, with Tuesday being particularly busy and hard to get on equipment, and Thursday being a little better. The only other (minor) criticism I have is that the underarm pull-up bars are set rather widely, with no option to take the more standard narrower grip. And if you’re tall, they might be a little short for you. However, you can also use the Synergy area for pull-ups and the bars there solve both of these problems.
Ultimately, I found Magdalena Ecke to be an excellent well-equipped gym with a good atmosphere, if you can get there! Avoid at peak times unless you don’t mind waiting for equipment.
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There was a good range of functional training equipment there. What were you after?