Westerly-Pawcatuck YMCA Branch

Good-New Y, very clean, nice people, new equipment, double basketball court, nice people

Bad-sauna isn't hot and had brown water around the drain

Very beautiful building with awesome layout and staff. I just wish it was a little more affordable, but then again the $54/month pushes me to keep going to the gym to make sure I've invested wisely

Always clean and well maintained, this YMCA is excellent! They have two large swimming pools and many fitness classes to choose from. The locker room is large and always clean. Great place for a workout!!

It's clean and for the most part the people are nice, but it's crowded and expensive -- there were about 100 people in the yoga class I attended! The teacher also spent WAY too much time delivering what she probably thought were profound nuggets of wisdom.

And (since I wasn't a member but paying to enter the faclity) the class cost just the same as smaller classes in other places with better teachers! "Better teachers" = explain the poses clearly, adjust you if you're not doing them properly. Obviously that's not possible in a huge class.

If the monthly membership fees were lower, I would join just to use the sauna and do spinning-- but with the high monthly rate (even for seniors) I will just pay to use the place occasionally, and take my yoga classes elsewhere.

What's not to like?

The YMCA in Westerly is newly renovated & a great place for families. They have pretty competitive rates too especially when you consider how much you are offered.

My wife & I take spin class weekly & our 5 year old loves to spend time in the child watch. He always has a good time & actually looks forward to going. There is a 2 hour limit & I'm not sure how the other gyms in the area stack up in terms of child care but I'm willing to bet they're not as good as the Y.

The Y has so many options available for exercising. There's basketball courts & pools. The weight & cardio rooms are always kept clean & there's plenty of equipment. It seems like they're always adding new classes as I've heard rumors of them offering barre workouts soon.

As a Silver Sneakers member, I find the Westerly-Pawcatuck YMCA to be user-friendly and clean, with friendly and knowledgeable staff. I mostly practice Yoga and swim laps for my personal wellness. The Yoga instructors have years of experience and inspire physical and soulful searching. Their classes have normally no more than 16-20 persons, of all ages and abilities. The swimming facilities are separately built for either families and those who are not strong swimmers and also for lap swimmers, for exercise and for competition. Join this great institution and you are automatically welcomed to visit the Mystic YMCA, not far away.

Living in a small town means very few gym options to chose from, but between the low price and the amazing classes, I picked the YMCA over the other local gyms hands down. Not only is it located right outside downtown Westerly, but after long weeks of renovation, there is ample parking! During the summer months my gym buddy and I would workout and then proceed into the Wilcox park for a nice relaxing cool down walk or jog.

I haven't worked out on my own in months but this gym in my opinion is more for the ladies and seniors due to the lack of free weights that are available downstairs in a dingy room. The wellness center upstairs is well lit with many treadmills, bikes, rowing machines and ellipticals.

I am obsessed with the classes!!! I stared with a class called Zumba - aerobic dancing to salsa music, reggae, hip hop, etc and it definitely made me sweat but have fun at the same time! (learned a lot of dance moves, too!) Then I decided to try Body Sculpting - resistance bands, free weights, steps, and exercise balls. Polly is an amazing instructor and always tells us "If you don't squeeze your butts ladies, no one will want to!". There are also many moderations to the exercises incase you're a beginner. Lately, I've been taking spin (self explanatory) and kickboxing, which is definitely the most intense class I have ever taken and after weeks of participating, it still kicks my butt! There are also Silver Sneakers classes which are geared toward seniors.

I have become very toned and received many compliments on how good I look. The classes help me get myself to the gym since its a set time and the instructors are so great! They really push you to do your best and motivate you.

There are also water fountains, pools, racquetball rooms, basketball courts, sauna, locker rooms with showers and friendly staff!

I've been a member of the YMCA since I was 10 or so... Chances are from the years 2000-2003 if you took kiddie swim lessons, I was your instructor. Because of that traumatic experience, I have not been in either Y pool since 2004, so I can't really speak for them. I can tell you the Buckley Pool is warm (ideally not because of children's pee but who knows) and the Fuller Pool is the colder pool for teens, adults and the swim team.

This is a great place for kids and tweens! I took and taught swim lessons here, became certified in baby sitting, flirted with boys at the teen night sock hop and volunteered as a member of the leaders club for 2 years.

For the past two years, I use the YMCA only for the gym and the fitness classes. The two gyms themselves are pretty standard. (Standard is code for boring) Threadmills and weight machines. One of the gyms is cardio and weights, the other is just free weights. I don't go into the free weights room because it feels like a boys club and I'm entirely unwelcome.

I'm a big fan of the classes. They don't have a crazy large schedule since the YMCA is a nonprofit, but they do okay.
The fitness instructors are sooooo nice. Annalisa will kick your butt in Kickboxing twice a week. (DO NOT go to this class as your first class because you will never come back) Tamala teaches boot camp. In my first bootcamp class, my friend Rachel lay on the floor in the fetal position for 5 minutes and I couldn't properly use stairs for 5 days. This class DOES get easier so keep it up. Tamala is so bubbly you'll just want to keep torturing yourself with squats. Polly teaches an unreasonable number of classes from Body Sculpting to Step to Spin which accounts for her crazy amount of energy. She always cracks me up with her comment "Squeeze your buns! If you don't do it in here, no one else will do it out there."

And I'm not gonna lie, my buns are nice and squeezable after two months!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Y employee in Brooklyn, NY and have an away membership that allows me 10 visits a year which I use when I visit my Mom who lives locally and is a member.

Both of the Brooklyn locations near me have had some renovations done in the last few years but this Westerly location is SO new and nice it kind of blows my mind. I know there was a lot of shuffling during the renovation/build but it seems like it was totally worth it!

Sometimes we take the yoga classes downstairs and sometimes I use the cardio machines. I have always been very pleased with the yoga classes.

The only issue I have is sometimes it takes them awhile to sort out my away membership-there used to be a binder but they have now been moved to a folder in a filing cabinet.

The YMCA in Westerly is beautiful but crowded and too expensive. How can an average person afford the cost of membership there?

Why is the Y's fee for membership double the cost of membership at other local "for-profit" gyms? Are there too many managers and administrators? Being linked with Mystic and Arcadia YMCA doesn't save money - they actually need more staff to coordinate everything.

I have been told they cost more because they have a swimming pool. But that doesn't help me -- I just want to use the gym. Couldn't they offer a membership without use of the pool?

Have they forgotten their mandate to serve the public? Are they more of a country club and less of a service organization?