Fitness First Highbury Avenell Road, London N5 1FE

"I joined this gym in February after transferring from harringay. The staff are lovely and the facilities are excellent. Its a friendly environment with great personal trainers always on hand to give sessions or advice if needed. I highly recommend training here."

"A little disappointing... I joined when I first moved to London in August last year after trying out a couple of gyms in the area. At first, it seemed to have a good range of equipment and was definitely a step up from where I was before. I was happy for the first month or so, but over time it just doesn't seem to live up to the price point for the membership. The gym is overcrowded and you often have to wait a long time for equipment. Everything just feels a little run down, and things definitely seem to have gotten a lot worse in the last month or so. I've tried the spin classes a couple of times, but had to keep changing bikes as the foot grips are broken on many of them. The screens on lots of the bikes are also faulty meaning, when a class is full, many people aren't able to track their progress or even use the pedals properly. For a premium gym I wouldn't expect this to be the case. They've always had towels available on the door when you arrive, but have recently started running out because they've sold too many memberships. Last week, I'd come in to use the pool so had to go home when I found out they had no towels left. The staff didn't give any explanation and no apology, which was frustrating as I'd wasted my time coming in. Overall, there's nothing that bad about the place. I had just hoped for a lot more based on the price of the membership. I'm feeling disappointed to be locked in for a year of this."

"This is a very good gym. It has most of the facilities you could wish for - weights area, sauna, steam room and swimming pool. The staff are all very friendly and it feels like a nice small community between staff and members. Sometimes you have to wait to use some of the equipment in the main weights area as it’s not the biggest but it’s not a massive issue and it wouldn’t stop me from recommending this gym to someone looking to join"

"Lovely staff and great location. Unfortunately the gym is often overly busy and there isn’t enough space to accommodate the number of guests. The gym has become a little tatty and needs upgrading, it often feels unclean even though there are often cleaners around. As others have noted in other reviews, the pool is pretty disgusting and people just go straight from sweating in the stream room / sauna into the swimming pool to cool down. It’s a shame as the gym has good potential - it just seems far too expensive for what you’re getting."

"Too many memberships have been sold, it’s often far too busy and there is not enough space or equipment. It’s gotten fairly tatty now and needs some work - the changing rooms often smell really bad. There is a sauna and a steam room, and it’s become a bit of a joke that there’s always one of them that is out of order. The equipment itself is fine, slightly older but does the job."