Gold’s Gym’s staggeringly expansive 65,000-square-foot facility stands as a ziggurat built to fitness. A phalanx of personal trainers—muscles bulging from heaving around armloads of certifications—team up with exercisers, ripping pages from the Total Transformation Training system playbook to handcraft custom fitness routines and practical nutrition plans that help clients to lose weight, build lean muscle, and learn which barbells are for lifting and which are for eating. For a more communal experience, patrons can leap into all manner of group classes, pedaling through spin, limbering muscles in yoga, or tussling with water resistance in aqua classes held in the 25-lap pool. Inside the Cardio Cinema, projectors pipe movies such as Argo and Looper into engaged retinas to infuse bodies with the endurance needed to power through intense workouts.

The fitness emporium also trains athletes in sport-specific or general programs. During performance training, coaches work one-on-one with their charges, focusing on all-around speed and functional movements to forge sportspersons capable of traversing the field faster than an antelope riding piggy-back on a lion.