Exercising has come a long way from the days of outrunning a lion until it reached the point of exhaustion so its sleeping carcass could be bench-pressed and shot-putted. Build muscle using non-living weights with today's Groupon: for $39, new members get a two-month membership (a $99.90 value), while current members get two personal-training sessions (a $120 value) at Gold's Gym, located in Pawtucket.

Gold's Gym began more than 45 years ago and today features an impressive array of next-generation fitness gadgets, a results-oriented focus, and clean facilities. New members can mimic the toned muscles of action heroes and body-builder babies with a two-month membership, which includes full access to the exercise arena including group classes, 135 pieces of equipment, a cardio cinema movie theater, and country-club locker rooms. Neophyte ironworkers can follow up with regular attendance at the gym, where they can hop on a cardio machine, pump up in a controlled manner on strength-training machines, tighten up in the abdominal and functional stretching area, or stick with lifting huge, heavy pieces of metal and commercial chest freezers.

For current members, today's deal can be redeemed for two personal-training sessions with guidance from one of Gold's Gym's staff of certified personal trainers. These strength stewards will test each client's strength, flexibility, and body-fat percentage, among other metrics, to determine their biological age before designing a personalized fitness regimen.

Reviews

Though the Pawtucket location of Gold's Gym has yet to receive many online reviews, four Yelpers give the gym a four-star average:

• This gym provides a lot of what I look for in a gym – Mckenzie G., 11/11/2010
• They [sic] gym itself is quite large and spacious with a great selection of equipment and machines. – Hilary H., 08/04/2010