Most of Robbins Lane — a narrow strip connecting two larger highways in the blue-collar Syosset neighborhood of Long Island, New York — is punctured by potholes. There’s an inlet between 231 Robbins Ln. (a self-defense class studio) and 233 (a rug store) so well-camouflaged by concrete walls and slightly saggy power lines that, were you paying even a bit of attention to your phone’s GPS, you’d probably cruise right by it.
Catch the turn, and you’ll find yourself heading down a narrow, trench-like parking lot. At the back, a black awning juts out of the broad side of a hellishly red building. On it reads the words, “the East Coast Mecca.” That’s the entrance to the Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym, one of the most renowned and prestigious bodybuilding facilities in the world.
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But not all of the most famous gyms on the planet are hiding in plain sight; some have built their reputations off of the sweat equity of their clientele, while others rely on good old-fashioned branding magic. Here are just seven of the world’s most recognizable gyms, and how they became much more than just four walls and a few deadlift platforms.
7 of the Most Famous Gyms in the World
- Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym (Syosset, New York)
- Gold’s Gym Venice Beach (Venice Beach, California)
- Westside Barbell (Columbus, Ohio)
- Metroflex Gym (Arlington, Texas)
- Sandow Curative Institute of Physical Culture (London, England)
- Alphaland (Missouri City, Texas)
- Oxygen Gym (Multiple Locations)
Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym (Syosset, New York)
Bev’s Gym, as regulars call it, doesn’t need to advertise for itself. There’s no signage on the road indicating its location. You can look it up on Google Maps, but “the East Coast Mecca” isn’t easy to find.
And yet, Bev’s is chronically inundated with both loyal locals and fitness enthusiasts who make a pilgrimage just to bang out a leg workout alongside some of the most dedicated and accomplished physique competitors of all time.
Powerhouse Gym may be a widely recognizable chain with over 300 individual franchises, but the Nassau County location stands a cut above the rest. Founded by famed women’s strength and physique pioneer Bev Francis and her then-husband Steve Weinberger in 1987 — who now sits as head judge on the IFBB Pro League — Bev’s no-frills atmosphere and a dragon’s hoard of lifting equipment have made it one of the premier bodybuilding facilities in North America.
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Squat racks line the walls as far as the eye can see (and then a little further than that) while dumbbells up to the multiple hundreds of pounds rest idly on the floor, but never gather dust. The crowd at Bev’s can haul serious weight.
Famous frequenters include Mr. Olympia podium finishers like Phil Heath and Kai Greene and the gym occasionally receives celebrity shout-outs from the likes of Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.
Gold’s Gym Venice Beach (Venice Beach, California)
You can find a Gold’s in commercial plazas and the bustling downtowns of just about every medium to large city in the U.S. As of 2020, the franchise boasts over 700 locations worldwide, most of which are in North America.
But the O.G. Gold’s Gym belongs to Venice Beach, California. Aptly named after founder Joe Gold, the original location came up in 1965. Gold would eventually sell the facility to one of its patrons, Ken Sprague, who had grand ideals for the place.
After offering Gold’s Venice up as a filming location to the crew of the 1977 seminal documentary Pumping Iron, Gold’s exploded. Thanks in no small part to the larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger (and his musclebound colleagues), the Venice Beach location was rapidly dubbed “the Mecca of Bodybuilding” for its contributions to the burgeoning physical culture obsession in the States.
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“Gold’s set the template for successful gym branding,” says Conor Heffernan, historian, BarBend contributor, and Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Ulster University. “They sold hundreds of thousands of shirts with their famous logo, welcomed news crews, and hosted bodybuilding shows. Gold’s was one of the first successful breakout gyms in the golden era of bodybuilding.”
Gold’s Venice maintains a feverish adoration by fans of bodybuilding to this day and is still the gym of choice for many current bodybuilding competitors despite its status as a tourist attraction. You could certainly follow in Schwarzenegger’s footsteps and bang out an arm workout there … if you can manage to get ahold of an unclaimed weight bench, that is.
Westside Barbell (Columbus, Ohio)
Most gym owners don’t receive a two-thousand-and-something-word obituary in The New Yorker when they die. But Louie Simmons, whose passing in March of 2022 sent ripples across the strength community, certainly did.
Simmons founded the most famous (and controversial) strength training gym in history: Westside Barbell, a temple of powerlifting with a reputation that remains, for better or worse, inextricably linked to Simmons himself.
Westside has produced over 100 world-record-breaking performances in powerlifting since its creation, and many of those athletes studied under Simmons’ watchful eye. However, Westside Barbell has anything but an open-door policy. You can’t just walk in, jot your signature down onto a clipboard, trot a tour of the space while listening to a staff member hazily describe the amenities there, and then dive into your own strength training session.
Westside’s prestige is couched partly in its exclusivity. It’s a members-only joint, and the gym sparingly accepts new members. But the teachings and methodology there, borne largely by Simmons himself, account for the bulk of its fame.
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You won’t find a spin studio in the halls of Westside. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a few treadmills. The floor plan of Westside Barbell is a garden of steel — squat stands, power racks, and monolifts jut out of the flooring, along with dumbbells up into the multiple hundreds of pounds. Westside is a free-weight warehouse, and their record-busting clientele needs every weight plate they can get their hands on.
“Specific training techniques like using resistance bands and chains, the conjugate method of programming, and even equipment like the reverse hyperextension all came out of Westside,” Heffernan says. And he’s right — a 2018 documentary short by VICE Sports called Simmons “the Godfather of American powerlifting” for his long-lasting influence on the sport.
Even after his passing, Westside has maintained its sphere of influence over strength sports in the States and continues to produce athletes of the highest caliber. If you managed to get past its doors, you could take one glance at the floor-to-ceiling chalkboard that lists every 1-rep max record held by its denizens and understand in no uncertain terms that Westside produces winners.
Metroflex Gym (Arlington, Texas)
At some point in their fitness careers, most dedicated gym rats have seen eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman’s iconic 800-pound deadlift clip. It’s one of many where he utters his iconic “yeah, buddy!” catchphrase.
Coleman spent much of his storied bodybuilding career hammering away at heavy weights at the original Metroflex Gym in Arlington, Texas. While Metroflex lacks the glamorous fame of a facility like Gold’s Venice Beach, anyone who has been in the iron game long enough knows that some of the best physiques to ever grace the Olympia stage were forged in the heart of the Lone Star State.
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According to its website, Metroflex has helped over 100 athletes win championship titles in both bodybuilding and powerlifting. And in many ways, it embodies the crossover ethos of powerbuilding itself — that a world-class physique should be able to move world-class weights. It certainly worked for residents like Coleman and Branch Warren.
Sandow Curative Institute of Physical Culture (London, England)
The United States has largely led the way in the democratization of fitness and the proliferation of lifting culture, but that doesn’t mean that all of the world’s weight-lifting landmarks are found stateside. Across the pond (and many, many years ago) exists one of the most important sites you’ve probably never heard of — the Sandow Creative Institute of Physical Culture in London.
“Many credit Eugen Sandow as the father of modern bodybuilding. He hosted the world’s first major bodybuilding show in 1901 and originally opened the Sandow gymnasium as far back as 1897,” Heffernan says of the legacy behind the Curative Institute.
Heffernan regards the Institute as one of the very first modern facilities that could be considered a public gym or health club. The “world’s most perfectly developed man,” as Sandow was called, expanded his health pursuits beyond physical fitness and into medical care, though those efforts were met with controversy. (1)
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Sandow passed away in the mid-1920s, and despite his permanent mark on bodybuilding lore, the Institute didn’t develop a comparable legacy and is no longer in operation. Still, it earns points for contributing to the idea of a public place where people could improve their health.
Alphaland (Missouri City, Texas)
Many of the most famous gyms in the world have multi-generational reputations that have stood the test of time. But others are riding the hype straight to the bank and staking their claim to fame in the process. Alphaland, the official Alphalete athletic apparel gym, is rapidly becoming a must-visit hotspot for the next generation of gym rats.
Thanks largely to a strong social media presence and its pro-influencer policies — not to mention a very well-furnished facility overall — Alphaland is quickly gaining a presence as one of the premier bodybuilding and powerlifting gyms, particularly among Gen Z.
A Texas paper called Alphaland the “Disney World for Bodybuilders” in July of 2022, and clocked the facility itself at over 30,000 square feet. More than enough room for every odd piece of lifting equipment you can imagine, plus a host of specialty amenities.
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Alphaland is more than a place to set up a tripod and record a workout video for social media. The gym itself is more of a compound, with multiple full-sized and fully furnished weight rooms, two NCAA-sized basketball courts, a football/soccer field, group exercise studios, and more. All that’s missing is a storied history, but it certainly seems like Alphaland’s history book is being bound and penned by the day.
Oxygen Gym (Multiple Locations)
Bodybuilding culture in the Middle East is as vibrant and electric as Hollywood is in the States. When Iranian-born bodybuilder Hadi Choopan won the Mr. Olympia contest in 2022, it was something of a touchstone moment for the region.
Perhaps nothing better emblematizes the area’s adoration of muscle-making than the world-renowned Oxygen Gym chain. Founded in 2004 in Kuwait by competition promoter Bader Bodai, Oxygen has recently become the premier luxury destination for almost every big-name bodybuilder.
Frequenters of the Oxygen facilities include social-media superstars like Larry Wheels, current competitors like Regan Grimes, veterans like Kevin Levrone, and many, many more. Why? As Wheels described in a 2020 YouTube vlog, “There’s nothing they don’t have here.”
The Oxygen facilities are widely regarded as the largest and most well-furnished bodybuilding gyms on Earth. The recently erected Dubai location fashions itself the “Modern Mecca” of bodybuilding and has the funding to back it up. Oxygen recently commissioned a $30 million expansion of the site to house even more equipment and amenities.
But it’s not all glitz and glamor at Oxygen. Pro bodybuilders who train with Oxygen Gym coaches are put through a brutal routine, which the late bodybuilding writer Peter McGough compared to a “boot camp.”
“I typically wake around 7 a.m., then head to the gym for cardio and some touch-up work on muscle groups that need extra attention,” 2019 Mr. Olympia Brandon Curry said about the Oxygen system in a 2017 interview. “I will normally eat seven meals a day. After my third meal I train under my coach’s supervision for 60 to 90 minutes. When we finish, I take my post-workout supplementation that is not included in the seven-meal count and then eat 30 to 40 minutes later. I have a third training session later in the day.”
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While undeniably effective for some pro physique athletes, the internal Oxygen machine certainly isn’t for everyone. In a 2021 interview, Grimes told Dennis James on an episode of The Menace Podcast that he had to creatively exit a multi-week stay at Oxygen Kuwait to escape the controlling, around-the-clock training and diet regime:
“I gained over 40 pounds in just a few weeks. It was just overly aggressive in every aspect. They had meals brought to me in bed; I was eating non-stop around the clock. I had to use an excuse [about making it back to the States for Christmas] to leave; they weren’t going to let me go home, I don’t think.”
While Oxygen may not have a pristine reputation with every pro who trains there, the facilities’ dedication to bodybuilding maximalism is noteworthy in its own right. The beefiest men on the planet — several of the Oxygen locations are male-only and require photo identification, according to Wheels and Curry — travel by land and sea to hone their craft in the “Muscle Factory.”
References
- Conor Heffernan, Desirable Bodies and Eugen Sandow’s Curative Institute in Edwardian England, Social History of Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 1, February 2022, Pages 195–216.
Featured Image: @official_alphaland on Instagram
