Pleasance Sports Complex & Gym

Fantastic experience: Well equipped, clean and cheaper than any other gym in the city

Negative experience: Let me write honest review as below: Equipment point of view: not bad, you can find good amount of some equipment except the smith machine and benches!! When it comes to facilities cleanliness: the gym in general is clean, but the changing rooms are not the best honestly. Staff is friendly and good. Now the most important, this gym is usually on high peak!! it is busy all the time, and the majority of the gym users are lack of what so called "gym etiquette"; they come to the gym spend 3 hours; 40 min training and 2 hrs 20min watching movies and wasting time, now this is ok for sure, but the point is using the same equipment for at least 30min is crazy. My comment to the management, please don't make us consider this gym is the University of Edinburgh gym because it is not!! there is no obvious benefit for the students of UoE for being members with you, £50 difference with other gyms for the annual subscription is not something you should mention, so this should be stated clearly as a profitable private gym excluding being part of UoE.

Fantastic experience: Fully equipped for a weightlifter. Enough space.

Negative experience: Turned away by class instructor for being 2 minutes late on the first day due to struggling to find the room. Perhaps staff could benefit from some accessibility training..?

Fantastic experience: This gym has everything you may need. State of the art machines that integrate with an app so you can track both cardio and weights, friendly staff, very clean, sizeable sauna in the ladies locker room. Price (as a uni staff member it's 25/month) is unbeatable.

Fantastic experience: excellent student gym with plenty of different studios, cable machines and other equipment. Also has climbing and bouldering walls and a games court. Clean environment with plenty of water stations. Pay ~£80 for a semester which is really good

Fantastic experience: Great gym, but please bring back the flavoured water station! It makes us wanna go every day…

Negative experience: Disgusting, showers are cleaned maybe once a month, reeks of urine and excrement when I complained I was told that sweeping the floors once every two weeks is standard

Fantastic experience: Huge space for a reasonable price available to general public. Multiple different purpose rooms.

Fantastic experience: Was at the Nina Conti show which was brilliant and then went on to get tickets for a few other shows and the young girl that helped me and my sister with a small problem was brilliant excellent service and this is what makes the fringe Festival so

Fantastic experience: Super impressed. One of the best gyms I have ever joined. Bought a month membership for 30 pounds, which is more than reasonable for the high quality of the gym. There are 6+ different gym rooms/areas with everything you could want. Cardio designated area is huge. Locker rooms were super nice with a sauna. Signing up was super easy online.

Fantastic experience: best gym in thr world

Fantastic experience: Played Squash at the Pleasance. The facilities looked great with regards to gym and exercise studios etc. Buzzing with people.

Fantastic experience: Best gym in Edinburgh

Negative experience: Stay away! Beside being the most expensive gym compared to others! They have their own ‘weird closure dates’ and here is a surprise, they will deduct those days of your subscription and say you agreed to terms and conditions! What a joke! ++ they close 7 days around the new year time and it’s deducted from your subscription. Machines maintenance takes ages if they do it.

Fantastic experience: Extensive, high quality setup

Positive experience: Really great gym, lots of facilities but gets very crowded after 5pm. It can be a bit stressful. Also I wish the staff would organise the weights after the gym had closed instead of around 8pm-9pm. They will come on the mats to put the weights I numerical order but this can disrupt people doing sets.

Fantastic experience: Best gym I've ever been to - joined at the weekend and went for the first time on Sunday with my partner who has been a member for years. Staff were friendly and always present should you need help, and the place has everything you need. My partner says the place has been revamped since he first joined and they've done a great job - the place is bright and welcoming and there are a number of great quality machines. The bathroom is beautiful and well stocked with hairdryers and pads/tampons which is a massive bonus. I also like how the place is laid out and how some of the machines are in 'wee caves' - very quaint and cute! I feel like some gyms feel sad, grubby and judgy but I didn't get this impression at all from this one and will definitely be back!

Positive experience: Recent investment significantly increased the quality of the equipment. The gym still does get super busy during peak hours.

Fantastic experience: Great gym and facilities, highly recommend!

Fantastic experience: Incredible GYM!! Cardio machines are really good with personalized video-trainings. I can't believe the price! Very cheap of course.

Negative experience: The place is quite impressive but some machines are one of a kind. It gets very busy and the wait can be just unmanageable.

Fantastic experience: Badminton courts in it.

Positive experience: Great overall gym. Climbing gym is a bit on the small side.

Fantastic experience: Best gym in Edinburgh

Fantastic experience: Love the new equipement!

Fantastic experience: The equipment is modern and in good condition

Positive experience: good but busy sometimes

Positive experience: Was at pleasance for festival show. Nice place

Fantastic experience: Splendid

Fantastic experience: Excellent range of kit and classes in large facility. Staff are friendly and helpful. Good value for students, staff and public.

Fantastic experience: Lots lots of memories there

Fantastic experience: Excellent location and the classes are great

Fantastic experience: My gym experience here has been exceptional. The community is amazing and I'm always motivated by how relentless these gym rats are!

Fantastic experience: Excellent gym facilities! You can also join if you aren't a student. The pool and gym combo is great value.

Positive experience: Great facilities overall, too much focus on Weightlifting equipment in eleiko room, only 2 power bars? Only 2 benches and almost all of the time they are being used for hip thrusts with the actual hip thrust attachment left un-used. The weightlifting bars are great for weightlifting I’m sure but really awful for powerlifting movements, trying to get a rack a bench and a power bar at even a semi busy time is extremely difficult, and considering the rack heights of the bench presses in the vaults are not suitable for many people this is a problem. The Vaults is great overall almost all the kit is fantastic except the hack squat, worst hack I’ve ever seen. GHDs in circuits gym badly need to be fixed and Eric Liddell could really do with a seated hamstring curl rather than lying. Lastly, there seems to be a culture of people trying to reserve equipment they are not currently using but intend to use later in the workout. Most common instance of this is people doing a squat or some type of lunge with a barbell and keeping a bench behind them (not using it) for when they go to do hip thrusts after their squats, but they will not allow anyone else to use the bench while they are not using it and you were to ask to use it they would say “I’m going to be using it” To me, this is not on. It’s a busy gym and I don’t agree with reserving equipment you are going to be using later and stopping others from using it while you are not even using it.

Fantastic experience: Love the facilities

Fantastic experience: Best gym I've ever been to. Vastly better than PureGym. Dozens of rooms, each offering something different. The thing I need most (and the thing that most gyms fall short on) are squat racks with barbells and free-weights, which this place has plenty of. It's all top-tier Eleiko equipment too! Update: The newly renovated cardio gym and Eric Liddell gym just opened and are truly fantastic. Cutting-edge equipment everywhere! I already believed this was the best gym in Edinburgh, and after the refurb it's leagues ahead of anywhere else.

Negative experience: Too busy and crowded. The sauna smells bad

Fantastic experience: Fantastic

Fantastic experience: Excellent facilities without membership options available for non-students

Positive experience: Great gym but leg extensions machine has been out of order for over 3 months

Positive experience: They got most of the equipments. There are a lots of cons. Gyms are divided and machines , weights and all are in different floors. A lot of people comes over there which makes you want to wait for a machine to be done using by another. It's a drag. Also they closes early. Apart from these cons they got everything which an ideal gym needs.

Positive experience: Large and well kitted out gym, can get slightly too full at peak times.

Fantastic experience: Friendly staff as always, good facilities and always very clean

Fantastic experience: Awesome place to do some sports, study and societies.

Positive experience: Great venue for small gigs. Comfortable seating

Fantastic experience: Fabulous shows and courtyard

Fantastic experience: Great fringe venue.

Fantastic experience: Fills monkey excellent show worth twice the price

Fantastic experience: Great gym, lots of options and affordable.

Positive experience: Fantastic facility right next to the city centre. Kept in keeping with the area and provide all the sport facility you might need.

Fantastic experience: Been going here for 4 years. One of the best places

Positive experience: It's pretty good. Gym facilities are top notch. However be wary, the staff doesn't prioritise fixing machines. Currently there are atleast 2 machines which need repairs and are broken for atleast 2 months and nobody cares. They would talk about alternative but won't fix it.

Negative experience: The gym should seriously consider placing a hold on new members. Waiting over an hour for a piece of equipment like a squat rack is common during peak times and quite frankly difficult to justify. Update: also cut in half the water dispensers. Now you also have to wait 10 min to get water - great job guys

Negative experience: The gym is very average but if you are looking for a gym with fun classes then please do yourself a favour and try somewhere else

Positive experience: Good price for student and Many good programs in here. But difficult to book. I wanted to use swimming lane but never succeed to book.

Negative experience: Its a great gym but the booking system is soooo bad you try to book climbing or some other activity but the website says "A problem occurred while trying to add your selection to the basket." this is so annoying and it shouldn't take 30 minutes to book a hour worth of activity >:(

Fantastic experience: Great Uni gym, economic prices that do not mean the quality of the equipment is subpar (only problem is some machines break down and are not replaced 1mkntj and half and going)

Negative experience: Pretty awful gym. Machines aren't cleaned enough which results in them sticking when working out. People sitting texting on machines whilst people stand and wait. Gym staff not interested. There are gyms around where personal trainers and staff take interest in what's going on in gym, like for example if they see someone using bad form they will politely inform them. Not in this gym see people training wrong all the time. It's not my place to tell them. It's the staffs responsibility but they wak around caught up in their own self impotance.

Negative experience: So many machines are broken and haven't been fixed since months

Positive experience: Great place to play basketball

Positive experience: Excellent gym overall, one of the best I’ve been to anywhere, huge, clean and extremely well-equipped (a shame some rooms are closed now for renovations). One weakness is that the signage is really poor, especially for first time (or second, or third-time) visitors. The layout is a maze-like labyrinth of corridors and staircases, it’s very easy to forget how to get to a room or just find it purely by chance. Visible signage with pictograms, rather than just long lists of room names which mean nothing to a new user, would be more helpful. The signage which does exist also isn’t in places you would want it, like under a doorway or hanging from the ceiling, when you turn a corner, or at the staircase you are thinking of going down or climbing so you stop, perplexed, because you don’t know where it will lead you to. Red is not the best colour for signs if it's also the main colour of walls inside the gym. A map might even be handy. I know this isn’t an airport, but it would make the place more user-friendly.

Fantastic experience: I’ve been going here for 3 years (almost every day out of lockdown for the last year) and I’m not exaggerating when I say I think it’s the best gym in the UK. I’m moving away from Edinburgh soon and I will miss this place terribly. AMAZING equipment range/access and facilities, is split up over lots of different rooms so is less intimidating and you can really focus on what you’re doing. Lots of bathrooms (including gender neutral) and friendly staff on hand. They do challenges every month or so so there’s a real gym community feel. Because there’s a lot of students it’s generally a comfortable and progressive atmosphere and I absolutely love it. Also have been really really considerate and on the ball with upping hygiene standards since Covid. I love you Pleasance!

Fantastic experience: One of the best gyms I have ever trained in. The equipment is absolutely stellar, especially if you train Olympic weightlifting. They have so much practically new Eleiko equipment. Honestly almost anything you would ever need

Fantastic experience: Nice racks, huge installations, just amazing.

Negative experience: This gym used to be a good one years ago. Please go and check it out yourself. 1- Really bad music. If you are training seriously you need music that motivates you. The music in this gym actually demotivating. Not many staff in the gym nowadays. 2- Sauna has been broken since November. It is now second half of January and still not fixed. 3- Blocked basins, broken soap dispensers and dirty Toilets. 4- Some lockers have been broken since Autumn last year and still not fixed. The list can go on. Please go and check it out yourself.

Positive experience: It's amazing but I would like the stairs to be added as an equipment and to open more hours as they close early during weekends Other than that perfect!

Fantastic experience: A great gym!

Fantastic experience: Best gym cheap good equip

Positive experience: I've been a member of the Pleasance for 7 years and I can say, having been to other gyms across Edinburgh, that it is by far the best in the city. The Pleasance has whatever you need: heavy weights, archery, shooting, pilates, circuits, rock climbing, yoga, martial arts; you name, they'll have it. The sheer scale of what they have to offer is matched only by their expert physio team who are considerate and informative in whatever injuries you have. Their changing rooms are well equipped with showers and saunas, and have a high standard of cleanliness. Some minor points: -It would be great if the Pleasance was open later. The UoE have taken on board this idea within the last few years, and extended hours from 8 to 10pm on weekdays, but an 11 or even 12pm finish would be great especially given the erratic time people finish work at. -It would also be nice if the reception were so standoffish. -The gym can get very busy, especially after 5pm. This is the drawback of being one of the best gyms in the city.

Fantastic experience: One of the best gyms of the country. It has a LOT of machines and even when it is full, one can still find a spot to do one's own exercises. The gym also offers Squash courts for rent as well as an array of equipment. Also has a nice climbing venue and a fairly decent multi-purpose hall. The classes are also really nice and the bathrooms are always clean.

Negative experience: Far too overcrowded, hot and humid inside.

Positive experience: Good classes and equipment but the showers are often dirty and the staff is incredibly rude.

Positive experience: the best gym in edinburgh !!!

Fantastic experience: Best sport center in Edin

Positive experience: Great gym and friendly staff, though often too crowded to use the machines that I want.

Positive experience: Lot of cardio equipments so the wait time is less but make sure to avoid going at 5/6pm. Renting a swish court is a little expensive. Would definitely recommend it given that there are many floors at the gym and a lot of options

Negative experience: The class booking system crashed several times. Staff are not helpful. Costumer service below standard!! Very disappointment.

Fantastic experience: The best equipment and coolest staff i ever met

Fantastic experience: Great gym - great value for money. I highly recommend it for all students.

Fantastic experience: Very popular and well-equipped.

Fantastic experience: Fantastic facilities and lots of sports clubs, although most are only available to Edinburgh University students. Membership available to all, just not the sports clubs and the gym facilities are fantastic. Parking can be difficult and it is by permit only in the car park, but there is plenty of metered parking nearby!

Fantastic experience: my favourite place. There are all kind of sport environment. I like boxing room.

Fantastic experience: Brilliant

Fantastic experience: Large gym with plenty of machines to use and a variety of classes.

Fantastic experience: Amazing facilities and great trainers.

Fantastic experience: Very well equipped gym. Layout is slightly confusing.

Fantastic experience: Outstanding facilities and exercise classes

Fantastic experience: Well equipped gym

Positive experience: Looks quite run down at the moment, with quite a few machines out of order or in need of repair. Otherwise there's always something to do, even at busiest of times.

Fantastic experience: Great gym need to be a student to access or have someone sign you in

Positive experience: Modern, but very crowded in the afternoon. And keep in mind that's it's only opened till 6 on weekend.

Fantastic experience: I understand from talking to a lot of other people in Edinburgh, that this is the best equipped gym in the whole city. Very good value for money as well. Can get a bit busy at times, but usually there isn't much of a wait for equipment. You never have to wait for the cardio equipment, but the free weights and machines are usually quite busy.

Fantastic experience: This is the university gym! It's absolutely huge! It runs loads of free classes and has a climbing wall and bouldering room I use regularly. The staff are great and it's amazing value for money.

Fantastic experience: Extraordinary nice sports center. Very well maintained.

Fantastic experience: Best gym in Scotland

Positive experience: I was here for an exam, which was decent, can't say what it is like as a sports facility though. Looked pretty good

Fantastic experience: they have great facilities and really good classes at a very reasonable price

Fantastic experience: Very good services, value for money.