How to spot a good hotel gym (and avoid the bad ones)

Photo: Alexandre Zveiger (Shutterstock)

During a recent vacation, I stayed at two different hotels. One of them had a gym which was a workout paradise, or as close as you could get without weights. There was a dual-cable machine, dumbbells up to 75 pounds, competition-sized (!) kettlebells, not one but two places to do pull-ups, assorted suspension trainers, and medicine balls and the like, and, among the cardio machines, a real Peloton bike. The other gym? Nothing more than a small rack of dumbbells, some treadmills and the air conditioning of a tropical swamp.

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