#2: Recreation Centers

24 Hour Fitness: $70 to start & $30/month ongoing for access to one facility
Your college rec. center: Free (included in tuition!)

In high school, I had never dreamed of getting a gym membership.  After all, only health nuts go to the gym...right?  College helped me reverse that stereotype as the on-campus rec. center made fitness equipment and classes so accessible to me, the novice, at such low cost. 

Recreation centers are booming on college campuses and often undergo drastic renovations to stay on the cutting edge of fitness comfort and technology.  Typically in these facilities you can find cardio and strength training exercise equipment, a running track, a dance studio, tennis courts, raquetball courts, basketball courts, volleyball courts, and a swimming pool. However, some of the amenities students have come to expect from their rec. centers would turn Gold's Gym green with envy:

While many rec. centers have a rock climbing wall, the Evergreen State College Rec Center has a full climbing gym.

Source: http://www.evergreen.edu/reccenter/images/climbing_gym/climbingwall3.jpg

Carleton College's Recreation Center has it's own indoor putting green!

Source: http://apps.carleton.edu/reason_package/reason_4.0/www/images/42165.jpg

UC Irvine's Anteater Recreation Center recently added a Test Kitchen and Classroom to the facility.

Source: http://www.campusrec.uci.edu/arc/images/kitchen.jpg

In addition to some amazing facilities, many colleges provide fitness classes in their recreation centers, ranging from dance to martial arts to spinning to yoga, and more.  Some of these classes cost money and others are free, so check the schedule at the start of each term so you know what is coming!

I am by no means a fitness guru and I don't know that a gym membership is anywhere in my future, but there was something about the recreation center on my college campus that made me want to go and get fit.  Maybe it's the social aspect of working out, maybe it's the convenient location, or maybe it's the fact that I didn't have to fork out any additional dough to use the facility.  There's something at the rec center for everyone.  What kind of rec center amenities would you like to see at your college?