To be annoyed that my gym only has open mixed sex showers

[Hothothothothotdog]

My local council gym with a swimming pool only has open showers in the mixed-sex swimming pool. This means I have to rise off, dress, then go home and shower which just seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

AIBU to be fuming about it? It means an early morning swim is off the cards as I’ve not got time for that faff (or ever tbh!).

Was the same at the pool where I learned to swim over 60 years ago.

The pool I use has a mixed sex changing area but it is open to the pool. Two lifeguards are sat right next to the changing area so I never feel it's a problem. There are open showers and some cubicles so you get a choice. It seems to work.

That is because you shower in your swimsuit.

The local pools in the places I have lived always had mixed showers and single sex toilets.

ETA: as well as single sex cubicles and single sex changing rooms.

Just stick on a tobe or towel and flip flops and go to the ladies.

separate women’s changing room with showers.

The pool I go to now is like that, single sex changing rooms... I kind of don't like the nuddy women wandering around. I'm too used to mixed sex changing rooms & you only get nuddy if A) you're under 5yo or B) in your cubicle OR in the single cubicle showers (which every council pool I've been to also has).

The now-pool is competition standard and although they have family sessions, it is fairly bad set up for families so not many families go. It's Difficult When .... say a dad wants to take his 7yo daughter swimming. This was exactly our problem when DC were little. I recently tracked down "Mum!" when a lad about 8yo was standing outside the changing room shouting for her attention. Not ideal.

You realise you’re in the swimming pool wearing a swimming costume in front of all the same people?!🤷‍♀️🤣🤣 no one gives a shit if you wash your armpits and hair in front of them in the shower! You are overthinking just how much people actually looking at you and care?

Obviously that poster wants to remove her swimming costume for a proper wash. Is that the norm where you swim?

Aren't you clean and showered (at home) before you even go to the pool? How dirty can you get having entered the water clean.

Maybe try looking up how many sex offences are carried out when mixed sex facilities are the only availability. Here’s a small sample…
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/crime/pervert-used-his-mobile-phone-to-photograph-girls-changing-at-edinburgh-pool-3104606
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/men-filmed-people-swimming-pools-changing-rooms-bathrooms-police-b1154508.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gang-hid-pool-changing-rooms-160356310.html

I can honestly say I've never in all my years seen anyone do their "bits and pits" in a public swimming pool shower!
Surely you just have a wash in the showers with your swimming costume on and then you can have a more thorough one when you get home if you like?!

She wants to do "her bits" as well though
Which to wash would involve taking swimming costume off.
I've never known communal naked showers at swimming pools

I’m 60 and have never encountered mixed showers where there’s a pool. If I did, I wouldn’t bother returning there. Sod that.

YANBU

ysa it's standard but women shouldn't have to be showering in front of men.

men are the biggest danger to women and a basic shower in front of men is just a minimal right.

buts it's universally normal and I don't think it would change.

As in morning or evening?

It's pretty arrogant to call the op daft and assume she doesn't understand the layout of HER OWN gym, when you yourself have never been there!

As pps on this thread have said, I have also been to leisure centres where there is one mixed changing "village" usually near the pool area AND separate male and female changing rooms, often in a different part of the building (i.e. near the gym), and no option to get from one to the other without going through the public areas which could have reception, a coffee shop, in one place I visited a library in - thus pretty understandable you might not want to wander across dripping in your swimsuit.

My leisure centre asked for feedback after their big refurb when they changed from separate sex into mixed village - they said there had been a lot of mixed feedback but essentially every new public leisure centre built in the last decade has followed the same design- nowhere is building new public centres with only single sex facilities. That's why some people have never experienced them and some have only experienced them, all depends how old your centre is.

Otoh all the private gyms with pools I've been in - David Lloyd, virgin active have all still had single sex changing rooms.

You literally have your swimming costume on though? Thinking back I can only ever remember communal shower areas and everyone was in the same big open area one. Never thought anything of it tbh.

I thought they were all like this anyway.

Which shows how easy it is to make women believe they aren’t entitled to their own spaces. You’ve never known it so you don’t think it’s a thing or even should be a thing.

That’s because they’re meant to be rinse off showers. Not get ready for a full day shower.

usually the gym sections will have a proper get ready shower. You are supposed to arrive clean for swimming (having used soap or some other cleaning product for your body)

so you should rinse off anybody seat when entering and rinse off the chlorine water when leaving.

Nobody gets their clothes off though, it's a rinse off after the pool. You hardly do an intimate wash, you do that when you get home surely.

This is because a lot of leisure centres get homeless people coming to use them for a wash.

and then beginning the changing rooms. So I think they’re phasing them out. But also it’s to just get people in and out rather than spending 45 minutes getting ready. And doing a full hair wash routine.

Do people not plan their day, activities around the facilities they have access to?

if you know you prefer a proper wash and want to use a place that only has these facilities you make sure you have enough time to get ready at home after your workout?

unless I’m at one of my fancy gyms I wash at home. I would only shower at the leisure centre if I was desperate.

a communal rinse off shower is the leisure centre making it clear it’s for a RINSE.

My local has to put up signs telling people to stop dyeing their hair and wash their undies. No wonder they’ve opened everything up.

At my local pool there is a similar setup. I have a dry robe type thing and flip flops that I wear between the two changing rooms. Normally I go to the gym pre swim so my stuff is in that changing room and I’m just nipping in to do a few lengths / sauna.

Like I said upthread, I’ve swum at lunchtime quite often over the years, in various council pools, and always had access to female changing rooms and showers, and have had a proper shower in a private shower cubicle.

So I’m not going home, I’m going back to work. And I’d like to be clean when I do so. Which I’ve always been able to be.

Pretty standard to have communal showers at a leisure centre. Just shower and wash your hair with your costume on like everyone else.