Malkin Athletic Center

It’s hard to believe this gym is associated with Harvard, really. It’s cramped and has an awful layout. The hours here are completely ridiculous — it closes at 7PM on a Friday and 5PM on a Saturday. With all the money that Harvard has it’s bizarre that they can’t provide for longer hours.

This gym has quite a history and an incredible athletic center for athletes. Quite impressed with the wrestling facility

This gym is a great option based on its price alone (the actual price you’ll pay varies based on your exact affiliation with Harvard). While it has less equipment overall than a private/​commercial gym, the MAC never gets busy enough that you won’t find a free machine.
The one caveat you should consider before joining is the hours — it closes early on Fridays and Saturdays (as early as 5pm), and the summer hours are basically nonexistent (completely closed on the weekends, for example).

Love/​hate relationship with this gym. Love — the cardio machines, cost, accessibility, workout classes– cycling, rowing, core strength. Hate — the labyrinth of the building and having to climb/​descend several flights of stairs and go back and forth to either sides of the building to reach specific equipment, the very small, outdated and overcrowded weight room.

$ 50 for the semester, $ 150 for the year. Perfect for broke grad (or undergrad) students! (Sidenote: Must be Harvard affiliated to use this gym.)
Friendly front desk & membership people.
Towels are provided.
Downstairs: Huge locker rooms/​bathroom, weight room.
Upstairs: spacious classroom (zumba, yoga, etc.,) & two corridors of cardio machines (many w/​built-​in TVs) with a view of the pool in the middle.
I’m spoiled by gyms that are open 24 hours/​day & this one isn’t. Hours may change, but usually closes at 10pm weekdays & 5pm sat. It’s never busy when I’m there between 11am-​1pm or right before closing.

I had my first taste of a crowded evening workout at the mac tonight (I usually go during the day on the days I’m not working or in school). When I opened the door to the treadmill room it felt like I was walking into a sweaty armpit. No bueno. There’s no circulation in there! New year’s resolution time must be utterly horrible here, but I digress.
For the very cheap price I pay (my husband is an employee), I really can’t complain. But at the same time, the price is reflected in the complete lack of upkeep at the mac. My first time I visited, I wanted to try the circuit room, because I thought it would be a more woman-​friendly place to strength train (both weight rooms are male dominated and I’m not very comfortable there). I was able to use maybe half of the machines, the other half of them had their names/​instructions completely worn away so I had no idea what they were meant to be used for!
As others have mentioned, the layout here is really weird. if you want to use the treadmills, it’s pretty straightforward: go up the stairs after checking in. If you want to use the ellipticals, though, it’s another story. You can either go upstairs through the treadmill area and through the classroom area (as long as a class isn’t going) to the other side of the building for the ellipticals. Otherwise you need to go down to the basement, cut through the building, and walk up two flights of stairs. I mean. you ARE there to work out but it’s a pretty awkward layout.
It’s also a bummer that classes are extra, AND that although you can cut through the class room to get to the other side of the building, they lock up all the free weights and equipment so you can’t just use the room for stretching/​lifting. That is one of my biggest disappointments with this place: I’d love to have a more woman-​friendly place to lift weights and it would be so easy to offer members the option by keeping the weights unlocked. I guess they’re worried about people stealing them. but who’s stealing 8 lb weights?
Positives: I will say that the treadmills and ellipticals are all quite nice. They are all very new seeming and come with tvs which is great. I have yet to use the pool, but it looks very nice and well-​maintained. some ellipticals look out onto the pool so you can watch the swimmers, which i like (they’re of all ages/​shapes/​sizes). I wish the mac offered group swimming lessons (they don’t unless you put together your own group).
Overall like I said for what I pay, I understand I won’t get much, but it seems like Harvard is putting in seriously minimal effort here. It wouldn’t take much to address the obvious issues I brought up in my review and it would make it a much better place to work out. And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, do something to get air circulating in that treadmill room!

It’s nice to have a gym close by as a student, but the MAC is not great. Actually, it kinda sucks. The worst thing about this place is the set-​up. You would think by looking at the building from the outside there would be plenty of space for everything and accessibility wouldn’t be an issue — wrong. After checking in, you have to basically walk through a maze to get to the locker room downstairs. If you’re doing cardio, then you need to walk back up two flights of stairs and maybe to the other side of the building, depending on which cardio machines you want to use since there are two cardio rooms. Because of the way this building was constructed, there are also two weight rooms connected by a long hallway which is adjacent to a smaller room for machines for those wanting to do a quick circuit. You should plan on knowing which equipment you want to use and where it is between the rooms, otherwise you will be doing a lot of walking around. And there’s not much of each equipment so you might have to wait, especially when it’s crowded. Oh, and the weight machines are old. Like someone said, people have to do calisthenics in the stairwell area. I really hope this place gets a major renovation soon.

Good gear, and plenty of it. Video screens on the all the cardio equipment. Decent 25 yd pool. Random studio space all over. Spacious locker room. Bring a lock for the day lockers or buy one for $ 5.
Only downers: you have to pay for towel service, and the layout is a little bizarre (and signage sucks).
Pay attention to the rates they charge, because it’s different for each school. But it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a better deal than any of the other gyms in the area.

Updating this to 3 stars for the summer months. The MAC is now packed with teenagers and kids doing swimming summer camp or something. They are loud and extremely obnoxious in the locker rooms. And the locker rooms are SO disgusting in the summer months. It’s hot and people leave gross things everywhere. I have never seen anyone down there cleaning.

The TVs on the machines are GREAT. 4 stars for that. BUT the ALWAYS ran out of sweat towels! (and i went almost every day for a year, so i know!)

Bottom line: the MAC smells like feet.
No exaggeration. It’s not that there’s one room that smells like feet, or even one corridor. The *whole* place smells like feet.
Harvard, PLEASE invest in ventilation. Or can someone crack a window? Especially in the cardio room.
And it’s beyond cramped. There are people doing calisthenics in dark hallways because there’s no room anywhere else. Seriously. You will go downstairs to the locker room and find women practicing yoga on mats underneath a flight of stairs.
God help you if you get there between 4:40 and 6PM. It’s a zoo.
Oh, and God help you if you want to swim after 5. You can’t. The pool is closed. And God help you if you want to swim after noon on a weekend. You can’t. The pool is closed. And it turns out the only time time pool isn’t crowded is between 10:30 and 11:45 AM on weekdays. Of course, it probably will be now, since I’ve told all of you my secret.

Now I’m not a pervy old man… I am much too young to be considered old. If you are looking to loose some pounds and want to do it around some 18 year old Harvard blondies, then this is the place for you (and me). The only catch is that you need to be a Harvard affiliate. Now this isn’t as difficult as it sounds since the term partner is pretty lax now a days. All you need is a joint lease, bank account, or some mail (additionally you usually need to sign a piece of paper declaring your interdependent relationship; but hey, if you are that cheap you wont mind).
The gym has everything you would expect from a gym, including a nice towel service. The most rocking thing here, aside from the girls’ bodies, would have to be the fact that all of the cardio equipment have built in tvs. You heard it here, now you can watch some food network while burnin’ your fat ass. Now there is a 20 minute time limit on the machines, but it turns out that you (and the person who tries to kick you off of your machine) are the only people who follow it. People also don’t always wipe down the machines when they are done, but if you don’t mind kicking people off and cleaning your machine before you use it, then by all means.
The complex is quite sizable. Did I mention that there are TWO cardio rooms? There are also basketball courts, personal trainers, two pools, an indoor cycling studio, and a place where classes are held. I would definitely suggest taking a step class (you will figure out why soon enough). You can thank me later. Not just cardio equipment, there are also three weight rooms.
Bottom Line: Its not like you have to kiss each other in front of the membership people.