The gym; somewhere conventionally viewed as a place for sweat-loving sadists and buff-bodies alike, but times have changed since the days where you’d find Arnold Schwarzenegger repping it out on the bench press, or Jane Fonda flitting around in a skimpy leotard for retro aerobics.

For years, I’ve wanted to share that fitness doesn’t need to mean ludicrous, pain-inducing workouts, nor a solemn endeavour that we ‘ought’ to do merely to preserve our health. Fitness can be fun! Fitness can be therapeutic, fitness can be social, fitness can be solo. My point is this fitness can be anything you want it to be and just the same as with how we should approach our nutrition needs, there is no one size fits all and we merely need to discover what works for us. We seem to steadily be embracing this concept as fad diets and short-term exercise solutions are ridiculed by the experts and our peers. 

With this holistic approach to our health, we’ve become more open-minded and many of us have found the desire to work up a sweat in the company of others – yes I’m referring to the rise of group-based training (something I’ve already mentioned I’m a huge advocate of in my recent review of Core Collective’s TEAM/SWEAT class). Naturally, the wider industry has followed suit and as we can see with the rise of boutique gym studios, I think it’s fair to say the luxe fitness scene has firmly landed here in London! I’ve put together a selection of the best studios for every workout you could possibly imagine, as part of Your Ultimate London Fitness Guide for 2022. An extensively researched four-part feature to help you discover ‘fitness’ in a way that works for you.