HEALTH & BEAUTY • FITNESS
SHAPE UP How one gym-avoider became a gym convert at W10 Performance
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here are lots of reasons why non-gym goers don’t like gyms. We find them intimidating, for one. Nobody wants to broadcast their inadequacy alongside others who are blatantly showing their superior strength and skills. The presence of sweaty, big-muscled types can be off-putting for smaller, flabbier, weaker people who are already miles away from their comfort zones. Then there are the showers and the changing rooms, presenting further challenges. And that’s before we even get to the actual exercising, which of course nobody likes anyway. At least that’s how I used to feel. All of the above reasons are why so many of us avoid the gym, and why even if we do sign up half-heartedly, we rarely go, so we see no results, so we go even less. However, some gyms seem to inspire great loyalty and almost religious fervour. Like W10
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Performance, which entered my radar after about five people had sung its praises to me, unsolicited. Eventually I succumbed and signed up for a month’s trial. Because though I am instinctively a non-gym goer, I am also not a fan of the looming middle-age spread that’s becoming the wolf at my door. At W10, they’ve eliminated many of the obvious problems. The showers are lovely, fully equipped with nice products and fresh towels; the changing room is small and inviting; there are lots of hairdryers with diffusers, there’s even a bowl of hairbands for when you’ve forgotten yours. And when you’re new, you start with a detailed consultation, which results in a list of detailed statistics about you – and you’re instructed to download their app, which makes it very easy to book sessions (and brilliantly, less easy to cancel them). The gym works on the principle of small group personal training sessions. So you book a session with a trainer, and the session is shared with up to four people.
Sessions are tailored to you, so you’ll probably be doing different things to the others in your group, and the pitch is just right. They definitely push you hard, but in a nice way, and the hour seems to be over quite fast, thanks probably to the large variety of different exercises you’re forced to do. All the trainers are smiley and friendly, everyone remembers your name and there’s no need to feel ashamed. Lots of exercises require no equipment at all, while others involve machines, weights or funny elastic strap things. Two or three sessions a week will certainly keep the wolf from the door and instill a new sense that gym-going is less binary than you may have thought: you don’t have to be a gym-goer or a non-gym goer, because at W10, everyone is equal.
W 1 0. F I T 202-208 Kensal Road, W10 020 3489 5428
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