Gyms are the new nightclubs – and that’s worth dancing about
One of my great regrets in life is that there are so few opportunities for dancing. And I mean dancing the way I like it – not in nightclubs, where all the action takes place far too late at night, at far too great a cost, and with a hangover thrown in for good measure. Nor at weddings, where DJs are always awful, and where you’ve just eaten a giant dinner and feel like going to bed instead of boogieing in black tie.
But now it seems a solution is at hand – with our fitness and health-loving millennial friends leading the way. Enter the disco workout.
Today’s groovy ones are shunning the late-night boozathon that is a club for a morning, noon or night-time workout at the gym. That’s right: gyms are the new nightclubs. And it’s not hard to see why.
According to marketing firm Mintel, the UK private health and fitness market is soaring and is now worth £3.2billion – and, for a nation of former
couch potatoes, it is interesting to note that 15per cent of Britons now have gym memberships.
With this has come a taste for those US cult workout studios, such as SoulCycle, a spinning class in which people cycle for dear life in discotheque conditions – a packed room oozing body heat, revealing Spandex and thumping beats.
And this autumn, a US import called Sweat Crawl will be making an appearance here. That’s right: this is a pub crawl for gyms.
I approve of all this. It’s a way to get your exercise, combined with the adrenalin and sexiness of a nightclub, but without the awful sticky floors and late nights. Some gyms, such as Trib3 in Sheffield, even greet exercisers with a glass of prosecco after the workout.
Now that’s something to dance about.