A NEW GIRL EVERY NIGHT After-class antics of your gym instructor
It used to be all about rappers and rock stars but, as Giselle Wainwright finds out, it’s the wellness influencers who have our attention now…
You can do this! C’mon! Push yourselves!” A handsome young man, the colour of a digestive biscuit and with a six-pack that glistens under the strobe lighting, bellows at the room. As the beat kicks in, he suddenly breaks into a round of burpees, and the 20 or so women in his class drop down beside him, their topknots jiggling in excited unison. It’s Tuesday night and this HIIT workout is his favourite of the week. And judging by the fact that this 60 minutes of cardiac-arrest-inducing aerobics sells out within 10 minutes, his clients clearly agree. As the hour draws to an end, and Rich* doles out high fives, a petite blonde in forestgreen leggings and a matching cropped top holds his gaze that second longer. “Could I get your number… for private training?” she asks. He whips out his phone. That night she texts. The following day, they’re having sex on her living room floor.
This scene. On repeat. But with a different woman, plucked from a different class, is how Rich spends his Tuesdays. And Thursdays. And Saturdays. Across the country, his female counterparts are doing the same – and if they’re not, their clients are wishing that they would.
“Clients hit on me all the time,” Ashley*, 27, a personal trainer for a well-known nationwide gym chain, tells me. “I meet most of them on the gym floor, but we train at theirs and that’s where it turns into something else. Recently, a client disappeared upstairs, then called my name. I found her in the shower with the bathroom door open – I was happy to go with it.”
“One time, a girl from my class waited outside the gym for me and offered me a lift home,” adds spin instructor Luke*, 31.“She told me she lived a 45-minute drive away, but loved coming to my class just to see me. Fast forward about 20 minutes and we were at it in her car.”
WARMING UP
It never used to be like this. Ten years ago, fitness was something to be done with the curtains drawn, and Jillian Michaels’ Shred-It DVD on your TV screen. Wellness meant ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith poking around the general public’s toilet detritus, or Mr Motivator doing grapevines in Day-Glo legwarmers and a bandana. But today things look different. Our fitness idols are Joe Wicks, a chest-baring 31-year-old who looks like a cross between Justin Bieber and the world’s most beautiful labradoodle, Kayla Itsines and Jen Selter, an Instagram star who paps pictures of her cantilevered backside in varying degrees of squat. Can Joe Wicks do a better forward lunge than Mr Motivator? Probably not. But can he look a whole lot better doing it? You bet. Will that make hundreds of thousands of us more likely to follow his exercises? Judging by the fact that the three books he’s released in the last 18 months have all sold more than any other UK weight-loss title since records began**, the answer is yes.
The wellness industry is worth £2.9 trillion†, and if sex sells, then on the gym floor the current crop of trainers are only too happy to indulge their client’s fantasies. Go into any gym or fitness class today and the instructors look like demigods – all tans and teeth and six-packs that bulge like a bag of onions. Gone are the days when you only knew the name of your instructor before you turned up to your aerobics class. Now, gyms and fitness studios across the land sell classes through the person taking them. You don’t
“Minutes after class, we were at it in her car”
show up to any old HIIT class. You set your alarm so you can be the first to bag a spot at Rich’s HIIT class. (The Beckhams’ favourite spin studio, SoulCycle, was the first fitness studio to set up with the idea that you would book classes for the instructor rather than the class.) In the world of fitness, instructors are celebrities. And where there are celebrities, there are invariably groupies.
HOT & BOTHERED
A friend of mine always turns Happn on whenever she’s close to a gym, while another picks her classes based on what the instructor looks like. The personal trainer has become today’s trophy conquest. I’ve not gone to those lengths quite yet, but after a recent breakup I have been hitting the gym a lot more often, in outfits a lot more revealing than when I was with my ex.
Alex Crockford, 27, has the freshly shaved face, chiselled cheekbones and perfectly styled quiff reminiscent of a ’90s boy-band member. His body, with its honey tan and tribal tattoo on the left, sculpted bicep, is one that I – and his 138k followers – know well, thanks to a grid consisting largely of topless workout pictures. “I get a lot of messages like, ‘You’re hot and sexy,’ or, ‘Are you single?’ followed by, ‘Where are you based?’” he tells me, admitting that 60% of his following is female. “I’m engaged, but I know plenty of guys who take advantage of the perks. Being a mini celebrity in their own world? Of course they do.”
One of them is Dan*, who has 250k followers and admits that meeting women is the sole purpose behind his posts: “I wanted a cut of the money and the fame while doing something I’d be doing in the gym anyway, but naturally, it’s helped my love life. I’ve had relationships with several high-profile women, all through them messaging me directly.”
As for the women he doesn’t want to date? He’ll flirt with them, for business. “If they’re up for more, I’ll continue, as I know they’ll keep paying for sessions, and that’s good for me.”
Ollie Best (pictured) has had to take a different approach. The 35-year-old’s feed may contain the standard topless shots, but he also liberally peppers it with pictures of his girlfriend, Charli, after receiving non-stop, pushy requests from prospective clients – both male and female. “Guys tend to be exceptionally forward. I’ve had messages asking for training, but then offering to pay more if I send explicit photos,” he says. “Women are brave behind their keyboards – I get bombarded on social media. As part of my training, I ask women to send before and after photos, which is a standard industry thing. But some take it to the extreme. I’ve had X-rated shots sent to me, of women in lingerie or topless. It’s odd, as they’re always so shy in real life.”
It’s not just male trainers who attract attention. “I’ve been offered £20k to spend the night with someone,” says London-based PT and fitness influencer Ciara Madden (pictured), who has a bottom that looks as though it’s been crafted out of Carrara
“Plenty of guys take advantage of the perks”
marble (which she is only too happy to share with her 44k Instagram followers). She tells me she also receives ‘hundreds’ of explicit photos or propositions per day: “One guy offered me £100 if I sent him my smelly socks after a workout. It’s constant. It’s why I only train women now. My feed is all about booty workouts for women, so if a guy messages me asking to train him, I know what he’s after.”
Clapham-based PT Nathalie Ruck, 28, says she’s also had odd requests, such
as being paid extra to work out in bare feet, as well as being hit on regularly. “In the first gym I worked at, I was asked out four times in the first month,” she recalls.
Barry’s Bootcamp’s most revered trainer is Louis Rennocks, 30. Scraping into the model’s usually fully booked classes is something you should feel ‘very, very lucky’ about, according to his clientele.
“You have to look a certain way, be a certain way in this industry. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that I look after myself,” Louis tells me. “People want a photo at the end of the class, of course. They’re pretty confident, but I always stay professional.”
“I go maybe twice a week,” says Emma, 29. “Louis has great energy. I know I work out harder because of him. He’s so fit, it makes me feel good that a guy like that gives me his time.”
COOL IT DOWN
This is a running theme with every woman I spoke to for this piece: we’re obsessed with the personal interest that these attractive men take in us. And it’s a flattery that often comes at a time when we need it the most. Because the majority of us who hire personal trainers, or begin a new fitness regime, are looking for a total reinvention: of both our bodies and minds. Myself included. It was a brutal split that drove me through the doors of my local gym a year ago. A workout helped me feel in control, at a time when, outside a class, I wasn’t eating or sleeping. While nothing happened with my PT, his interest in my life was intoxicating. But was it him? Or the natural high my body experienced each week? We know that exercise releases the ‘happy’ hormone dopamine (also released during orgasms), but during a workout, your body also releases oxytocin, the hormone associated with falling in love. When I leave the gym happy, it’s because I did the work, but after a class, I pin that happiness on the instructor.
And, of course, each instructor has their own duty of care – most major gym chains have rules in place forbidding PTs from dating or sleeping with their clients. “I understand where the attention comes from,” says Ollie. “It always starts off professionally, but as you start to train, you inevitably know clients well and it becomes quite a personal relationship. Now I have a girlfriend, I can let clients down gently, but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t date one. You can’t let these professional relationships become blurred.”
As I pull on my leggings in my boutique fitness studio’s changing rooms, I think about what it is that really gets us going about these guys. Has my own bad break-up affected what I want from a man? Probably. Am I actually going to get that from a personal trainer? Probably not. It’s their job to make us look and feel good about ourselves. It’s a business transaction. And that’s worth bearing in mind if flirting during the session becomes something more. As with any love interest, if they’re taking advantage of a low point in our lives for a quickie, then they’re not a good trainer, or decent human being. It’s also important to consider how the PTs feel about the attention you’re plying them with, too – for every Rich who’s flattered, there’s an Ollie or Ciara who finds it uncomfortable. But as a marketing ploy? What we’re buying into is something that makes us feel better about ourselves, and that’s no bad thing.
But then I catch myself in the mirror – I’m wearing a cropped top and brand-new Lululemon leggings… OK, maybe it is time to take a bit of a step back.
“You know clients well; it becomes personal”