The dawn of the super-gym

On a humid July evening in New York’s SoHo, and in spite of arctic air-con, everyone around me is feeling the burn. Armies of impossibly buff boys and a few taut, toned women are performing punishing crunches and lunges, wielding giant kettlebells, squatting, jump-ing and pumping colossal volumes of iron, under the watchful eye of black-clad trainers. I side-step to avoid being flattened by a man running rapidly towards me, tethered around the waist with a thick elastic band held tight his trainer, like some latter-day human chariot.

Less a gym and more like a scene from the heats for The Hunger Games, this is Equinox sports club, one of the flagship branches of America’s most high-end fitness chain, which is imminently opening its first UK outpost in Kensington. The smart new London club, below the Kensington Roof Gardens, on the floor previously occupied by Biba and then The Rainbow Room restaurant, boasts a free crèche, a room devoted entirely to punchbags, a digital skylight with passing clouds (because there just wasn’t enough light from the real sky), and all manner of machinery, including an anti-gravity device that analyses your gait and a Pilates Reformer machine called an ‘electric chair’. There is also talk of a Michelin-starred chef running the on-site restaurant.

The choice of an upmarket location for its first UK foray is hardly surprising: the 60 US branches of the club, in cities including LA, Chicago, Miami and Washington DC, and the 20 in New York, are all in prime property hotspots and have garnered an impressive celebrity clientele, including P Diddy, Natalie Portman and Gerard Butler. The brand is even endorsed by President Obama, who used numerous Equinox branches to work out in while campaigning for the last election. A friend of mine regularly reports seeing Homeland’s Claire Danes, and her current rival for the Emmy award, The Good Wife’s Julianna Margulies, perspiring competitively at the SoHo branch, but when I pop down at peak time, after work on a Monday, I can’t spot any celebs, apart from a man in a bandana doing something fiendish with a medicine ball, who may or may not be Will Ferrell.

The club — all high-ceilinged, industrial chic — is so big that the A-listers could be hiding out anywhere. In the cardio area, I count 30 treadmills, 25 elliptical and cross-trainers and a similar number of stationary bikes, underneath 16 large flat-screen TVs. Around the corner, the group fitness studio, with its brand-new sprung beech floor, is similarly vast, and well-toned gym bunnies are taking part in classes such as Purgatory BootCamp ‘a no-nonsense, non-stop conditioning/cardio class that will push you mentally as well as physically, because “you gotta go through Hell to get to Heaven” ’. I appear to have wandered into some sort of dystopian fitness future.

The cycling studio, meanwhile, is almost in pitch darkness, with house music throbbing as a spin class sweats it out. It sounds, and looks, like a rave on wheels, and I wonder if this is what the receptionist was referring to when he asked if I was on the ‘guest list’ (you get a certain number of day passes for friends when you join).

Beyond the reception area, with its juice bar, sofas, free Wi-Fi and Mac terminals, a staircase leads to the sunny yoga studio, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, and there’s also a spa offering everything from massage to laser hair removal. Small fridges around the club contain eucalyptus-soaked cold towels. It’s the sort of luxurious fitness experience Holmes Place was probably aiming for, before it sold out to Virgin Active.

Back in the enormous weights area, I am keen to try some of the dazzling array of equipment, but frankly, I’m intimidated. There’s not a bingo wing or beer belly in sight, but I soon realise that no one here — approximately 75 per cent of them male — is watching me; they’re far too busy admiring themselves in the many mirrors.

In the changing room, I consider filling my bag with the free cosmetics — the showers contain vats of Kiehl’s products, and there are jars of thoughtful extras, such as shaving cream, disposable razors and tampons, as well as hairspray, deodorant and mouthwash. I am guessing, with its offensively good-looking, well-groomed clientele, the post-workout hook-up rate here must be pretty high.

Of course, chilled eucalyptus-soaked towels and Kiehl’s conditioner come at a price: the monthly fee for the SoHo club is $183 (£118), plus an ‘initiation’ (joining) fee of $645 (£415), and an hour’s personal training is $100 (£65). The Kensington club will cost even more, with monthly fees of £160 if you join now (£180 once it opens), though the usual initiation fee of £500 is currently being waived.

Tim, the handsome membership advisor who shows me around the SoHo space, challenges me when I admit that I find the rates steep. ‘You have walked into the best fitness club in the country,’ he says. ‘Other clubs only sell you on price, we sell you on results. Ninety-five per cent of our clients see results. We have an incredible retention rate, people want to come back.’ Perhaps, I think, some come back simply to gaze at all the rippling biceps or to score a date. But whatever the motivation, the cult of Equinox certainly seems to keep them coming. ES