Gyms in Sydney and Melbourne are now wellness sanctuaries with waiting lists
A new breed of fitness centres are less about the sweat and more about creating an oasis of spiritual, mental and physical health.
If our twenties are our hedonistic years and our thirties the decade of career and/or family, our forties and fifties are when we begin to understand that perhaps our bodies won’t last forever.
Yoga, weights, cycling – various kinds of fitness suddenly become part of the weekly routine. And part of the budget.
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This story appears in the August issue of WISH, out on Friday, August 4 with The Australian.
Because getting fit(ter) post-40 is now a status statement that can cost along the lines of a new car or choosing to fly at the pointy end of a plane. It’s not just enough to take up yoga, join a Pilates class or get a bike.
Fitness centres now come complete with incidental details, such as an in-house laundry service so you never have to lug your gym kit again. Aesop products in the bathroom. Or more esoteric offerings such as bio-hacking and sound healing.
This new breed of training is about offering an oasis of wellness where you just happen to also work out.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s millennials entering this new phase of life. One report backed by a global fitness player suggested that millennials (and gen Z) make up 80 per cent of health club memberships.
Yes, the smashed avo generation with its preference for bespoke experiences catering to their schedules have stamped their fingerprint on another industry. More realistically, it’s also because 40, and 50, aren’t quite the “middle age” life stages they once were. It’s more like Phase Two of Life.
“I think forties and over is an interesting time for people’s health,” says co-founder of Sydney’s Lockeroom, Lachlan Rowston.
“Our kind of client, where they are in their career and what they’ve sacrificed to get there, health is often one of those things that was on the chopping block. For a lot of them, the motivation for them wanting to do something about this isn’t so much that they’re in their forties, but they now have kids and they begin to wonder ‘Am I going to be able to keep up? Can I play sport with my kids?’.”
The slick, all-black gym, located on Bridge Street in the Sydney CBD, has become known for its strictly controlled membership numbers and making no secret about its equally strict courting of an exclusive clientele.
“We advertise for and get founders, partners, business owners, chief executives – essentially, the boss,” says Rowston.
“The people that are in charge.”Rowston and his business partner Raph Freedman came up with the idea to create the kind of space that would fit the demands of C-suite operators while working at a more down-to-earth gym.
The pair also quickly realised that this kind of client was after more than the average gym offering: “‘Can I pay you more for personal training? Can you write me a diet plan?’ So we thought, ‘If this person is willing to pay us five, six times the amount of our regular member, what if there was a gym just for this person? Would there be a market for that?’.”
Turns out there is. A lucrative one, too. Memberships at Lockeroom were snapped up shortly after the doors opened with few flinching at pricing that starts at $9000 for six months but can creep upwards towards $25,000 per year if you want all the “whistles and bells’’ as Rowston describes it.
But as he explains, the cost is more flexible – and value for money – than legend has it. “That price is dictated not by the number of sessions, because every pack has unlimited personal trainer sessions, but it’s depending on what you want to add on to the membership – the nutritionist and the laundry service for example.
”If you’re in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, then it’s likely you, or someone you know, has trained at least once at Acero in Kensington. Acero, founded by Jono and Amy Castano, has become a favourite for celebs – Rita Ora, Rebel Wilson and Candice Warner for instance – seeking out transformational training.
The space boasts luxury Italian fitness equipment Technogym, and doesn’t do “memberships” but rather single sessions that range from $70 to $140 each or “pricing packs” that range from $1150 for 10 visits or a 12-week transformation pack at $6000.
“Acero isn’t just a gym,” says Amy Castano. “What we’ve created is a community that our clients feel a part of. We don’t just get results, but we have fun doing it. For us, fitness, wellness and clients that want to make a change should do it in an environment where they feel comfortable but most importantly, enjoy it and I believe we provide that.”
But these costs pale in comparison to the new – and very exclusive – wellness space in Melbourne’s Collingwood from property guru Tim Gurner. There’s a lot that $25,000 can get you. Like a week at Soneva Fushi in the Maldives. Maybe some minor renovations to your home. Or you could sit through an application process of interviews, assessments and goal alignments in the hopes you are approved to become a member at Gurner’s Saint Haven.
At this point in time though, your best hope is getting on the waitlist. According to Gurner, people couldn’t sign up fast enough to a wellness hub that promises everything from high vibrational music, biohacking, a shoe polish while you work out and, my personal favourite detail, scented towels. The limited number of memberships are now already allocated.
“We have a very long waiting list that is constantly growing,” says Gurner. “Our first club is already fully subscribed and we have further waitlists for Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland with the aim to open a number of clubs along the eastern seaboard of Australia in the coming months and years.”
But once you’re in, you’re really in so to speak. Health stats are checked via an Oura Ring and then meal plans and various treatments are built around that specific data. Most interesting is the way Gurner describes the social element of Saint Haven: a chance to meet and greet “like-minded individuals”.
“Imagine a Friday night where, instead of drinking into the late night and waking up feeling exhausted and sick, you meet friends at ‘The Club’ and have a hard training session, followed by half an hour of breathwork, before enjoying a four-course wholefoods dinner and finishing with an IV drip and a soak in the ancient baths,” he says. “You will have truly connected at a deeper, real level with friends, nourished your body and woken feeling alive and wanting to take on the day.”
The opening of, and apparent success of, Saint Haven hints at a turning point in the way we view the fitness experience. And what we consider to be important when it comes to our health.
That’s what personal trainer and Kundalini yoga instructor Leah Simmons has also found to be true. Simmons, who is based in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, is about as close to a celebrity guru as Australia has right now, and her clientele is a rolodex of the social pages including PR gun Alice Moore and queen of athleisure, P.E Nation co-founder Pip Edwards.
What Simmons has learnt from the people who sign up to her courses at her online program KAAIAA is that clients are seeking more than just a sweat session. Health now means also addressing mental and spiritual wellbeing. Breathwork, meditation, Pilates and “spiritual integration” are all on offer as part of the month-on-month training schedule. The clients signing up, says Simmons, are people aged between 35 and 55 who have caught a second wind so to speak. And, she adds, many are women.
“I would say 95 per cent are women,” explains Simmons. “I think that they resonate with me, because I’m not a 20-year-old fitness model spruiking this, that and the other. I’ve got two kids, I’ve lived a life. I don’t profess to be any different to them. I think women, especially, reach a point in their lives where they just go, ‘There’s more out there for me. This isn’t the end of the road’. I remember looking at my parents when they were around 45 thinking, ‘You are old’.”
Simmons believes that this is a turning point for the fitness industry. Now, it’s not enough to look good but people are willing to seek out experiences and programs that provide the tools to feel good, too.All that being said, health, and wellness, shouldn’t be luxuries in and of themselves. But it sure does make it easier to sweat it out and grind the years back when they’re packaged up as one.
