Where to Train in Greenwich If You Hate Big Gyms

Plenty of people don't dislike exercise. They dislike gyms.

The queue for the squat rack. The person filming themselves in the mirror. Forty pieces of equipment and no idea which three you should use. Paying £30 a month for a year and going eleven times.

If that's familiar, the problem was never your motivation. It was the format.

Why big gyms don't work for a lot of people

A large gym sells you access. That's the entire product — a door code and some equipment. What you do once you're inside is your problem.

That works brilliantly if you already know how to train and enjoy doing it alone. If you don't, you're paying a monthly fee for a building you feel awkward in. The gym doesn't mind either way; their model assumes most members won't come.

What small group training actually is

A coached session with a handful of people in the room. Someone has written the session before you arrive. Someone watches you do it. Someone notices if your form breaks down or if you've gone missing for two weeks.

It's closer to personal training than to a fitness class. The cap is the whole point — at eight people a coach can still see everyone. At twenty, they're a DJ with a microphone.

What to look for

Ask three questions of anywhere you're considering.

How many people are in a session? If the answer is more than about ten, you're buying a class, not coaching.

Who writes the programme? If nobody can answer, nobody writes it.

What happens if I stop coming? At a good studio, someone rings you. At a big gym, nothing happens at all — that's the business model.

Where we fit

META45 is a small studio on Norman Road in Greenwich. Sessions are 45 minutes and capped at 8 people. Every session is programmed and coached, and the coaches know members by name — which is only possible because we've deliberately kept it small.

We're rated 4.9 out of 5 across more than 6,600 ClassPass ratings and 5.0 on Google. Most of our members had a big gym membership before they came, and most of them weren't using it.

If you've bounced off gyms before, it's worth trying a different format before concluding the problem is you.