Action packs: meet London's new gym tribes for 2015

Do you dress in black to lift weights or are you lissom, lean and dedicated to flexibility? Phoebe Luckhurst meets the gym tribes
Get in gear: it's time to find your fit tribe (Picture: Paul Dallimore)

Getting fit is hard to do. Breezy fanatics scream that all you need is a will and a pair of trainers — first, that’s a lie, and second, those are harder to acquire than the fanatics imply. Willpower is a fragile, elusive spirit; trainers are expensive and selecting them bewildering (unless you have a helpful guide).

And thus humans — social animals, as we are — do as we have always done and seek safety in numbers. Attaching yourself to a fit tribe will steer you through the complexities of working out. Find your spiritual kin and mimic their style, behaviour and regime. London: find your fit tribe.

YOGINIS

The look: yoginis are svelte, lissom and compact. The truly committed — and most tend to be, for another attribute of the yogini tribe is dedication — will attend four classes a week; the results are enviably sculpted muscles (yoga works most of them if you do it properly). The uniform is Lululemon leggings and layered vest tops for showing off those honed arms.

The workout: if you want to get your juices flowing, try rocket yoga: yoginis recommend it in hushed tones. Throw yourself from pose to pose to feel that sun salutation burn.

HEALTH GOTH

The look: the health goth has a complicated evolutionary timeline: it began as a niche meme and a small group of friends posting pictures of fitness kit in incongruous settings. It evolved into pictures of tattooed, pierced hipsters working out; now, it’s also a catch-all term for people who rock up to the gym repping black sportsgear and looking very serious. Health goths always work out alone; classes are for the normative and mainstream. They covet anything from the Alexander Wang x H&M collab.

The workout: Find them using weights ­— moodily — or running — angrily — on a treadmill.

MARATHONER

The look: perhaps more than any other fit tribe, marathoners self-identify as an elite: one that has stared the limit of human endurance in the face and conquered it — only wetting themselves twice in the process. As a result, as well as this enhanced appreciation of the human spirit, they’ll likely be damaged permanently: look out for the limp, the wince as they descend a staircase, or a tatty knee support that is no longer performing its function (“This? Oh, just a silly thing the physio suggested. I’ve never been fitter!”). Obviously, marathoners wear memorabilia: specifically the free T-shirt they got for finishing Berlin 2012. Marathon royalty will be repping a London tee. You’ll spot them mainly on a treadmill or doing squats with kettlebells in order to strengthen their leg muscles. You may also hear them crying in the shower when they think you can’t hear them: running hurts.

The workout: the biggest news in running next year is treadmill interval training — there are classes popping up across the capital. Interval training involves modulating the speed and incline on your treadmill: serious runners love it. You’ll also find marathoners in training races: try a Human Race — there are events for all abilities (humanrace.co.uk), the Royal Parks half-marathon (royalparkshalf.com, October 11) and the Hackney half-marathon (runhackney.com), May 10.

SPIN DOCTOR

The look: spin doctors are the peppy, school-spirited members of the fitness community: their vice is spinning (cycling an exercise bike at high speed and varying the levels of resistance, conducted to the heady soundtrack of today’s modern pop) and their poison is coconut water. They are always clad in loud neon and have distractingly peachy bottoms. As 2015 — like 2014 — is set to be another year of the rear (if you care to adhere to anatomical trends) it would be prudent to attach yourself to this tribe. Your arse will thank you for it.

The workout: Psycle on Mortimer Street is a favourite: the vast studio blasts tunes to get your legs moving fast and shreds fat fast.

SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

The look: the social butterfly has not set foot on the gym floor and fails to see the point of the machines. By their logic, you live in a world of stairs (admittedly true), live in a city with hundreds of parks in which to run and cycle a real bike (admittedly true) and can row a real boat (admittedly true). For them the point of the gym is classes. They’re undiscerning: qualifications are “anything involving dancing, complicated equipment or a repetitive twisting movement”, and “conducted to the greatest hits of the Black Eyed Peas”. Kit isn’t the main event — it’s the thrashing around they go for — so they’ll be in something half-hearted and nondescript, but they’ll be grinning (“IT’S ALL THE ENDORPHINS!!”). Usually wielding a bottle of water.

The workout: Body Attack really helps to “work out the stress knots of a busy day”.

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