Gyms can often be intimidating places. Even when you know what you’re doing, there are all sorts of factors that can make the experience stressful rather than the stress reliever it’s supposed to be. Whether you have to wait for equipment, you can only go at the busiest time or battling through a sea of personal trainers who may or may not know what they’re doing – sometimes it can just be a buzz kill. When we were invited down to try out the Lomax gym in Chelsea, we did so with some trepidation.

However, as soon as we walked in to the building, we could see we were in for something different. This is the first place we’ve been to in a while that seems to have a perfectly harmonious balance between fitness, nutrition and wellbeing. Walking in to the ground floor, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just a lovely cafe. It serves only foods with the best ingredients and the staff will whip you up a protein shake or nutritious smoothie to send you on your way after your work out. You’d be happy enough to spend the whole day just in the cafe, but you know, we have working out to do!

The gym is upstairs and is not your regular wall-of-mirrors-and-stench-of-sweat-fest. Lomax started out as in home one-on-one personal training and they have very much brought that mentality into this space. It’s much smaller than your regular gym and you can have one-on-one PT or do group classes.

We were there for the Blast class, taken by the awesome Hilary. Group classes have a maximum of four people, so you still get personal attention from the trainer to correct form and there’s no hiding in the back to try and take it easy. The Blast Class is a great combination of 30 – 60 second intervals of spinning, TRX, weights and bench work designed to up your heart rate and give you an all over body workout. Just when you think you have nothing left to give, Hilary throws in a killer ab portion to send you on your way. For a 60 minute class, it seems to be over in a flash – guess that’s what happens when the workout is fun.

After that, if you so wish, the building also has spa facilities offering a range of services from massage and physio to acupuncture, reflexology and life coaching. Between the food downstairs, the small, personalised gym sessions and this, you can tell the Lomax approach to a healthy lifestyle is as it should be – holistic. The whole building shows you, you can’t have one without the other. For a truly healthy life, you have to have that balance.

Bravo to Lomax for creating a truly unique and healthy atmosphere to work out in. Can’t wait to get back for another Blast Class.

Check out the Lomax website for more information.