If social media has changed the face of pretty much everything, then you’d have to admit that it’s also changed the body – or at least, how we nurture and maintain it. Accounts extolling the virtues of clean, wholesome eating are huge; nutritious brunches are endlessly Instagrammed, and the surroundings in which they’re served, increasingly Instagrammable.
The same goes, of course, for gyms, with the rise of the gym selfie (#legday, anyone?) causing fitness providers to create ever-more photo-worthy settings in which to work up a sweat. Gyms and studios are increasingly focused on one specific type of training – barre, for instance, or yoga. If you ran a few miles on a local leisure centre treadmill while watching Real Housewives on a mounted screen and didn’t take a selfie, have you actually even worked out?
Manor strips away all of the nonsense, providing an intense workout without any of the frills. I’ll admit, I’ve become soft and spoiled in recent years – so much so that I was taken aback to find a changing room devoid of hair elastics, magnifying mirrors, GHDs and cotton makeup-removal pads. Haven’t brought your own towel? Forget about swaddling yourself in complimentary sheets of sumptuous Egyptian cotton, lovingly rolled into pyramids under an inspirational neon sign (Let’s Do This!) – here, it comes for a charge of a £1, and the laundry bag into which you discard it is as utilitarian a thing as possible.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, having looked at the website before my session :
“People who come to Manor come to train. We aren’t a beauty salon, a café or an edgy backdrop for your Instastory. Our coaches are experts in training. They aren’t a maid service, a phone charger provider or your mum.’
Essentially: forget preening. You’re here to work and to feel psyched about how you’ve worked, without the additional gratification of ‘likes’.
The Manor I visit, in Victoria, is correspondingly gritty: bare concrete, a small weights area. I buzz to gain access; once in, there’s no welcoming reception area, complete with glossy receptionist, to ease me in to the setting; rather, a desk is set right there in the space between the weights and the boxing ring. There’s no juice bar, no protein balls, no cacti and no mega-watt smile of welcome. Indeed, I’m not even entirely certain that the guy who checked me in had all of his teeth.
Established by two professional fighters, ex MMA pro Charlie Watts and former undefeated pro boxer Chris Baugh, Manor’s first gym opened in March 2018 and has since expanded from Victoria to Old Street, Oxford Circus and Vauxhall, with further openings planned for 2019. Boxing classes are available to anyone on a pre-booked or, subject to space, drop in basis; it’s a workout that, according to Baugh, has incredible benefits, both internal and external.
“There’s nothing like learning the art of boxing to put you face to face with your own doubts and challenge you to overcome them,” he says. “People visibly become more confident, more outgoing and at ease with new people.”
I’m one of just three females in the class and torn, a little, between feeling relief that there aren’t more hyper-critical female eyes in the room and embarrassed about what these (extremely capable looking) men might be thinking about my puny presence. Both sets of thoughts are quickly banished when I realise that nobody, literally nobody, cares. The lack of self-obsessive drama in the space imbues the whole feeling of the place: you’re not there to look at you, and neither is anyone else.
Our ex-pro trainer takes us through a fairly rigorous warm-up before we move over to the bags lining the outside of the ring. Working singly and in pairs (again, my confidence falters momentarily) we hook, jab, upper cut and bounce on the balls of our feet, at times holding the bag for our partner while they rain blows upon it, or repping burpees while they perform a sequence on the bag. Everyone is sheened with sweat within minutes; by the end of the session (which in this case fits neatly into a lunch hour) they’re drenched.
On Thursdays and Saturdays, the disused storage area set further within the building becomes the site of a form of voluntary torture called Yard Work, a torture that provides a buzz like no other: one girl I meet tells me that she travels across London for it each week. Functional fitness is very much the order of the day here, with participants put through moves involving heavy tyres, weights and ropes, all being pushed, pulled, carried, lifted and flipped. The lack of a ‘comfort zone’ vibe in the set up is carried right through to the lesson – it pushes you beyond the upper limit of what you think you’re capable of to what you’re actually capable of. Turns out, that’s quite a lot.
It’s not just in terms of the facilities and sessions that Manor is keeping it real; they’re also working to strip away the myths around male strength and to start conversations around mental health. Their campaign, StrongNotSilent, in aid of charity CALM, was designed to raise awareness of male suicide, now the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK each week. They’ve also supported the CW45 Homeless Project and Ourmala, an organisation offering yoga, a safe space and various wrap around services to marginalised refugee women.
If your 2019 resolutions include taking a no-nonsense approach to your fitness, rather than treating workouts like an extension of a spa day, then Manor is a great place to start. The high of my session lasted well into the remainder of the day and the pleasurable ache in my arms and stomach, well beyond that.
Memberships at SW1 are from £85 per month for 2 classes per week; prices at other locations vary.