Gym or bootcamp: an honest comparison

Most people who join us have a lapsed gym membership behind them. Not because gyms are bad, but because a gym asks you to supply every bit of the motivation yourself, and that is the thing that runs out in February.

Here is the honest version of the comparison, including where a gym wins.

What a gym does better

A gym is open when you are. If your week is unpredictable, that flexibility is worth a great deal, and a fixed session time will not suit you. A gym also has machines, a squat rack and somewhere warm to shower, none of which we have. If you already train consistently on your own and you know what you are doing, a gym is probably the better buy.

What a coached outdoor session does better

Somebody is watching your technique. Every session at Stave Hill is led from the front and corrected up close, which is the part people pay a personal trainer for and the part a gym membership does not include.

There is a time and a place you are expected. It sounds like a restriction and it turns out to be the whole mechanism. A session you have to be at on Tuesday evening is a session you go to.

You are outdoors. Fresh air, trees, the river and the skyline instead of a basement, a mirror and somebody else's sweat on the bench. Members who start in autumn are usually the ones who tell you the winter sessions are the best ones.

And there are other people. Not strangers with headphones in, but the same faces every week who notice when you are not there.

Which one is right for you

If you have joined a gym more than once and stopped going more than once, the missing ingredient was probably never the equipment. It was that nothing about the arrangement kept you going. That is the specific problem a coached group session in a park is good at solving.

If you thrive training alone at odd hours, keep the gym. We would rather tell you that than sell you a membership you will not use.