At Les Mills Auckland City, the club where the Les Mills story began 50 years ago, three new state-of-the-art workout studios have recently opened.
The building refit is designed by Monk Mackenzie (the team behind Auckland’s stylish Cycle Path), and leading interior designers Rufus Knight Associates, known for their sophisticated retail store designs for brands such as Lonely and Aesop. Both firms worked in partnership with award-winning design studio Alt Group who designed the branding and the main palette of black, white, grey and gold, bronze and silver – an appropriate nod to the gym owner’s past athletic glories.
The building exterior and interiors are a refined black, which creates a dramatic theatrical backdrop for The Trip, a 45-minute immersive cycle experience combining a multi-peak cardio workout with a journey through digitally created worlds. Every workout has a unique narrative and riders are absorbed into the full sensory experience, travelling through surreal landscapes, switching up gears to climb steep hills and then switching down again to swoop down dramatic slopes. The Cycle Studio features a sloping theatre design, with nearly 100 gleaming bikes lined in tiers, facing a large curved screen, fed by five giant projectors.
Les Mills is known internationally for its exercise programmes, which are used by millions of global gym users each week and the innovation continues with the design of two new workouts, Ceremony and Conquer.
Ceremony is a 45-minute functional training workout using a wide range of exercises and pieces of equipment. The focus is on whole body, strength, cardio and conditioning within a shared community experience. Combined with use of equipment such as Ski Ergs, rowers, agility ladders, sleds and kettlebells, the workouts also include explosive exercises, balance and coordination drills, and whole body, flow-based movements like dynamic bear crawls.
Conquer is a 45-minute complete boxing conditioning workout that uses a trio of treadmill running, aquabag punching and resistance-based cardio exercises like ball slams and skipping. It is the combination of these components that gives you an experience unmatched by any boxing offering or full-service gym. The workout is structured like a boxing match: three minutes of work, with one minute to recover and transition to your next station.
If you’re wanting to experience any of these classes, grab a free pass from their website and head to Les Mills Auckland City.