‘It’s my second home!’ Gen Z and the sudden, surprising boom of luxury gyms | Fitness

TThe best part of Owen Willis day is a morning shower. Notes of lavender and eucalyptus crossed its private stone tiled shower room while it uses a bottle of bodysuits of £ 32. It dries with a soft white towel before rallying on the cow body (£ 24).

However, it is not Willis’ house. It’s his gymnasium. It belongs to Third Space in London, which is called a “luxury health club”. Memberships start at £ 230 per month for an individual site and come up to £ 305 to access all of its branches, including Mayfair Club, where gymnastics can expect “fresh air treated with UV” and “a steam sauna and a Himalaya salt vapor”.

The 23 -year -old, who has worked in marketing, has been a member since the age of 18. He describes him as his “second home”, where he estimates that he spends about 22 hours a week. “It’s a massive part of my life,” he says. It is also a massive part of his income: its members collect it £ 279 per month – which, when it started to leave, was around 10% of his monthly salary.

Willis is one of the growing number of Gen Zs – those from 13 to 28 years old – for whom gym adhesion is an essential part of their monthly expenses. In the United Kingdom, 27% of adults under the age of 25 consider gymnasium to be a necessity, according to a survey of the Intuits Credit Karma credit note. Many young people prefer to invest in fitness to spend money to eat outside or make the club. A survey carried out by the gym group, which operates hundreds of gymnasiums across the United Kingdom, revealed that 22% of 18 to 24 years spend more than £ 50 per month for subscriptions and activities related to fitness, 18% of the priority of health expenses and physical form instead of socializing, while 16% place it above go to pubs or restaurants.

Willis says he saw a “big quarter” among his friends, who come out less for dinner and go to “more pleasant” gymnasiums instead which, in addition to presenting fully equipped gymnasiums and fitness lessons, include saunas and hamans, massage pistols and hydrotherapy pools. “It’s more than a gymnasium,” says Willis. “I’m going to relax there; I work from there all the time. There are also other things, such as yoga and sound meditation. ”

The gymnasium was also a form of escape from the sharing of the house. At one point, Willis lived with six people, in a house that had a mouse infestation and only two showers. Wet towels were scattered on the bathroom floor and the shower was a time a time. As a result, he never showed himself home. “It was really horrible. Then, I would go in the third space and the concierge would know my name and give me a soft towel when I entered. If they knew what my apartment looked like at the time, they would probably have canceled my subscription, ”he jokes.

The third space is equipped with irons, starch and even, at an additional cost, a dry cleaning service. “I don’t have iron so, if I needed to close something, I was cycling at the gymnasium and would do it there,” explains Willis. Its use of gym installations has maintained other low costs. He rarely buy toiletries, using expensive products available in the locker room instead, and even if he now lives alone, he still has only one shower at home about once a month.

The rise of young gym faithful like Willis means that the luxury gymnasium company is booming. The third space – which extended its number of clubs from one in 2001 to 13 in 2025, with higher way – saw consumer spending in its gymnasiums increase by 41.1% between December 2023 and December 2024, according to the CACI business consulting firm. Other channels – including the competitor of the suburbs of Third Space, David Lloyd, where memberships with his flagship locations can collect £ 150 per month or more – have also been shot in advance. A ukactive survey, the commercial organization which represents most of the British fitness operators, revealed that generation Z is the key demography which stimulates the record number of British going to the gymnasium.

The gymnasiums themselves also become more luxurious. In Lanserhof, the Mayfair arts club gymnasium, members start £ 6,500 a year. Surrenne in Belgravia, in the center of London, invoices £ 10,000 per year for membership, plus membership fees of £ 5,000 (customers will apparently experience a “new paradigm for well-being”). The CPASE in the Cheshire, which was described by Tatler as a “more luxurious gym than any other”, offers “an air enriched with oxygen” in its “revolutionary playground” for almost £ 4,000 per year. A membership in the installation of Cliveden House fitness, the Grand Berkshire manor, which was the Profumo affair site, will cost you nearly £ 6,000 per year.

Niyi Akinseye has been training at the gymnasium for over 10 years. “It started with me being an overweight and uncomfortable child,” he says. “I was very aware of my appearance.” The 26 -year -old, who works as a regional project manager in a human rights charity, plans to make a career change next month to become a full -time coach.

He went to Gymbox, which was called one of the best luxury gymnasiums in London by Esquire in 2023. After its members, £ 95 per month and other courses and equipment, Akinseye says that he spends about £ 250 per month in fitness, or 10% of his wages to take away. Akinseye says he met friends “with similar goals and passions” and easy customers for his nascent fitness coaching services. “The more I pay for the gymnasium, the more opportunities I found,” he says.

After being welcomed by the receptionist, then put back a new towel, with the knowledge that a sauna session is fast approaching, he says that he “feels happy and as if I am ready to do my job”. He calls fitness a “form of therapy – there is something very therapeutic to move your body and find something in which you can channel your emotions”.

It is no secret that young people, including generation Z, face great challenges. Akinseye says that it is partly why he became interested in physical form. “Seeing the results was very satisfactory in a world where there are a lot of uncertainties for young people,” he said. “Work is not guaranteed in this world, as it may have been for previous generations.” Having a subscription to the gymnasium, he said, helped give it a feeling of stability.

The exercise lessons have also become more popular with young people. Nishka Parekh, who lives in London, spends about £ 75 per month in various classes, including the Pilates. For the 24 -year -old marketing director, fitness is “certainly a social activity”. She says: “Sometimes my friends and I plan to go to a training course on Friday before going to the ad.”

Although it has not become fully teetop like many other people, Parekh says that it is pleasant to do something social that “does not revolve around alcohol consumption and is better for your health”, physically and mentally. “The physical form certainly helps to improve my mental health,” explains Parekh. “If I spend a really difficult work day, or a difficult period in general, go to an exercise lesson or if the gymnasium always makes me feel much better.”

Willis feels in the same way. “I get more outside the physical form,” he says. “The advantages for mental health to go to a beautiful gym are massive, because you are surrounded by people who are also more invested in their physical form.”

Unlike the boxes of sweat grotty which once dominated the market (and where many have crossed their training sessions, eager to leave as soon as possible), luxury gymnasiums work incredibly hard to keep customers there as long as possible. Third Space CEO Colin Waggett said that his members should “get the same kind of experience [in our clubs] As in a firmdale hotel ”- referring to the hotel chain of charm. In addition to high-end fitness equipment, many third-space clubs have dedicated workspaces, cafes and wellness centers. In its flagship branch of Canary Wharf, members can have Botox (from £ 189 for an area) or a Brazilian lymphatic drainage session (£ 95 for a 50 -minute session) or a Brazilian session).

At David Lloyd, as part of an investment of 500 million pounds sterling in his clubs, the firm announced earlier this year that he was going to add works spaces and pensions of SPA in a certain number of locations, to create clubs which, according to society, are places for “Me-time, together, work, rest, rest and playing time”.

Willis says that reducing his fitness expenses, in particular to chop his third space subscription and to exchange towards a cheaper alternative, is “out of the question”. “I didn’t really think about moving in a cheaper gymnasium; It will never be the same thing, ”he says. “I would probably go once, say:” I don’t want to stay here anymore “and leave.”