A London gym group known for its lively, playful style, which opened its first club in Holborn in 2003 and runs around ten clubs in the capital.
Gymbox is a London gym company that set out to be the opposite of a dull, corporate gym. Its clubs have a full gym floor plus several themed studios for yoga, boxing, bootcamp, cycling and rowing, aerial classes such as trapeze, and independent community clubs for CrossFit, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, weightlifting and calisthenics hosted inside its gyms. Its website also lists Olympic lifting platforms, combat cages, live DJs, reformer Pilates and corporate wellness packages. Wikipedia says the company has 10 clubs, all in London.
Gymbox was co-founded by Richard Hilton and David Cooper. Mr Hilton came from advertising and marketing and wanted to change London's dull gyms, with a space designed by a nightclub designer, live DJs, unusual classes and plain language. Mr Cooper, who had a fitness background, joined him. The first club opened in Holborn in September 2003, designed by Ben Kelly, who also designed Manchester's Haçienda nightclub. In its own words, Gymbox is 'just pure, unadulterated serious fun', and it says its values are inclusivity, fun and individuality. In a 2018 interview Mr Cooper described the aim as an antidote to boring gyms.
All of the clubs are in London. The 2018 interview named Holborn, Farringdon, Victoria, Elephant and Castle, Cannon Street and Ealing, and said the company wanted to open more in London before looking at other UK cities and abroad. We did not find a current list of clubs. The Farringdon club, which opened in 2016, is the only one named on its own about page.
The culture comes across as playful and a bit irreverent. Mr Cooper said that in the early days the founders' priority was finding people with big personalities and a spark, and the team once interviewed candidates at a table in a coffee shop. Instructors audition every week, even when there is no vacancy, and each discipline has a master trainer who oversees class quality and trains new instructors, while a creative team invents new class formats. In 2018 it reported 26,000 members and 200 staff, which is dated. The company later added an HR department, Mr Cooper joked.
Jobs include group exercise instructors in many disciplines, personal trainers, front-of-house and sales staff, club managers, creative and class-development staff, and head office teams in marketing, design, property and people. If you have energy, a sense of humour and a particular skill, such as boxing, dance, aerial work or strength training, this is the sort of company where those strengths matter. Its website is the best place to see what is current.
Website: gymbox.com
PURPOSE helps school and university students explore 62 sectors and over 1,000 entry-level careers in the UK, then connects them directly with employers.
Explore PURPOSE