Pool or pulpit...that is the question!…read more Here at the Virgin Active in Repton Park, they placed a swimming pool right inside a church...how cool is that? When I first entered the pool I was really taken aback and quite mesmerized - it felt a little sacrilegious, but at the same time I very much enjoyed swimming in this beautiful environment. The gym area itself is also quite neat, as you sweat underneath a prettily-decorated vaulted ceiling. There's plenty of exercise equipment, although the weight-lifting area is a little small. This Virgin Active gym is in Repton Park, which was the site of the fomrer Claybury Hospital - a psychiatric hospital. Apparently there's still the ghosts of the past haunting these premises....

I joined this Virgin as it is my local club about a month ago. This Virgin club is nestled within…read morethe closed community (Repton Park), the best way to get here would be by car, although there is a bus stop just outside Repton Park it is still quite a walk when you are inside. This gym has a Costa Coffee inside next to the reception that also includes food (this can get slightly irritating when working out and smelling food) o_O The gym has quite a few treadmills, bikes, rowing machines, free weights, TRX etc, each machine has a tv screen with the ability to plug in your IPhone/IPod which allows you to listen to your music but also you can store your workout data to your phone too. The most amazing area in this gym is the swimming pool, it is absolutely stunning, the whole gym used to be a chapel for the mental institution, so the decor inside is beautiful. Within the pool area, you also have the sauna and steam room, along with some sun loungers and some juice to drink. The only gripe I have is that there is no air-conditioning (but I don't think there is anything they can do about that due to the building structure).

Redbridge Sports Centre is great. To be honest, I never really go there but I do know it's great…read more My problem tends to be that as much as I like going there for a game of tennis or to work out, I find it much easier to check my facebook and eat a bowl of cereal. If on the other hand you are slightly more motivated to exercise than me, then you should head to Redbridge Sports Centre. The tennis courts are really nice. They're quite expensive just for an hour - but I've often preferred paying for one of their courts for an hours use than heading down to the park to play for four hours in the freezing cold. And I guess that is a key to what works in the Centre's favour - the luxury of it. It's all very clean and friendly, which makes it seem more inviting than, y'know, going for a jog in the freezing Essex rain. I've never been a member of the gym (which I'm sure doesn't surprise you due to my lazy nature) - but indeed, it looks well equipped and everyone looks happy, at least as much as I can tell looking through the window and seeing them. But then again, they're not as happy as me walking past sipping a coke and munching on a bag of wotsits. In summary, yeah - this place is cool. It doesn't seem to have changed since I was a kid, yet everything is still top of the range.

The Redbridge Leisure Centre is awesome. It also confused me once, because to get to the RLC you…read moreneed to get off at the Fairlop underground station, which is two or three down from Redbridge. I phoned a friend and arranged to meet him there for tennis and he said he was there waiting for me. I got to Redbridge station, got off, looked for 20 minutes for the leisure centre before my friend told me where I actually had to go. A joke! I got there and, from the front, you can see into the gym. It's a really long room and one of the times when I was there I saw four huge coloured guys on treadmills with like full hoodies, chains, jeans on! Not that it's relevant to my story but it was a very interesting spectacle. The indoor tennis courts here are awesome. With eight courts available for the moderately pricey price of £20 an hour (the demand is large and it's London after all) to play on excellent carpeted surface, indoors, away from the elements of Winter.. for me, the deal is worth it. The balls moves fast and makes everyone look alot better then they actually are when they play on it. If you're a tennis fan, I definitely recommend this place to you! But remember, Fairlop... not Redbridge...

As an aspiring lightweight boxer from England, I had been training in Mendez Boxing Gym in New York…read more(moved there last year) for the last 10 months or so. My fitness has vastly improved and I have been better off because of it, however, in terms of learning the boxing fundamentals and actual technique, none of the trainers so much as gave me the time of day beyond the generic "hit the bag for 3 rounds, do padwork with x for a half an hour, now shadow box for 3 rounds" stuff you'd find in your run-of-the-mill fitness gym that facades itself as a boxing facility. Nonetheless, despite all the time and dedication I had spent in this gym, I never felt at home, and felt that my efforts and aspirations to AT THE VERY LEAST fight in an amateur setting were neglected, and it felt as if all my efforts and sacrifices were in vain no matter how hard I tried. I train 6-7 days a week and throughout the majority of those days I try and train twice (once in the morning and a second time at night) I had recently returned to England for a 2 week holiday and I had spent time with one of the trainers named Tony, who happened to be a friend of another family friend named Harry Cowap, who had a history of professional boxing in Ireland. Within a matter of a few hours I felt more at home and covered more of the rudimental boxing mechanics at Peacock than I ever did for the last 10 months at the place I was "training" at back over in New York. Nonetheless, even my family who was there to watch me train noticed that everything from my form and performance had greatly improved while training with Tony. I am currently back in New York, I'm not sure when my next trip back home to England will be, and I am currently holed up in New York finishing off uni and training at my old gym (Mendez) for the sake of keeping my fitness, however I will not forget the workout, tutoring and overall kindness that Tony and the gym provided me that day. Since then, my view on Boxing has fundamentally changed for the better and I have a new sense of instilled self-confidence in the sport! Until I return, I say Peacock keep up the damn good work and keep aiming to push and train the next generation of boxers England (or anywhere else) has to offer! Would definitely recommend Tony and Peacock Gym to any and everyone in the London area with a die-hard dream to fight professionally! Proud As A Peacock!

The reception staff here are pretty nice and I figured there'd be nothing to lose by checking this…read moreplace out, especially as I like to experiment with different keep-fit regimes. I've really enjoyed the Pilates I've done in the past and I do a lot of yoga anyway, so I thought Yogalates sounded like a good bet to start with. The price for a drop in class is pretty reasonable at £5 and so I went along a little while ago. I was prepared to let go on the lack of studio space, but the grime in the changing rooms was pretty depressing. The teacher wasn't very patient with the newbies in the room and did little to introduce herself or make us feel welcome. I won't be returning, sadly.