Luxury gyms in Dubai tone it up a notch

While money can buy everything from watches to super yachts, one status symbol will always be a little more elusive: a perfectly toned physique.

There’s no getting around the fact that toned arms and firm abdominals require an investment of time as well as money, but happily a new crop of boutique gyms is promising to up the ante when it comes to your fitness regime. Mixing the best elements of personal training and franchise gyms, these fitness concepts maximise the efficiency of your workout in luxurious surroundings that will keep you coming back.

Indeed, “addictive” is the word that the owner Maryam Fattahi Salaam uses to describe Physique 57, the barre-based programme that she brought from New York to Dubai last summer. A petite figure in white jeans and silver heels, Salaam first tried Physique’s 57-minute, full-body workout while living in Manhattan. “I was hooked,” she enthuses. “I went straight home and told my husband: ‘This has to come to Dubai.’ I’d just had my first baby but I would get up early and go to the 6am class five or six times a week.”

Barre fitness is a growing global trend, offering ordinary women access to a dancer’s shape. Physique 57 classes are carefully choreographed to work every muscle group using small, precise movements set to upbeat music. It’s far from painless, but the instructors (all trained dancers), who walk the room correcting posture and cheering everyone on, manage to make it enjoyable.

“We have clients driving here from Abu Dhabi and Sharjah several times a week,” says Salaam of her loft studio in Jumeirah’s Citywalk development.

“Women are realising that they can bring their fitness level higher than they ever thought and have fun doing it.”

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Luxury gyms in Dubai tone it up a notch