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Self-Help: Personal Training at Prime

Six weeks of sweating blood at the latest five-star gym to open in Shanghai. There was pain. There were tears. But was it all worth it?
Last updated: 2015-11-09
In an attempt to reverse the downward spiral of your mental and physical wellbeing, in these Self-Help articles we bring you suggestions of classes, sporty things, team events, volunteering and educational stuff that might just pull you out of that boozy tail-spin.



Personal Training at Prime Fitness


Prime is a newish gym started by a couple of guys called Victor Rowse and Denis Couprie. Victor has been a personal trainer for almost 15 years. Before that he was a PPE graduate from Oxford University. So, brains and brawn. Denis was born in Senegal and grew up in France. He was a parachute commando in the French Army and then went into bodybuilding, winning the 2001 World Superbody bodybuilding championship. Big guy. Worked as a bodyguard after that, including for Kobe Bryant and Mariah Carey. The force is strong with this one.



They have two other full-time trainers and they aim to offer clients a fast but very effective workout. They have a small but state-of-the-art and pristine space in a very central location on Huaihai Lu. Everything about the place is designed to get busy people in, give them a hard work out and then get them out to get on with their lives.

All the staff are professionals, certified and trained. They can give you nutrition advice, too, and design programs tailored to your goals, whether that’s weight loss, improved overall fitness or building muscle. But most of all, they are there to work you extremely hard within a 30-minute class.



What you need


Next to nothing for this one. You don’t even need a pair of shoes. At least, they let me train in my socks. Woohoo! That means you don’t have to haul trainers around with you to work. They have towels, showers and free water for everyone. You don’t need to bring any of that. You just need your game face and be prepared to go at it like a champion.

What happens


Prime runs a few group classes (Pilates, circuit training), but the main thing they offer is personal training. I trained with a Dutch guy called Gwaeron. He’s recently arrived in Shanghai, having spent the past few years training Olympic athletes in Holland. He’s a qualified personal instructor with a degree in sports management. A nice, friendly, very fit guy, he listens to your goals on the first day of training and then designs a program to achieve them. Look, here he comes now...



Most of his training focuses on working groups of muscles at the same time, rather than single muscles in isolation. This means he’s working on your overall fitness and fat burning, rather than just on pumping up certain bits of your body. He’s got a background in boxing, kickboxing and ju-jitsu, but none of the exercises we did together were very complex or elaborate. In fact, they were very simple — stuff anyone who’s been to a gym might have done in the past: lunges, squats, chest presses, rows… Really just working with free weights, using your arms and legs to pull and then push. Simple stuff. But the simplicity did not make our time together easy.

We’d start off with a three-minute warm-up on a rowing machine, then do three exercises — say, lunges (striding up and down the gym holding weights), pull ups, and chest presses with dumbbells. Three sets of each with the weights increasing each time.



Gwaeron oversees and corrects your technique. He’s a stickler for technique, a firm believer that if this is not correct you’re not getting the full potential out of the exercise. After three sets, I would normally be on the floor panting, black and silver dots squirming in front of my eyes. I don’t know how he did it, how he got such a dramatic level of exhaustion out of me with just a couple of exercises, but this is how it went.

Then I’d pant for a bit and then we’d do another two or three exercises, maybe some squats using barbells (the really big weights that Turkish men lift at the Olympics). After this I would be on the verge of death, and we might have a little stretch or do some work on my stomach, and he’d release me.



This is interval training — short bursts of hard work — as opposed to the cardiovascular workout you get on a treadmill or bike. Interval training is a much more efficient and faster way to burn calories. Obviously that means it’s also a lot more painful.

But the upside to all this pain is that it’s over quickly. Half an hour and we’d be done. Then I might go and have a little cry in the shower, or lie down on the floor of the changing room until the nausea subsided, and then I’d be out of there.

Who goes in for this


Well-heeled professionals, the time-poor who need a serious workout and don’t mind paying for one. The gym opens at 6am and seems to be busy earlier in the day before work. Most of the clientele I saw were foreign, American and European, but for much of the time I was there I had the gym to myself. This is not a crowded place. Everything’s focused on a very personal service.



How much of your life will this take up


With changing times and showering and that time spent having a little cry on the floor of the changing room, you can be in and out of the gym in less than an hour each time. Two or three half-hour sessions a week is enough to see rapid results, if you’re working hard each time and twinning this with a moderately sensible diet and you’re not drinking 19 pints of beer a night.

Like all things, it depends what sort of shape you’re in going into this and what you’re looking to get out, but I’d say twice a week for 30 minutes a time would be enough for most people. Twice a week and you’ll see good results within four or five weeks.



How much does it cost


It’s 350rmb per session. That’s the same no matter when you go or which trainer you see. There’s no sign-up fee for the gym and no unlimited month pass or anything like that. You pre-pay your gym card and they deduct 350rmb every time you show up. If you pay 5,000rmb in one go, they’ll give you an extra 5% for free (so, almost one class). If you pre-pay 10,000rmb, they’ll give you an extra 10% of that free (three classes).

The group classes work out cheaper — you gather a few friends together and everyone pays about 150rmb per class. However, these classes are pretty much full already. The main thing they offer here is one-on-one personal training. That’s the reason to go to Prime.

So… 350rmb a class. Not cheap, but then the only previous personal training we covered for this column was twice that, though that was for an hour’s session. In the West, you’re going to pay about 700rmb a session to a trainer. If you think about what they’re probably paying for at the gym — the rental, the equipment cost — and the fact that these people are trained professionals who have been doing this full-time for years, I don’t think it’s too bad. When you weigh the results against the cost, it’s worth it.



Since I probably spend about 700rmb a week on things like booze and crap food, I figure it’s fair to spend about the same to counteract all that crap. Full disclosure: Prime gave SmartShanghai a few weeks of free sessions to try the place out to see if we wanted to write about it, but after that I liked it there so I started paying.

Plusses


The ratio between results and the time it takes to get them is excellent.

After finishing the class I felt vindicated and free, like I could probably eat and drink what I liked for the rest of the day without having to worry about what it would do to me. I’m not saying I changed my diet and ate more crap, but it meant I could enjoy my beer more, knowing that I had burned four trillion calories earlier that day.

The gym is small and so the service is very personal. Someone texts you the day before each session to remind you. Everyone knows your name and they’re friendly. It’s also quiet — most of the time I was in there on my own with the trainer. This is not a place you’re going to have to wait to use machines or queue up for a shower.



Minuses


I would be lying if I said the classes were pleasant. They are not. This is not something you’re going to look forward to. It’s something you’ll dread when you wake up in the morning and realize that you’ve booked a session that day.

That’s not because the people or the place aren’t nice, it’s just because of the amount they push you. You will sweat and be in pain. But that’s how you know it’s doing you good.

There are cheaper ways to get fit. You could do all these things on your own at the gym without a chirpy Dutchman standing over you making you sweat blood... But we know that’s not going to happen. No one works this hard on their own; that’s why personal trainers exist — and hey, they work.

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For a listing of where these classes take place, click here. The Prime Fitness website also has a lot of information on the trainers and their techniques, and links to some good articles written by Victor about training, weight loss and diet. Find their site here.

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