Our Most Valuable Asset

We found penny on the floor of the new gym. I would love to tell you we found it under something meaningful, tucked behind a piece of old equipment or wedged in a corner that meant something. We did not. It was under a pile of somebody else’s rubbish, same as everything else last week.

Still, my mum always said find a penny and you are in for a good day. I am choosing to believe her.

Right now it genuinely is our most valuable asset. The strength kit has not landed yet. The treads, rowers, bikes and skis are still a few weeks out. What we have got is a stripped back room, a lease that took most of the summer to sign and one battered sticky penny. So here is where the money actually went, and what our penny is currently worth against everything else.

The lease

It took a lot longer than I expected. Round after round of drafts, points going back and forth, signing dates coming and going. There were a few evenings in July where I sat there not at all sure it was going to happen, and I had already told a lot of people that it would.

The reason it did happen is Rima Gasperas at Bexley Beaumont. She went through every version line by line, chased the points that mattered, argued the ones I would not have known to argue and kept the whole thing moving when it would have been easier to let it drift. She took calls at times of day no one should be taking calls about a gym lease. If you are ever in a position where you need someone in your corner on something like this, that is what it should look like. It was signed on the 7th of August.

The clear out

We went in on the Friday to start clearing. It was my birthday.

Two box van loads of what the last tenant left behind, and Bec and I carried every last piece of it out. Not how I had pictured spending the day, and I would do it again tomorrow. Bec took on the showers. I will spare you the detail. I will just say that she took on the worst job in the building without being asked and she did it properly, and I very much got the easy end of that deal.

Then we stripped the walls back ready for paint, which is the bit where a place looks a lot worse before it starts looking better. If you had walked in that Sunday night you would have wondered what on earth I had signed up for.

The bit I got wrong

In the middle of all this I moved our email over to a new system, then sent an update out at half past midnight. It reached precisely nobody. Not one person on the list.

There is no story there beyond doing a job at midnight that should have been done at ten in the morning. It was found and fixed by breakfast and the update went out again the same day, but if you were expecting to hear from me and did not, that is why. If anything else looks like it has gone missing, reply and tell me.

This is the part nobody puts on Instagram. Opening a gym is meant to be tape measures and kit lists and standing on the studio floor working out where the treads go. Some days it is a laptop at the kitchen table and a cup of tea going cold next to it.

What is happening this week

The decorators go in on the 18th and they are in for about six days. Once they are out, the fire and health and safety assessor comes through.

The kit is ordered. All of it, all new, nothing inherited from anyone. The strength equipment lands at the end of this month. The treads, rowers, bikes and skis arrive on the 14th of September.

The team

The coaching team is being hand picked, one at a time, and there are some familiar faces in there. I will introduce everyone properly nearer to opening.

What I will say now is that I am auditioning rather than interviewing. Anyone can sit in a chair and tell me they are good with people. I want to stand at the back of a room and watch someone coach it. That takes longer and it means turning down people who look great on paper, but the coach on the floor is the difference between an hour you tolerate and an hour you come back for, so it is worth the time.

The dates

We open the doors on Monday the 21st of September. That first stretch is a soft launch. Same class times you will see on the timetable, but smaller groups on the floor while the team beds in. We want this place full. We want it working properly first.

Official launch is Thursday the 1st of October, full timetable, everything running. There is more to say about that week nearer the time.

Founders Club closes on the 31st

Applications for the Founders Club close on Monday the 31st of August and the window will not reopen.

It is £1,300 for your first full year, paid up front. Unlimited classes in every zone from the day we open. Your name hand lettered on the Founders Wall. The Founders Pack, an AltyTude hoodie and bottle, handed to you when we open the doors. Priority booking two days ahead of everyone else. Four guest passes a year. Next Gen at half price for one child. A monthly check-in with a coach, plus a performance review with our Head Coach twice a year.

Nothing renews on its own and nothing is collected now. Your balance is taken when we open the doors in September, and written terms reach you before any payment does. If you want to hold a place while you think about it, a £100 deposit does that and it comes straight off the £1,300.

There will be no more than a hundred Founders, ever.

Click here to secure your place before Monday the 31st of August.

And if it is not for you, that is completely fine. Memberships stay open when we launch and first sessions go on sale in September. The only thing that closes on the 31st is the Founders rate.

Nearly there

Six weeks ago this was a lease I could not talk about and a room full of somebody else’s rubbish.

On Tuesday there are painters in it. At the end of the month the strength kit arrives. In September the treads, the rowers, the bikes and the skis come through the door, the coaches get on the floor and we start running classes properly.

I have wanted this for a long time and it is close enough now to see it. Same hour, same effort, same faces, in a place built for it. See you in September.

Come as you are. Leave better than you arrived.

Peter