Just off the bustling Chiswick High Road, I am greeted by a fairly tall, extremely muscular man; he looks as though he could lift the world if you asked him to. The man immediately smiles, however, and happily shows me into his current studio which is the top floor of a tall house on the corner.
The man is called Joe and is the owner of a small business called CYKL HAUS, providing spinning (indoor cycling) classes, personal training and boxing for cardio, as well as pilates from a separate instructor. Having established it in October 2016, he has unfalteringly watered his budding business from a love of fitness to its current state with 2000 registrations on his website. In the next few weeks, he is about to make his biggest step yet: moving to a large, prominent shop front.
But, for now, I am in the original studio.
Here, I am greeted by turquoise-coloured LED lights striping pitch black walls. Joe has designed this. There are weights of all sizes, from small to gargantuan.
You might think that Joe would only have clients using the latter, but you would be wrong.
‘It is all about the progress,’ he tells me, filling my ears with inspirational stories of clients, from ages four to eighty, from hardcore sportspeople to people who despise it. ‘There was a client who started with his body fat at 30% and we brought that down to 16%, and brought his pulse rate from 60 down to the 40s and he had an over 100% increase in strength.’
Joe goes on to tell me about a lady with osteoporosis with a bone density increase; somebody pre-diabetic, with their blood sugar lowered so significantly that they weren’t pre-diabetic anymore, and, of course, countless people who just want to ‘feel better about themselves.’
Joe definitely no longer seems like just a determined weightlifter, but a life-changer too, who is all about the client, and what they want themselves to become.
‘I spend a lot of time with people, and they become like friends,’ he says. He is clearly not unused to the social aspect of his job, made clear by how breezy he is, despite having been up since 5:45 (this is nothing unusual). ‘I’d say the most interesting clients are those that become a friend.’
It transpires that during lockdown, he has been allowing clients to borrow his weights and his (indoor) bikes for free. I try to look, but I can’t see anything in that deal for him.
‘As a smaller business, you have to try and wear several hats. But, I don’t believe doing anything on a small scale. The original goal when we moved in was to get to a shop front, so now we’re on Stage 2.’
So now CYKL HAUS, thoughtfully also named by Joe, is expanding rapidly and taking people’s strength (both mental and physical), happiness, and life-span with it.
Maybe Joe can carry the world with those muscles.
