1. Is 20 Minutes enough?

While a lot of people like to brag about the hours they spend in the gym, that’s just ego. Who wants to spend countless hours in the gym? The time you spend in the gym is an inaccurate representation of your commitment to your health. We’ve done our homework and 20 minutes is absolutely enough. There’s a lot of science behind High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and if you dig into the research you’ll find multiple studies showing the impressive benefits of exercise programs lasting less than 20 minutes (look up Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption if you’re interested in the science – it’s fascinating).

Really, though, the best way to find out is to ask one of our clients, or come in and try it out for yourself. Do the week-long trial and you’ll feel how 20 minutes is more than enough!

2. Is the training tough?

While none of the movements are complicated or difficult to perform, you’re no doubt more interested in whether training at Ritual is tough in terms of the amount of effort you have to put in. We’re interested in helping you get the results you want, and doing that involves asking just a little bit more from your body than it can handle. While that’s almost the definition of ‘tough’ (and it has to be if you want to see results), we don’t believe that a Ritual session should be an exercise in torture.

There’s certainly no boot-camp style sergeant-major screaming at you to push out another rep. What we mean by tough is that you’ll be glad to see the back of the last set of exercises, and you’re gonna be very sweaty and out of breath at the end. But rest assured, it will be manageable and safe, regardless of your fitness level.

It’s important to bear in mind that ‘tough’ means different things to a professional athlete and someone stepping into the gym for the first time, and different things to the well-rested version of you and the hungover, sleep-starved version. What we can say is that anyone can get though a Ritual session – not only do we have four levels of progression for a reason, the sessions only last 20 minutes, and we promise you can get through 20 minutes of almost anything!

3. Will training at Ritual help me lose weight?

The kind of training that we do at Ritual is fantastic for fat loss because it enables you to keep burning calories long after your session is done. If you can ask just a little bit more from your body than it can handle, you can raise your metabolic rate for up to 48 hours – so if you want to burn fat whilst sitting at home watching TV, HIIT is the way to do it.

However, you shouldn’t regard training at Ritual as some sort of magic pill that will guarantee you’ll get skinny. While most of our clients do lose body fat and gain lean, dense, efficient muscle, the results you get depend on a host of factors like training frequency, training intensity, nutrition, sleep and stress. If you can combine training regularly at Ritual with a fairly clean diet and a decent amount of sleep, you’re certainly going to get in great shape.

While losing weight is great, we don’t believe that the focus of training should be on aesthetics or the raw number you see on the bathroom scales (which is why there are no mirrors on the training floor or scales in the locker room). We’re more interested in helping you move towards your genetic potential, defined as your ability to do everything you want to do in life. This has little to do with aesthetics, and a lot to do with optimal functioning of your body – so think of a great-looking body as a side-effect, not the whole point of exercising. We offer training that will get you to your most efficient self – your best-aligned self, your most energetic self, your healthiest self – so you don’t have to worry about your health and fitness limiting the way you live your life.