The Best Gyms in Melbourne, Australia

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Founded by veteran boxing trainer, Leo Berry, Richmond Boxing Club is a Richmond icon. It’s been a valuable base for underprivileged and disadvantaged local youth and has been training competitive boxers for over five decades. As well as offering guidance to young people, the gym offers a range of weekly exercise classes to keep the locals fit – you don’t have to be an expert with your fists to feel welcome here. Its 90-minute circuit classes are well-loved in the community – combining boxing skills, including bag and pad work, with traditional fitness training to provide a well-rounded workout.

Fitness Studio, Gym

For a more high-tech experience, Virgin Active on Collins Street is the most comprehensive gym in Melbourne. It has a 25m (82ft) indoor pool and hydrotherapy pool, an anti-gravity yoga studio, a spa and sauna, an interactive cycle studio, an indoor climbing wall and even sleep pods for a 20-minute siesta post-workout. There’s also a huge gym floor with state-of-the-art equipment, as well as seven group fitness studios that host over 250 classes every week. As it’s part of the Virgin brand, you can also expect excellent service from the friendly staff.

Swimming Pool

Brighton Baths Health Club was established in 1881 and boasts Victoria’s only 50m (164ft) open seawater lap lane swimming pool, which is open year-round. There’s an indoor health club with sea views, and an assortment of cardio equipment and free weights. The outdoor Lido Deck also has a variety of equipment, including a boxing bag and TRX suspension bands. For something different, Brighton Baths Health Club is home to Victoria’s only private beach and boardwalk.

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The HIIT Factory, which seeks to revolutionise fast fitness, focuses on high-intensity interval training – otherwise known as HIIT. Most of the classes at the HIIT Factory, which are offered throughout the day in either cardio, strength or mobility, are only 30 minutes long, and ninety percent of them use bodyweight only. The best bit? There are HIIT Factory franchises located across Melbourne, including Werribee, Essendon and Yarraville. If you’ve not got much spare time and need to get that heart pumping fast, this is the best place in the city to do it.

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Healthy Fit, in Fitzroy North, applies a holistic approach to fitness, nutrition and wellness and offers private, semi-private and group training sessions. It has weight-loss programmes for both men and women; members work with a fitness and nutrition coach to get the best short- and long-term results. The nutrition coaching services are available to all members, so consider it a fully comprehensive gym.

Gym, Yoga Studio
5th Element Wellness is a world-class health club, with group fitness classes, a yoga studio, personal training options and an indoor climbing wall. It’s the small touches at 5th Element that put it a step above the rest – a juice bar, a library stocked with wellness books and magazines and an on-site wellness medical practitioner who offers blood chemical tests. There’s also an infrared sauna from Colorado, which is perfect for post-workout detoxing, while if you fancy the other side of the temperature spectrum, dip in the top-of-the-range Cold Tub – an immune-boosting tub designed by the folks who make cryotherapy equipment for top US athletes.

Fitness Studio, Yoga Studio
Barre Body has boutique studios in Flinders Lane, Fitzroy, South Melbourne and Windsor – all of them are pure interior goals, with either exposed bricks, whitewashed flooring or contemporary light fixtures. The studios offer a variety of barre, pilates, yoga and cardio classes throughout the week, plus there’s also Barre Bod

y Online, which gives members access to hundreds of workouts and classes led by real teachers. As Barre Body says, “It’s an addiction you won’t want to kick.”

Fitness Studio
Apparatus Private Studios specialises in TRX and pilates. TRX sessions, which incorporate body weight and gravity to create a dynamic workout, include suspension, RIP and functional training workouts. As for pilates, try mat work and reformer sessions, which run for either 30 minutes or a full hour. Apparatus hosts private and semi-private pilates training sessions – as you might expect from a gym as thoughtful and body-intelligent as this one.

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Progression Fitness Club, in the heart of Melbourne’s sporting precinct, offers classes in HIIT, three types of strength training and yoga. Members have access to the world-class Glasshouse Gym, Olympic Park’s oval with a three-lane 500m (1,640ft) athletic track, Glasshouse Café and the Holden Centre’s 50-person altitude room. Plus, it also offers outdoor boot camp, boxing, yoga and running sessions weekly at six locations across Melbourne.

Fitness Studio

A typical 45-minute ride class at Bodhi & Ride is set inside the nightclub-like Ride Chamber, which includes high-tech bikes, cardio and weight training for the lower and upper body. Any given class features loud DJ-mixed music, 50 different lighting settings and bikes that are close together – much like you would be when boogieing on a crowded dance floor. The flagship studio is in Port Melbourne, but Bodhi & Ride also has a CBD studio.