It’s always nice to receive a little recognition so we were pleased when the massive US focused website Bodybuilding.com contacted us in order to write a feature on Muscleworks. They were kicking off an inaugural gym of the month feature and wanted us to be the very first recipient!

The world of bodybuilding so often revolves around the States that its easy to forget that great, world class gyms exist beyond the reach of the Stars & Stripes. I have been fortunate enough to train in many of the greatest bodybuilding gyms on the planet – including all the old stalwarts of Venice Beach and Santa Monica such as Gold’s, World and Powerhouse (before they were closed down). I will never forget my first workout on the sun deck of the original World Gym – training like a demon imagining I was Bertil Fox and watching the Pacific Ocean as I gasped for air between crazy hard sets.

Yet despite this experience of US gyms the two best gyms I have trained at remain Dorian Yates’ Temple Gym, where as a 280lb gorilla I trained for a few months back in the late 1990s whilst harbouring dreams of being the second British bodybuilding messiah, and my second home of Muscleworks Gym in London’s Bethnal Green. Like all great gyms it IS rough around the edges, but it is the ONLY place in London where you can push yourself beyond your limits and be encouraged to be the very best that you can be. You can scream, you can shout, you can sweat, you can progress. Not like the anodyne Virgin First / Fitness Active (I get them mixed up, they are all the same) where all they care about is taking your money and then not having you use the gym too often as its not good for business. I believe that LA Fatness now refer to clients as “numbers”. I am not kidding.

If you are going to choose a gym, be it for bodybuilding in London, fat loss, or just to get healthy, then choose a place where you know you are going to get results.