{"id":125234,"date":"2025-09-09T13:35:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125234\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T13:35:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T13:35:14","slug":"the-latest-gym-trend-squatting-with-sheep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125234\/","title":{"rendered":"The latest gym trend: squatting with sheep"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve long been a regular at the luxury fitness spaces of London \u2014 weekly spinning at Psycle, calisthenics at BLOK and Barry\u2019s on repeat. I\u2019d easily spend \u00a380 a week on classes. After a tour of Third Space in Soho by a Men\u2019s Health cover-worthy team member I considered adding its eye-watering \u00a3273 monthly fee to my wellness expenditure. Factor in my three personal trainer sessions a week at my local north London gym and I\u2019d been spending \u00a3800 a month on fitness.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s super-luxe gyms are vast and architecturally ambitious. Natural light is banished until your eye-blinking exit from a class, your ears ringing from the pounding music. That became a pretty normal experience for me, until I made the decision to leave London in 2022 for a life by the Sussex coast in St Leonard\u2019s-on-Sea. After a 25-year stint working as an events and PR consultant I left because I craved the water, the countryside and fresher air. A month into life as a seaside dweller I had a personal trainer at a gym, regularly ran along the promenade and did the occasional kundalini yoga session. While I didn\u2019t miss Third Space, it felt as though there was something missing in my fitness routine.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d been working with Kaspars Maksimovs, a mobility coach, to alleviate a recurring back issue, and he told me about a countryside gym where he taught outdoor classes. I was intrigued. I punched the address into Google Maps and set off on the 45-minute drive to Barn Gym, near Etchingham in East Sussex. Gone are the days when a typical rural gym means creaky machines in a quiet village hall. After driving through the winding tree-lined lanes of the countryside I pulled up to the gym\u2019s sign, perched high on an oak tree, which directed me to the nearby Grandturzel Farm.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Classes are a mix of equipment-based and body weight exercises<\/p>\n

BEN SLADE<\/p>\n

The man behind the gym is 25-year-old Guy Kennedy. His family have lived on the farm and livery yard since the early 1960s. Looking around I immediately felt that the place was a refreshing change from my usual gym routine. No card swipes, no turnstiles, no lockers with digit codes to fumble with. The main gym space in the barn is as well equipped as any of the fancy ones in London.<\/p>\n

My first class was a 45-minute dynamic conditioning workout alongside five others (classes are capped at eight). It\u2019s a mix of equipment-based and body weight exercises on an outdoor rig that Kennedy designed. Think pull-up bars, climbing ropes and parallel bars. He made me drop to the floor for 20 burpees after I missed the start of more than one circuit. But I found it hard not to pause and admire 85 acres of the most scenic Sussex countryside. After bear crawls across the grass, runs around fields where sheep graze and sit-ups gazing at a clear blue sky I definitely didn\u2019t miss the stale, air-conditioned atmosphere of a luxury gym in London.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I tried the gruelling \u2018farm fit\u2019 trend at 59 \u2014 and I\u2019ve never felt better<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not alone in seeking rural fitness options that match what can be found in cities. Nearly 20 per cent of the UK population live in rural areas. Kennedy has long recognised the gap in the market. He qualified as a personal trainer at 18 and worked in towns including Tunbridge Wells, nestled in the picturesque Kent countryside.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Rural workouts beat air-conditioned gyms any day<\/p>\n

BEN SLADE<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the pandemic restrictions began lifting in 2022 I converted a small part of the barn into a PT studio,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was an instant success after some social media marketing and word of mouth. With demand growing quickly I converted the rest of the barn and then expanded outside into what it is today.\u201d <\/p>\n

The health benefits of exercising outdoors are not to be sniffed at. Last year Henrique Brito, a human performance researcher at the University of Lisbon, looked at how the environment makes a difference when it comes to resistance training. The results, published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, showed that outdoor exercisers achieved \u201cbetter performance output\u201d, the participants completing a higher number of repetitions of exercises such as crunches, squats and lunges in a set time than an indoor group.<\/p>\n

So paying \u00a310 a class at Barn Gym (with block of ten pricing) really feels like a bargain. On summer\u2019s hottest days I\u2019ve taken shelter under the forest canopy on the land for the gym\u2019s more gentle, movement-based classes, and I\u2019m looking forward to the crisp, dry winter mornings for invigorating outdoor workouts \u2014 hay bales included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve long been a regular at the luxury fitness spaces of London \u2014 weekly spinning at Psycle, calisthenics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-125234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}