Do you remember a time when nobody really talked about what they did for exercise or ate for lunch, because to put it bluntly, who’d have cared? Even now it would be weird to turn up at the office and announce that you’ve just run 5K with an average of 492 calories burned per hour, or hold your plate up to the nearest person declaring your dinner’s ‘clean-eating’ benefits. 

But on the internet, where people use social media to live-blog their every action, and an innocuous coat-hook can become a star for a day because OMG it looks like a face LOL, that’s a different story. Barely a day goes by where Instagram doesn’t enlighten you to a new food that’s allowed on the #paleo diet, or you feel shamed by someone on twitter who’s done 20 burpees, 60 squats and 50 pushups #fitness #gym #workout because particularly when it comes to boasting about health and fitness, anything goes online. The humble-brag is practically the law on Instagram – let’s blame Miranda Kerr and her smug workout selfies. 

It’s a sense of sharing that’s seems key to the success of a new craze of ‘bootcamp’ fitness, the high intensity group  workouts, which comprise a mixture of intense cardio and heavy weight-training that has taken America by storm and has now migrated to our shores. 

Barry’s Bootcamp, the hardcore fitness studio that can take credit for sculpting Kim Kardashian’s famous buttocks, and boasts clients including Victoria Beckham and Naomi Campbell at its Central London outpost that opened last year, is the most notorious. Everyone wants a piece of Barry’s, not least because what happens at Barry’s, which launched in West Hollywood over a decade ago, most certainly doesn’t stay at Barry’s, as a quick click on #Barrysbootcamp will tell you. ‘I think people come here because they read about it and hear that celebrities come here’, founder Barry Jay told us while he was in town for the Barry's Bootcamp London first anniversary festivities. ‘They’re like, “ooh, I ran next to Katie Holmes today”’. 

Geoff Bagshaw, a trainer teaching at the equally infamous Equinox Training Camp, a similarly challenging regime at the Kensington branch of the luxury gym agrees. ‘There’s definitely bragging rights in terms of people surviving the workouts’, he says. ‘The workouts are challenging, so they’re going to want to post to their friends to show what they’ve accomplished’. Indeed when I completed both a Barry’s Bootcamp London and ETC class on the same day without going into cardiac arrest, my twitter followers were the first people from whom I requested a medal.  

A group mentality is just as important to bootcamp style training like ETC and Barry’s IRL too. ‘One of my favourite things about it is the camaraderie, the team, the effort and the energy in the room’, Barry beams when I ask him if gym bunnies sticking together is better than being a lone wolf on the treadmill. Often likening his classes to a nightclub, or ‘a party in a box’ as a friend of his dubbed it, he says, ‘if there were just two people dancing in a club, it’d be boring, but when everyone’s up and dancing with their hands in the air, it’s great’. When I sit in to watch the sold-out special anniversary class Barry teaches at the Euston branch, it seems that there really ain’t no party like a Barry’s party. 

The crowd at the anniversary class – made up of lithe models and a surprisingly unintimidating selection of women in their late twenties and early thirties, wearing chic but simple leggings and vests - are smiley and pumped full of energy during the 90 minute class (which sold out in 9minutes). This admirable poise is despite spending a gruelling 45mins solid running while Barry leaps around the room, arms aloft, whooping along to Whitney Houston’s I wanna dance with somebody. It’s no surprise to hear Barry wax lyrical about visiting the West End theatre whenever he’s in London, ‘I spent two hours in tears at Les Miserable. It was born for the London stage, it’s so beautiful’, because his workouts are positively theatrical. Even the red lighting, chosen for its sexy vibe, is a nod to the drag queen musical Kinky Boots. ‘There’s one part where Lola says, “you’re gonna make me the first pair of kinky boots, and make them reeeeeeed, because red is seeeeeeeex”’ Barry explains with enough dramatic affectation to make you think he could audition for a part himself. ‘I totally get what she’s saying, that’s what I thought with the lights’. 

"If there were just two people dancing in a club, it’d be boring, but when everyone’s up and dancing with their hands in the air, it’s great." - Barry Jay - Barry's Bootcamp

Between the cacophonous music, a spectacular disco of red flashing lights, and a tightly choreographed routine of sprinting, jogging and weight lifting, you’re basically too distracted to notice that you’ve entered yet another minute of fast running at a steep incline or that you’re onto your fiftieth Russian Twist. Even despite a particularly ill-timed hangover, all I was able to think about during the class were the commands being rapidly fired at me, making even this intense style of training feel surprisingly doable. 

Admittedly, I’ve built up a reasonable amount of fitness in the couple of years I’ve been regularly going to the gym, but I rarely even break a sweat on my lazier days when going solo. ‘You feed off each other’s energy, it’s contagious’, Barry suggests. ‘What I love is that a lot of people come to me and say, “you’ve ruined the gym for me!”’. He’s right, even after just one class, I, someone who considers exercise a necessary evil, have been bitten by the Barry bug. 

"There’s definitely bragging rights in terms of people surviving the workouts." - Geoff Bagshaw - Equinox

It’s not just the fun Barry’s injects into bootcamp workouts that makes them seem addictive. Promising to burn around 1000 calories in just an hour, it’s pretty damn effective too. ‘The truth is you’re going to work your ass off and you’re going to get results’, he proudly notes. ‘It’s fun that Kim Kardashian is at the other end of the room, but with hard work, you start to see why you’re really here.’ 

In Kensington at the Equinox training camp, the atmosphere might be more ‘calm gathering’ than ‘raucous party’, but the importance of shared and visible achievement is the same. On the six week programme, a small group of people complete high intensity exercises three times a week with the promise that ‘they are definitely going to notice an improved appearance in their bodies and their overall health’, according to Bagshaw, who runs the course. He notes the ‘emotional commitment’ you get when working towards set goals as part of a group. Thanks to Facebook groups set up for teams taking part, ‘there’s a big connection and we’re really trying to foster the sense of community’.

Like with Barry’s Bootcamp, synonymous with celebrity culture, Geoff admits that ‘there is a status element to being involved’ with ETC. In New York where Equinox launched the programme, ‘the classes sell out in seconds, so the groups are a very privileged few’. It’s little wonder that people who take the classes are keen to use twitter to tell the world that #equinoxmademedoit. It’s obvious then that good old group encouragement is at the heart of the bootcamp craze, and all you really need to be kept fitter than a butcher’s dog. Whether that group is made up of hyperactive fitness partiers, a close-knit workout team, or the followers liking all your smug work-out selfies, is up to you. #GoTeam.