Class number one was 11 January 2023. Class number 366 was at 10:45am today, 2 May 2026. Twenty-eight months, four Barry’s UK studios visited, forty different instructors logged. The app calls my home studio "London West" — that is Queensway to anyone who actually goes there. Most of the 366 have happened in that one building on Queensway, between the same eight Wattbikes and the same red lighting that makes your face look like you are already finished before you have even started.
I did not get into fitness early. I got into it in 2022, at 36, after a decade of building agency businesses and treating my body like the hosting server for the actual work. Before Barry’s stuck, I tried a lot of other things and none of them lasted. Versa Climber at BXR — they have sites at Marylebone, Paddington Street, and City of London — genuinely brutal in a way that is worth doing once a quarter. Spin at Psycle. Outdoor running, which I still do for distance. A few hikes in the Peak District. None of it became a habit. Barry’s did.
This is a post about why, and what 366 classes of it have actually taught me. It is not a fitness plan, I am not a coach, and there is nothing for sale at the bottom.
What a Barry’s class actually is
For anyone who has not done one: a Barry’s Bootcamp class is sixty minutes, half on a treadmill, half on the floor with dumbbells and resistance bands. The studio is dark. The lights are red. The volume is loud enough that you cannot have a conversation, which is the point. You are running and lifting in front of a mirror you cannot quite see, while someone shouts numbers and the next person’s elbow is six inches from yours. Class capacity at Queensway is about thirty-six people split across treads and floor, swapping at the halfway point.
There is a ceiling on how clever the format can get. That is its main feature. You show up, you do what the instructor says, you leave. There is no app to set up, no warm-up to figure out, no progressive overload spreadsheet. The decision-making is done.
Why this format stuck when nothing else did
The honest answer is decision fatigue. Running an agency means I make about a hundred small judgement calls before lunch — pricing, hiring, scope, prioritisation, copy. The thing that makes Barry’s different from a gym membership is that the workout is decided for me by someone who does this for a living. I just have to be in the room at 8:20am (Tee), 9:30 am (Sam) or 10:45 am (Jonah).
The second reason is the room itself. Queensway is twelve minutes from my flat. If the studio were a tube ride away I would not be at 366 classes. I would be at maybe 90.
The third reason is the music, which is where the instructors come in.
The instructors who made me stay
The instructor turnover at Barry’s is high enough that any list dates fast, but a few names have shaped most of those 366 classes. Tee Von Zee teaches the cleanest cues I have ever heard from any group fitness instructor in any format — every transition is announced, every set has an exit ramp if you need it, and she does not bullshit anyone about effort. Harry Sellers (Saturday Special) builds music sets that I have caught myself listening to in the car a week later, which is rare, and which is a real and underrated part of why people come back. Jonah Duncan runs the kind of class where you cannot actually tell if you are halfway through or three-quarters because you are just inside the next interval. And Sam — there are two Sams I rotate between, and both teach with a calm that takes the panic out of the harder treadmill sets.
I cannot overstate how much the instructor matters. Same room, same dumbbells, same playlist length — the wrong instructor is a different workout entirely.
The operator-brain take, since I cannot help it
I run a software business. I notice format. A well-run Barry’s class has the same structure as a well-run design sprint: a tight front-half ramp where you load the work, a punishing middle block that breaks you, and a finisher that exists for closure rather than progress. The instructors who run the best classes manage time the way a good PM manages a meeting — they do not let any one segment over-run, even if it is going well. Especially if it is going well.
The thing about doing the same format 366 times is that you stop noticing the workout and start noticing the operations. Which classes start late, which instructors waste time on intros, which sound systems are tuned and which are mush. Queensway and all others Barry's run tight. The 10:45 starts at 10:45.
The post-class shake, which is half the routine
Sixty minutes burns me about 860 calories on a hard class day according to my watch, which is probably overestimating but consistently overestimating, so the trend is honest. The post-class fuel is non-negotiable: a mocha protein creatine shake, 38 grams of protein, ordered at the front desk and ready by the time I have changed. I have tried lifting fasted, lifting on toast, lifting on espresso. The protein-and-creatine shake within twenty minutes is the only routine I have not been able to argue myself out of.
My favourite flavours on the menu are Blueberry Cobbler and Coco Loco. I rotate between the two depending on whether I want sweet-fruity or sweet-coconut, and I always add the Bulk Up — an extra dose of protein and creatine on top of the standard shake — because the marginal cost is small and the marginal recovery is real. The Hermosa protein they use is excellent. Smooth, no chalky aftertaste, and it sits right after a hard class instead of fighting back the way some lifestyle-brand proteins do.
The thing nobody tells you about going to a fitness class three times a week for two and a half years is that the adjacent rituals — the walk to the studio, the shake afterwards, the fifteen minutes of decompressing on the bench outside before the day starts — end up being more than half of why the habit holds.
Four studios in 366 classes
The dashboard says four studios visited. Queensway is home. I have logged classes at Notting Hill, Victoria, and one at the City of London location when a client meeting over-ran and Queensway was full. Each one has a different room geometry and a slightly different vibe. Notting Hill is the original UK studio and feels like it. Victoria is closer to the corporate clientele. Queensway is the most consistent and the most local-feeling — same regulars at the same 10:45 every week, which I do not think is true at the bigger central studios.
If I were starting from zero today, I would pick the studio nearest my front door regardless of which is supposedly the best. Travel friction is the variable that decides whether you hit class 50, 100, or 366.
What 28 months actually did
I am not going to claim a transformation. I am the same shape I was in 2023, slightly stronger, with markedly better baseline fitness and a heart rate that recovers faster than it has any right to. The real win is that I stopped negotiating with myself about whether to go. The class is on the calendar three times a week. The shake is ordered. The walk home is fifteen minutes. The whole thing fits inside a ninety-minute window I can defend against any meeting.
That is the only fitness advice I have. Find the format you do not have to think about, the studio you do not have to commute to, and the instructor whose voice you will follow into the next interval when you do not feel like it. Then book the next month of classes in advance and stop having the conversation.
Class 367 is Monday morning.