Secret Fitness – a new activity based fitness concept

Do you get bored with doing the same thing at the gym? Do you enjoy group activities more than the treadmill? Then why not check out Secret Fitness?! I went along the other Friday with a group from Love Pop Ups London to check out their latest Secret activity… only read on if you don’t want spoilers!!

*Full disclosure my ticket for the Secret Fitness activity was free in return for this honest review, as ever all opinions remain my own*

Secret Fitness – a new activity based fitness concept in London

The Secret Fitness concept

Secret Fitness is just that… the activity or experience is kept secret until you arrive at the end destination. To keep the secret, you are provided with the meeting location (in central London) and what you need to wear/bring only 48 hours ahead of time. But you won’t discover what you are doing until you get to your end destination!

 

Why? This is all part of the Secret Fitness concept:

Secret Fitness’s purpose is to bring home those little adventures, celebrating lesser known experiences right here in London. Try something new; approach fitness and London in a new way, while having fun and meeting new people.

So the Secret aspect lets you discover new activities that you might not have considered before, as well as embracing all different sorts of ways to keep fit.

 

Before hand

Having received the email 48 hours prior with the instructions on where to go and what to wear I still didn’t have a clue what we were doing. The email contains a small survey that asks you all sorts of things and doesn’t give much away. Suffice to say that if you’ve been injured before or are pregnant, you may need to disclose this and get a doctor’s note to say you are OK to do the activity. This didn’t apply to me though.

I changed into my work out gear at work and brought my work clothes as a ‘dry change of clothes’ as instructed. Heading to the meeting point (which was super easy on the bus for me), I was a little bit tired after a large evening the night before & a full week at work. (OK, OK, so I was hungover too!). I was in a bit of a grumpy mood and a little frustrated not knowing what we would be doing…

 

Meeting point

I won’t tell you exactly where we met, as that will give it away to people selecting this location in the future. Suffice to say it was outside a tube station in central London and easy to get to after a day at work.

From here we walked to the activity location. We walked past several parks, was it going to be in them?

No.

We walked past the canal, was it going to be there? We didn’t think so at first and then we ended up on the canal path, faced with boats and a pile of life jackets.

Was this it?

No.

Instead the boats took us to the actual location (a little bit of cloak and dagger going on here).

 

When we made land, did we know what we were doing?

No.

There were several options facing me – a floating boat yoga studio, paddle boards and kayaks….

It turns out we were kayaking!! I was very happy about this 🙂

 

The Secret Fitness activity

Once everyone was ready (changed/bags and belongings locked away safely, life jackets on etc), we headed to the water’s edge to get into our kayaks. Most of us were in single person kayaks, but there was one two person kayak that was a lot larger (and hence more stable!). After a quick demonstration on how to hold our paddles, Chris showed us how to get into our kayaks safely and then off we went!

 

Once in the water Chris took us through the strokes and how to manoeuver our kayaks. I was in my element! Being a water baby I love most water-sports and had kayaked as a kid. So I loved it! A few of the others struggled with the kayaks to start with, but Chris managed to get us all comfortable and set in the same direction down the canal.

 

 

We kayaked down the canal from one lock to the other and then returned back to the boathouse. This was basically our warm up / practice run.

At the boathouse we then played some games. They had nets set up for kayak water polo, we did a game of bull dog with the ball too.

As you can hear we laughed a lot!

 

 

Then there were the races, where my competitive nature came out! I helped my team to win the relay, but when it came to the head to head, I was out powered by the two person kayak (& also knackered by then!), so lost – boooo!

Winning the relay race for my team

Then we were all back out of the boats, tipping the water out and putting them away, before posing for a photo.

We had post work out snacks from Gato and Co went down well!

The Verdict on Secret Fitness:

I started the evening out grumpy and tired. However by the end of the session I was happy and recharged. The time kayaking flew past and I was glad to rediscover an activity that I’ve done in the past. It certainly makes me want to check out other events and maybe get more involved with kayaking on the canal in the future.

Even better is that 40% of the £30 ticket price from this particular activity is donated towards supporting the community boat club that we used. So it was a fun and socially responsible activity! (Albeit a little wet!)

I’d definitely like to check out some of the other activities, I’ve heard that they have done archery and even pole dancing in the past (both things I’ve tried to varying levels of sucess!)

Thanks to Chris for hosting us and to Love Pop Ups London for the opportunity. Also big thanks to Chris for sharing the various ‘wet activity’ photos and videos he took whilst we were doing the activity. From how wet I got, I’m glad that I didn’t have to take my camera/phone with me to get pictures to share with you!

Find out more about founder Chris’ personal training business: Uber fit | Personal Training