Get whipped! - the latest NY workout to hit London

Fancy arms like Jennifer Aniston or Michelle Obama? Then try the latest NY workout to hit London, which involves whipping a room-length rope — it’s a cracker, says Phoebe Luckhurst

Phoebe Luckhurst @phoebeluckhurst20 August 2013

A Whipped! hangover feels a little like a real one. You emerge dehydrated and dry-mouthed, shaky and faint, and feeling a little bit like you’ve been beaten up.

If you’re worried you’ve wandered into the wrong publication (you picked it up at the Tube, not covertly under the counter of a Soho sinhouse), let me clear things up. Whipped! is the hottest new workout in London. And it’s going to whip you into shape — without any sort of Fifty Shades funny business.

The class, which originated in New York, has now become one of super-gym Equinox’s most popular classes, with its three weekly sessions constantly booked up. It’s circuit training but with a whole world of difference: the central exercise (and the reason a single session can burn up to 650 calories) involves whipping two weighted, room-length ropes secured to the floor by kettle balls up and down at high speed. It’s the workout you need if you want solid and perfectly toned arms like Jennifer Aniston or Michelle Obama.

You do two circuits of eight different workstations made up of exercises involving free weights, lunges and sit-ups — and encounter the ropes eight times in total. And believe me, that is more than enough.

One is heavier than the other, which doesn’t feel too significant after the first try but by the end the heavier rope feels completely unmanageable.

However, the ropes are also by far the most fun: there’s something childish about whipping it up and down, a glee that is absent when you do lunges while struggling with weights.

Trainer Rory Knight assures me the class is suitable for beginners, although your first session is going to be tough. He runs us through how each workstation operates before spending the duration of the 45-minute class babysitting me. Naturally, most of the exercises look relatively easy: jumping up and down holding a ball? Pah! But it become apparent that they aren’t: the ball is heavy and not, as I hoped, a beach ball.

Rory tells me that the reason Whipped! works is because it’s a “total workout” that combines cardio and strength training and you see results fast — one member of the class lost more than a stone in a month.

Afterwards, it really feels like I’ve worked every single muscle in my body — I’m already scared of waking up tomorrow in agony.

I got absolutely Whipped but I’m going back. Michelle O, your monopoly on the bicep ends now.