As a gym brand, Les Mills relies on the work of many staff to create the Les Mills atmosphere. Personal Trainers are a key part of a gym and one that often gets overlooked. While many may perceive the Personal Trainer as an intense upper limit member, the reality is far from it.

I set out to showcase what it means to work with a Personal Trainer as a Les Mills gym-goer.

 A meeting was held with key members of the Les Mills New Zealand team to discuss how we can better represent and showcase the work of Personal Trainers (PT’s) in clubs. PT’s are often seen floating about and observed as a reserved tool for the elite or wealthy, yet in reality they serve a purpose to engage and communicate correct training practices.

I suggested we create a short video series showcasing the personal side of personal training. The video would be shot entirely handheld with no rig, stabilisers, or tripods allowed in order to bring out the emotion between trainer and trainee.

 In the afternoon we shot Nikki and Sarah. Working as a pair, Nikki and Sarah often train together and also have a bond from the get-go. Their drive and push meant filming was a breeze and shots flowed naturally.

The brief was to create multiple short-form classes that existed for a short period of time to gauge how they might work internationally. Strength Development was the second class to be created as a part of Les Mills seasonal programming exercise. 

Although gyms have plenty of strength based equipment and an emphasis on building mass, Les Mills like many group training programs doesn’t offer a tailored strength workout. There’s a few that touch on the concept, but none that are built on it. Strength Development was to be the heavy lifting class that many members had asked for. 

We moved through many ideas and concepts quickly to get the shoot off the ground. The shoot landed us back in the retail space we used for PT - a relatable, common space that allowed for some connection to other content. The grey walls mean that people pop in front of them, while giving off a certain level of grit. 

I wanted to focus on this concept of movement without moving.  Given many of the moves used in Strength Development are slow, it’s hard to show any form of movement in a video, let alone a still shot on a billboard. This meant chopping images in half. I wanted to hone in on a gritty close-up nature that showed many different parts of the body, parts of the movement, and a way to give framing to movement without there actually being any.

Together I worked with Adam Abernethy on stills and myself on video. The goal was to create the easiest shoot ever - both stills and video shot at the same time, with an end video goal in mind to shoot towards. We finished the video at 330pm, headed back to the studio to start grading. The final video was out and released the following week. 

This art direction would then lead to the next campaign Strength Lab, a programme created to follow on from the success of Strength Development. However next time
we wanted to push it a bit further.

Design Director: Zoe Ikin
Art Director/Videographer/Video Editor: Chris Smith
Junior Designer: Madison Ford 

Strength Lab is the continuation of a good thing.
Gym-goers loved Strength Development, so much so that the programme ran for almost 6 months. The class was a hit and Les Mills wanted to give members more.

Strength Lab felt like a natural progression from previous work, the patterns had been created, the work was outlined, and everyone knew their roles. The only difference for us was how much more can we push the campaign? Realistically the campaign can’t be too far different from the past, but it can go a little further than before. We must be careful to never alienate members, but also careful to push a little more each time.

Sadly due to COVID restrictions we were unable to secure any venues to shoot at. This meant back to our usual space at Les Mills. The decision was made to work with production company Brewery to create a new look, a “V2” look. We set out to colour the space, flood the walls with orange light and darken the area to create a more ambient space, one that was familiar but new.

The art direction was a simple advance of the Strength Development look, but flooded with colour. Think Harrison Ford in Blade Runner 2049. The space was then blacked out and lit to ensure we only had very small parts of the space on display. 

Design Director: Rei Konza
Art Director/Photographer: Chris Smith
Videography: Brewery
Video Editor: Ben Claasen 

With the gyms being progressively redeveloped, Les Mills sent me around to shoot the gyms. Here are some of the images. You can find the full set on Les Mills Clubs page.