The Independent Magazine
19.01.2002

Kieser Training sounds too good to be true: a toned body with no warm-ups, no sweat and only three half-hour sessions a week. But have you seen the things they strap you into?

When I ripped a lumbar disc four years ago my osteopath told me that even childbirth wouldn't hurt as much. He turned out to be right. And so I've spent a lot of money since then in a prophylactic effort to make sure I never, ever end up in that sort of pain again.

Gym, yoga, pilates, special back yoga, acupuncture - I've tried them all. I gave up riding a bike, crossing my legs, wearing heels and being macho about carrying the big boxes when we move house. But now, with a body that feels like a staved-in barrel and an inch-wide post-partum gap in my stomach muscles that shows no sign of closing up, I'm getting nasty twinges whenever I have to lug baby, pram and shopping on to the bus home.

There's no longer the time - or money - to maintain a body beautiful. What I need is a speedy, efficient maintenance programme that keeps me on the road. What I need, a similarly stricken colleague tells me, is Kieser Training - motto: «A strong back knows no pain».

Watch your back
Kieser's machine for testing lumbar strength includes a computer screen, displaying your efforts in graph form

Swiss exercise guru Werner Kieser is the Mies van der Rohe of fitness: less is more. The 62-year-old ex-boxer advocates three or fewer half-hour sessions of his «medical strengthening therapy» a week, no more than 10 two-minute exercises each time, and fewer than nine «reps» (repeats) of each.

This, he asserts in his stern new handbook Full Strength, is quite sufficient to cure bad backs, prevent osteoporosis, improve posture, weight-loss and self-confidence. It can even, he says, reduce cellulite. Still more unorthodox is his belief that your average person doesn't need to warm up, or down, to stretch or even sweat in order to maintain sufficient muscle strength to support the body and avoid pain. Cardiovascular fitness also has no place in his regime. Instead, there are 27 types of «MedX»machine - refined versions of the kind of equipment you get in normal gyms - and each isolates and works an individual muscle group for optimum body efficiency. How very Swiss.

Britain currently has a minimal number of Kieser «facilities». There's precisely one, in Camden, north London. But two more, in the City and west London, are due to open this year as the advance guard of a programme of expansion which eventually aims to whip Britain into the frenzy of enthusiasm Kieser inspires in Europe, where 130,000 people use his training facilities. Kieser's first gym opened in Zurich in 1967; now a new one opens every fortnight.
All 90 or so «facilities» are identical and open to all members. So Europeans pop into a Kieser facility near work at lunchtime, and then top up at one near home at the weekends. When they travel they can find one near their hotel. All very efficient. But then Europeans have a history of embracing all sorts of «cranky» preventative health measures, from the Feldenkrais «awareness through movement» technique to ergonornic furniture and organic food.
Without a radical shift in our national psyche, I can't see Kieser's Mornington Crescent flagship reeling in the British punter. We tend to treat a gym like a shopping mall: a third space in which to graze, flirt, chat and groom. A Kieser facility is about as funky as a Muji warehouse. It's a huge, hangar-like, monochrome place. Over 50 sleek, numbered machines are ranked in rows like a monolithic periodic table. In the middle of the room stands a large Swiss railway clock to time your exercises. The changing rooms boast perforated steel lockers and steel and rubber cylindrical shower cubicles of which the Swiss army would be proud.

There's no TV or music, no juice bar or sauna. «Well, we're catering for adults here,» explains the German-born manager David Fritz, a no-nonsense ex-Reuters journalist. «People who know what they need.» There is a water cooler somewhere, though, and a stick-mounted copy of the FT. «Also we provide The Independent. It's what our clients prefer.» The clientele today appear to be highly effective types, probably early adopters of in-car global navigation systems, titanium-framed glasses and Teflon-coated overcoats. There's not a gym bunny or muscle Mary in sight.

Unlike yoga (Geri et al) and pilates (Uma, etc), Kieser refuses to trade on celebrity endorsement, which is probably why you've never heard of it. Although Alexi Sayle does train here, I'm told.

But there's a point to all this dullness. «You stay focused and efficient,» says Fritz. Kieser wants exercise to be as straightforward and routine as brushing your teeth. Chris, Fritz's wife, is one of three on-site therapists who devise programmes for members, using combinations of different machines. It would be positively unethical, she explains «to take your money for cardiovascular exercise, which you can just as well do walking up the stairs to your office».

She walks me over to the most intimidating machine of all, for an initial back-strength test. With much tightening of wheels and nylon belts, she tests my lumbar strength. I strain repeatedly against the black padded restraints. My efforts are graphed in real time on the computer screen in front of me. It seerns I have a full range of movement (thank you yoga). And an even distribution of strength (that'll be the pilates). But when she compares my «relative isometric torque» with the age-matched norm, I fall well below average range. I'm simply not strong enough to comfortably support my height and weight, let alone the baby, pram, shopping etc.

Though not entirely unexpected, this is depressing news. Fritz then tells the encouraging story of a thirtysomething IT expert with a bad back whose initial score barely even registered in this test. After six months of Kieser she'd shot way beyond me, went off snowboarding, and gave up training. «Later, of course,» recounts Fritz with some satisfaction, «she did come crawling back - literally - for our help.»
Chris prints out my report. When you train with Kieser, they graph your progress like this every 20 sessions, readjusting your programme accordingly. I can imagine the Kieser clientele using these reports to work out a cost-benefit analysis on their personal organisers.

In my post-baby haze, such precision is only to be dreamed of. I emerge to find that I've failed to put enough money in the meter and Camden Council have - Kieser would be proud - towed the car already. Sometimes efficiency can go too damn far.

«We're catering for adults here,» explains Fritz. There's not a gym bunny or a muscle Mary in sight.

Kieser Training can be contacted on 020-7391 9980 or at kieser- training.com. Annual membership costs £399, with no subsequent fees