Gym Dandy

Reformd

Neighbourhood: Entertainment District Who Goes Here: The mat-Pilates-is-for-peasants crowd Best Perk: Flattering selfie lighting Bougie Factor: 4/5 What It Costs: $34 per visit or $360 a month for unlimited classes

The punishing Pilates-adjacent workout known as Lagree has a cult following. It’s long been rumoured to be the secret behind toned, firm celebrity bodies—at least pre-Ozempic. The draw is as much status as sweat: you’re not just working out; you’re joining a sect, and each muscle quake is a revelation.

Reformd, Sweat and Tonic’s new Lagree studio, leans into that devotion. It’s housed in a super-luxe 6,000-square-foot space with a private lobby, heated floors in the change rooms and fancy toiletries. In the main studio, 30 gleaming Mega Pro machines are arranged in rows beneath an instructor platform, altar-style. Most Lagree studios squeeze in a dozen machines, but Reformd expands the boutique burn into a full-blown congregation.

Related: This new gym costs $2,000 a month

The Mega Pro looks like a medieval torture rack reimagined by a sci-fi set designer: a carriage that slides between two platforms with handlebars at each end, plus springs, straps and pulleys. From the outside, the workout appears modest, all slow lunges and tiny pulses, but that seemingly relaxed pace makes muscles beg for mercy. Salvation comes by way of quads on fire.

Since opening in 2019, Sweat and Tonic has perfected the nightclub-meets-gym aesthetic, and Reformd carries that DNA. It’s fitness in rave drag: pounding bass and pulsing lights create a sensory overload that distracts from the brutality of the workout.

The performance doesn’t stop when the lights come up. In true Sweat and Tonic fashion, the post-class mirror selfie is part of the ritual, and the merch helps broadcast that you’re one of the converted. Much like the SoulCycle tote a decade ago, a Reformd sweatshirt is shorthand for I do the hardest workout in town.

Related: The best sauna–cold plunge circuits in Toronto

The Jeff Nippard Muscle Lab

Neighbourhood: Oakville Who Goes Here: Digital disciples Best Perk: A pocket-sized personal trainer Bougie Factor: 5/5 for the select few who actually set foot here What It Costs: $50 for virtual access; good luck getting in IRL (unless you’re Mr. Beast)

Is this real life or reel life? These days, gyms aren’t just where bodies are built; they’re where content is created. And the Jeff Nippard Muscle Lab—a hybrid gym, lab and film set—blurs that line impeccably.

Nippard, a GTA-based fit-fluencer with more followers than the population of Austria (upward of 13 million across his socials, most of them on YouTube), has built a virtual empire exploring the science of sweat. For years, he filmed in public gyms filled with background noise and strangers drifting into the frame. Muscle Lab is his solution: a private, camera-ready playground where every shot, light and angle is under his control.

In 2023, Nippard snapped up two neighbouring 2,200-square-foot warehouse units in Oakville, knocked down the wall between them and embarked on a two-year reno to create a monument to muscle. Here, every square inch doubles as a film set, starting with the lobby, where sculptural armchairs flank a wall of weight plates painted in Muscle Lab’s signature green, anchored by a monogrammed rug. From there, one door leads to the “Light Side,” a gym with spotlights that sharpen definition, and another to the “Dark Side,” which has feature walls wrapped in corrugated metal for dramatic shadows.

Launching the Muscle Lab marks a shift for Nippard—not just higher production values and better thumbnails but a whole new mandate. “For the past 10 years, I’ve been explaining exercise research on YouTube,” he says. “For the next 10, I want to do the research.” Instead of summarizing other people’s studies, he plans to test hypotheses of his own. The results may not make it into academic journals, but they’ll definitely make it onto millions of For You pages.

Avant

Neighbourhood: Yorkville Who Goes Here: Fintech and trust-fund folk who think Equinox is too easy to get into Best Perk: The networking opportunities Bougie Factor: 5/5 What It Costs: An initiation fee plus twice-monthly dues from $185 to $1,000

Avant’s website flexes: “We don’t accept everyone—and that’s the point.” The new 31,500-square-foot fitness palace houses six boutique studios catering to nearly every workout fixation, including Reformer Pilates, spin, boxing and more. On the open gym floor, sleek, high-end Panatta weight machines sit alongside Canadian-made Atlantis equipment, all staged against a backdrop by the award-winning luxury hospitality design firm behind the St. Regis Hotel.

Two dedicated recovery areas are appointment-­only. The Thermal Cove includes an infrared sauna, a steam room and an eight-degree cold plunge—bracing if not exactly Wim Hof cold. The other is packed with massage chairs, an anti­-gravity recliner, compression boots, the Ballancer Pro lymphatic-drainage suit (think full-body boa constrictor) and a mechanized Korean alignment bed with 62 acupressure rods. It’s all very futuristic, with an emphasis on gadgetry.

Avant is the shinier, more exclusive sister to Liberty Village’s Altea—it’s smaller, pricier and more polished, according to Yorkville standards. The three membership tiers all require a $500 initiation fee plus twice-monthly dues that can climb upward of $1,000. The highest tier includes unlimited Reformer classes, a weekly personal-training session and monthly “accountability sessions” (Catholic confession, but make it fitness).

Before they’re permitted to shell out, though, would-be members must pass an unorthodox application process with questions you might find on a college application, including, “Why are you the ideal Avant member?” The idea is to create a community of “high-performance individuals.” Whether anyone with a valid credit card is actually turned away is unclear.

Depending on your motives, Avant is either Toronto’s most prestigious gym or the slickest new place to network over a post-spin espresso.

One Academy

Neighbourhood: Entertainment District Who Goes Here: The delayed-onset-muscle-soreness-as-status-symbol set Best Perk: No phones, no filters—just sweat Bougie Factor: 2/5 What It Costs: $38 for single classes or $279 a month for unlimited access

One Academy doesn’t just have members—it has lifers. Since opening its first location in a Leslieville warehouse in 2017, the bootstrapped gym has transformed regular people into devotees who build their lives around its schedule. Some have met spouses mid-burpee; others have literally moved homes to be closer. In 2023, One expanded to Etobicoke, and now it’s bringing its energy to Wellington Street with a new 8,000-square-foot outpost.

Unlike at the big chains, there’s no open-gym chaos here—only programmed workouts. Every class follows HiFlux, One Academy’s proprietary methodology: four-week strength-and-conditioning blocks designed for measurable progress. It’s a boot camp with brains, built before Mark Wahlberg invested in F45.

And then there’s Everest, the Saturday suffer fest everyone trains for. With two levels to choose from—Warrior and Beast—Everest is a full-body 90-minute gauntlet of strength and cardio designed to break even the elite, and yet it’s the gym’s most in-demand class, filling up minutes after bookings open.

The programming may sound masochistic, but it actually meets members where they are. On any given day, firefighters, creatives, CEOs and grandmothers train side by side, each chasing progress at their own pace. According to co-founder Jesse Bruce, “Our injury rates are extremely low because nothing here is random or reckless—we never program flashy, overly complex movements or push people to lift loads their bodies aren’t ready for.”

As a self-financed gym, One Academy answers to no shareholders. Twice a year, the gym throws a massive 300-person blowout funded partly by late-cancel fees. It’s a place that runs on effort, not ego. That’s also why “the Pit”—the main area where people get their sweat on—doesn’t allow phones. In a gym culture increasingly built for the feed, showing up and actually being present is the ultimate flex.

Altitude Athletic Training

Neighbourhood: St. Lawrence Who Goes Here: Folks who name-drop Tenzing Norgay Best Perk: Bespoke training plans with access to VO2-max testing Bougie Factor: 3.5/5 What It Costs: $300 a month, or more for a bespoke coaching package

Forget scotch at the club or 18 holes before noon. The new pastime of Toronto’s C-suite set is punishingly expensive endurance: six-figure Everest expeditions, Ironman bibs, ultramarathons. It’s not enough to scale the corporate ladder—now you’re expected to literally climb a mountain.

The problem? Toronto’s topography has more ravines than mountains. For those unwilling to settle for sea level, there’s Altitude Athletic Training. Inside its 1,200-square-foot enclosure, oxygen is thinned out from the usual 20.9 per cent to around 14 per cent, simulating an elevation of 10,000 feet.

The outpost comes from Melanie Miller, an engineer and obsessive runner forever chasing her next personal best. She looked at altitude training options—claustrophobic tents or a costly flight to Kenya—and figured there had to be another way.

Apart from the guy on the treadmill beside you wearing a Bane mask and grinding up a vertiginous incline, Altitude doesn’t scream lab-rat experiment. At its core, though, the place is pure body science—obsessed with metrics yet dressed in spa-like comforts.

Here, a half-tonne of proprietary machinery is hidden behind the walls, engineered to hum instead of howl as it strips oxygen from the air. The lobby stays at sea level; only beyond the sliding glass doors does the air thin. The natural-light-drenched chamber feels deceptively comfortable, but you sense the difference instantly: your ears tingle, and impassioned conversation leaves you winded. On the treadmill, your legs may be trotting, but your heart pounds like you’re in full sprint.

Some members sign up because training in high-altitude conditions means squeezing in a more intense workout in less time. But the real draw isn’t more-defined mirror muscles—it’s overhauling the body’s engine: lungs and heart.