The best part of Owen Willis’s day is his morning shower. Notes of lavender and eucalyptus waft through his private, stone-tiled shower room as he uses a £32 bottle of Cowshed bodywash. He dries off with a fluffy white towel before slathering on Cowshed body lotion (£24).

This isn’t Willis’s home, however. It’s his gym. He belongs to Third Space in London, which calls itself a “luxury health club”. Memberships start at £230 a month for an individual site and go as high as £305 for access to all of its branches, including the Mayfair club, where gym-goers can expect “UV-treated fresh air” and “a Himalayan sea-salt walled sauna and steam room”.

The 23-year-old, who works in marketing, has been a member since he was 18. He describes it as his “second home”, where he estimates he spends about 22 hours a week. “It’s a massive part of my life,” he says. It is also a massive part of his income: his membership sets him back £279 a month – which, when he started going, was about 10% of his monthly wage.

Willis is one of the growing number of gen Zs – those aged 13 to 28 – for whom gym membership is an essential part of their monthly outgoings. In the UK, 27% of adults under 25 consider gym membership a necessity, according to a survey by the credit-rating service Intuit Credit Karma. Many young people would rather invest in fitness than spend money on eating out or going clubbing. A survey by the Gym Group, which operates hundreds of gyms across the UK, found 22% of 18- to 24-year-olds spend more than £50 a month on fitness-related memberships and activities, 18% prioritise spending on health and fitness instead of socialising, while 16% place it above going to pubs or restaurants.

Willis says he has seen a “big shift” among his friends, who go out to dinner less and go to “nicer” gyms instead which, as well as featuring fully kitted gyms and fitness classes, include saunas and steam rooms, massage guns and hydrotherapy pools. “It’s more than a gym,” says Willis. “I go and relax there; I work from there all the time. There’s other stuff, too, like yoga and sound-bath meditation.”

The gym has also served as a form of escape from house-sharing. At one point, Willis was living with six people, in a house that had a mouse infestation and only two showers. Damp towels were scattered across the bathroom floor and the shower was crusted with limescale. As a result, he never showered at home. “It was really horrible. Then I’d go to Third Space and the concierge would know my name and give me a fluffy towel when I walked in. If they knew what my apartment was like at the time, they probably would have cancelled my membership,” he jokes.

Third Space is kitted out with irons, starch spray and even, for an additional cost, a dry-cleaning service. “I don’t own an iron so, if I needed to iron something, I would cycle to the gym and do it there,” says Willis. His use of the gym’s facilities has kept other costs low. He rarely buys toiletries, using the expensive products available in the changing rooms instead, and even though he now lives alone, he still only has a shower at home about once a month.

The rise of young gym devotees like Willis mean the luxury gym business is booming. Third Space – which has expanded its number of clubs from one in 2001 to 13 in 2025, with more on the way – saw consumer spending in its gyms rise by 41.1% between December 2023 and December 2024, according to the business consultancy firm CACI. Other chains – including Third Space’s suburban competitor, David Lloyd, where memberships for its flagship locations can set you back £150 a month or more – have also seen soaring growth. A survey by UKActive, the trade body that represents most of Britain’s fitness operators, found that gen Z is the key demographic driving the record numbers of Britons going to the gym.

The gyms themselves are also becoming more luxurious. At Lanserhof, the gym at the Arts Club in Mayfair, memberships start at £6,500 a year. Surrenne in Belgravia, central London, charges £10,000 a year for membership, plus a £5,000 joining fee (patrons will apparently experience a “new paradigm for wellbeing”). CPASE in Cheshire, which has been described by Tatler as a “gym more luxurious than any other”, offers “oxygen-enriched air” in its “revolutionary fitness playground” for nearly £4,000 a year. A membership for the fitness facility at Cliveden House, the grand Berkshire manor that was the site of the Profumo affair, will set you back nearly £6,000 a year.

Niyi Akinseye has been training in the gym for more than 10 years. “It began with me being an overweight and uncomfortable 15-year-old,” he says. “I was very conscious about the way I looked.” The 26-year-old, who works as a regional project lead at a human rights charity, is planning to make a career switch next month to become a full-time fitness coach.

He goes to GymBox, which was called one of London’s best luxury gyms by Esquire in 2023. After his membership, £95 a month, and other classes and equipment, Akinseye says he spends about £250 a month on fitness, or 10% of his take-home pay. Akinseye says he has met friends “with similar goals and passions”, and affluent clients for his burgeoning fitness-coaching services. “The more I pay for the gym, the better opportunities I’ve found,” he says.

After being greeted by the receptionist, then handed a fresh towel, with the knowledge a sauna session is just around the corner, he says he “feels happy and like I’m ready to do my work”. He calls fitness a “form of therapy – there’s something very therapeutic about moving your body and finding something you can channel your emotions into”.

It is no secret that young people, including gen Z, face big challenges. Akinseye says this was partly why he became interested in fitness. “Seeing the results was very satisfying in a world where there are lots of uncertainties for young people,” he says. “A job isn’t guaranteed in this world, as it perhaps was for previous generations.” Having a gym membership, he says, has helped give him a sense of stability.

Exercise classes have also become more popular with young people. Nishka Parekh, who lives in London, spends about £75 a month on various classes, including pilates. For the 24-year-old marketing manager, fitness is “definitely a social activity”. She says: “Sometimes, me and my friends would plan to go to a workout class on a Friday before going to the pub.”

While she hasn’t gone fully teetotal like many other people her age, Parekh says it’s nice to do something social that “doesn’t revolve around drinking and is better for your health”, physically and mentally. “Fitness definitely helps improve my mental health,” says Parekh. “If I’m having a really rough day at work, or a tough time in general, going to an exercise class or the gym always makes me feel a lot better.”

Willis feels similarly. “I get more out of it outside of fitness,” he says. “The mental health benefits of going to a nice gym are massive, because you’re surrounded by people who are also more invested in their fitness.”

Unlike the grotty sweatboxes that once dominated the market (and where many sped through their workouts, eager to leave as soon as possible), luxury gyms are working incredibly hard to keep clients there as long as possible. Third Space’s CEO, Colin Waggett, has said its members should “get the same sort of experience [in our clubs] as in a Firmdale hotel” – referring to the boutique hotel chain. On top of high-end fitness equipment, many Third Space clubs have dedicated workspaces, cafes and wellness centres. In its flagship Canary Wharf branch, members can have botox (starting at £189 for one area) or a Brazilian lymphatic drainage massage (£95 for a 50-minute session).

At David Lloyd, as part of a £500m investment in its clubs, the firm announced earlier this year that it was going to add workspaces and spa retreats to a number of locations, to create clubs that, the company says, are places for “me-time, together-time, work, rest and playtime”.

Willis says scaling back his fitness spending, especially axing his Third Space membership and swapping to a cheaper alternative, is “out of the question”. “I haven’t really thought about moving to a cheaper gym; it’s just never going to be the same,” he says. “I’d probably go once, say: ‘I don’t want to stay here any more,’ and leave.”