When you walk into the airy Echelon spin studio on Dublin's D'Olier St, you're met with an understated sign.
"No diet talk", it reads, or "weight loss talk. No unrealistic beauty standards or body ideals."
The black and white sign goes on, forbidding ableism, ageism, homophobia and transphobia, ending in the credo that, "mainstream beauty standards and body ideals are highly unrealistic and steeped in oppressive histories of white supremacy and misogyny ... so they're not promoted here".
It's a disarmingly clear-eyed challenge to fitness culture as many of us know it, from the legions of influencers posting scant "what I eat in a day" vlogs to the gym bros promising peachy glutes in just six weeks with their subscription plans.
In contrast, in the basement below the Echelon studio, in dimly lit rooms filled with multicoloured lights, small classes of a dozen or so people of all shapes and sizes cycle along to Taylor Swift or Twilight themed sessions, encouraged to respect the comforts of their bodies.
This shouldn't feel radical for an exercise studio, but for many people, it will
Opened in 2019, just before the pandemic sent us home with our weights, stationary bikes and yoga mats, Echelon is a boutique spin studio in the heart of Dublin city that is challenging the "smaller is better" mantra so often peddled in fitness culture.
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Founded by Carla Bredin, a registered nutritionist and trainee psychotherapist, the idea was born out of Bredin's own love of spinning as a means of destressing. Drawing from her awareness of social systems and the damage they can do to an individual, acceptance, she says, was written into the studio's DNA.
"It very quickly clicked that we were kind of offering something that people hadn't found before", Bredin says. "The focus was on the capabilities of your bodies as opposed to what's wrong with your body, what's wrong with how it looks, how can you change it, how can you kind of sign up to a six week programme to shrink yourself?"
Bredin is vocal about the influence of racism, ageism, ableism and misogyny on how we view and discuss our bodies, and speaks on her own Instagram account about how the body is political.
"When you truly look at something like diet culture or fitness culture, it is rooted in patriarchy", she says. "It is rooted in white supremacy. We have an ideal of what a body should look like and how a person should present. And that ideal is thin, white, able bodied."
And while this philosophy echoes throughout the studio, from the gender neutral and accessible bathrooms to the signs promoting preferred pronouns, Bredin is realistic about trying to manage a space filled with all kinds of people.
"Although I am trying to create a principled space, it's not possible for me to call it a safe space because everyone that's in the space is adding to it", she says. "So some people will say things and I can't control that, but I can put our principles up on every single wall and say, look, if you're going to be here, please acknowledge that these are the principles that we adhere to."
She adds: "Some people still track their workout and we're not trying to stop people from doing that, but I suppose it's to try and move it away from that being the metric of how the workout was."
On a recent Wednesday evening, I tagged along on one of the spin classes at Bredin's invitation, my complimentary cycling cleats clacking nervously. I'm new to spin, having timidly tried a few in my current gym after one disastrously humbling attempt six years ago that I'll never get over.
Before long Bredin walked me through how to set up my bike, her keen eye adjusting it to the settings that would be least likely to strain or exhaust me. A mini screen sat at the front of each bike, showing metrics such as RPM, miles covered and more, though instructor Paula assured me that many cyclists will cover them and "feel it out" instead.
It's hard to describe the feeling of cycling in that cosy, dimly studio, but it was unlike any gym class I've tried before. The clicking onto pedals, the friendly, supportive chatter and the minutes spent cycling in darkness together created an atmosphere that I can only compare to getting ready to charge onto a football pitch together: united in a mission, adrenalin spiking.
Glowing an almost radioactive shade of red, I left buoyant, wishing it was the kind of class I could do every day of the week.
Being a boutique studio, it is - inevitably - on the pricier side, with classes costing €23 each. This isn't lost on Bredin, however, who brings it up when we speak.
"We're still not perfect because it is a boutique studio", she says. "It is in Dublin City Centre with crazy high rents and so there is a minimum fee which is not accessible to a lot of the population. I'm not saying we're some kind of utopia and we've got it all figured out for everyone, but I keep thinking about it. I keep trying to figure out how to make the space as accessible as possible."
The people it does draw, however, are a diverse mix, which was evident in just that first class I took. Bredin notes how "we have a lot of men in their 30s and 40s that also feel incredibly seen and found because of how toxic fitness culture can be for men. I'm a feminist and this is a women owned business and I talk about the patriarchy until I'm blue in the face and the patriarchy harms men as much as it harms women."
We wrap up our chat with more reflection on how you convey that message while running an exercise business. Bredin leans into the awareness that, in one way or another, most of us have fallwn foul of the incidious teachings of toxic fitness culture.
"We're not to blame for the messaging that we've adopted. If someone wants to diet, if someone wants to be smaller, if someone thinks that their happiness will be more as they achieve a smaller body, then I'm not railing against them because, of course, we've adopted that message.
"In my small way, I'm kind of trying to dismantle what diet culture has told us about fitness in just my little building, in my little city, in my little country."
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