The gym
The Old Pattern Shop is twelve thousand square feet on one level with a mezzanine studio, and everything in it is included in one of three memberships or priced on one page. Each of the six has its own page with what it is, what it costs, and who runs it.
01
Twelve thousand square feet of converted ironworks: six squat racks, four platforms, dumbbells to 50kg, a cable row of twelve stations, rowers, bikes, skiers and treadmills under the big windows, a turf lane for sleds, and a quiet corner with mats and kettlebells for people who want to be left alone.
Off-peak £24 a month (9 to 4 weekdays and all weekend), full £34 a month (any time).
02
Strength, circuits, boxing, spin, yoga, mobility, a beginners' class and the Sunday hill run, forty-two sessions a week from 6:15am to 7:30pm, capped at sixteen so the coach can see everyone, booked in the app up to a week ahead or walked into if there is space.
Included in the unlimited membership (£44 a month, £28 for students).
03
One-to-one coaching with one of our four trainers, employed by the gym, at one price whoever you choose: £35 an hour, £30 in a block of six, £28 in twelve, or £50 an hour for two of you. Strength, weight loss, getting back after an injury or a baby, a first 5k, a first pull-up. Their pages say who does what.
£35 an hour, £30 an hour in a block of six (£180), £28 in a block of twelve (£336), £50 an hour for a pair.
04
If you have never been in a gym, or not for twenty years: a free week with no card details, an induction with a trainer, the quiet corner with no racks and no mirrors, First Steps classes three times a week, and a written programme that starts where you are. Half the people here started this way.
The free week costs nothing and takes no card details.
05
Boxing Fitness on Tuesday and Thursday nights with three heavy bags and pads with the coach, the Saturday conditioning session with sleds, ropes and the yoke on the turf lane, and one-to-one boxing with Kai. No sparring, no contact, just the fitness of boxing and the people who come for it.
Boxing Fitness and Saturday Conditioning are classes: free for unlimited members, £7 drop-in.
06
A week of the whole gym: the floor, every class on the timetable, the induction with a trainer and a programme to take away. Book it on this website with a name and an email, come in when the desk is staffed, and decide at the end. If you join, the week was free; if you do not, that is the end of it.
Free.
The building
The Pattern Shop was built in 1870 for the ironworks\' carpenters, who made the wooden patterns the foundry cast from and needed the north light to do it. It stood empty for thirty years until Gav and Lowri took the lease in 2016, kept the windows, the beams and the stone, and put a sprung floor over the flags. The mezzanine where the pattern-makers\' drawings were stored is now the yoga and mobility studio. We mention it because people ask, and because the light is the reason the daytime floor is the nicest place in Merthyr to lift something heavy.
Seven days of the floor, every class on the timetable and an induction with a trainer, booked with a name and an email. Join afterwards at the website price with no joining fee, or do not, and nobody rings you. About six in ten people join.
