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Modern exercise has completely transformed over the last several years, encompassing a range of new programs and amenities from dynamic group classes to nutritional regimens. Fueled by the progressively competitive landscape that social media platforms like Instagram produce, mainstream people and professional athletes alike seek that extra edge through bespoke training facilities and the solutions they offer.
One of those emerging facilities is Royal Personal Training (RPT) — the luxurious and advanced training facility founded in 2015 in Beverly Hills that attracts high-end clientele. But RPT isn’t explicitly designed for world-class athletes and Instagram stars even though it has a slate of them as regular clients; it caters to everyone.
Founded by brothers Shahin and Shayan Safai, RPT offers an exclusive glimpse into the rapidly evolving market for the modern gym experience.
Personalized Approach, Customized Routines, & A Suite of Amenities
Embedded into most personal fitness journeys are some abstract goal that they have in mind but consistently proves challenging to achieve. Stories of people attempting fitness transformations from the most astonishing to the more modest continually reveal that several factors adversely affect their results: an inability to stay motivated and a lack of knowledge in evolving fitness and training techniques.
That’s precisely where the current mold of fitness has made its most significant impact.
Not only do practices like RPT pioneer techniques for specific muscle group strength training, stamina, and hybrid yoga exercises, but they serve as focal points for goal-oriented people of all backgrounds to learn premier exercise methods and stay inspired.
For example, personal trainers can set detailed roadmaps to meet your goals as a client, providing high-level regimens and tiered, small levels to meet those broader goals. This helps people to hone in on exactly what they want to get out of a program, and what is realistic over a specific period.
Personal trainers can also hold you accountable and keep you motivated — a sentiment that is reflected in multiple studies concerning the benefits of group training.
Coupled with the close relationship between fitness, health trends, and social media today, the modern gym experience is more than just exercise — it is a unique social confluence. So much so, that initiatives like Exercise Is Medicine actively encourage doctors and other health providers to promote their patients to join gyms, take group exercise classes, and detail personal health metrics with trainers.
The bespoke gym is the new gym, and exploring what RPT offers is a testament to that idea.
For example, RPT presents clients with an abundance of options, such as more advanced classes like “The Royal Attack,” comprised of two 10-minute resistance band challenges, over 1000+ reps, and a goal-oriented approach to beat at least 3 out of the 4 levels. Other offerings include personalized consultations on achieving desired fitness ends, customized training with over 30 world-class trainers, cryotherapy sessions, and corporate wellness programs.
RPT grew its brand, and facilities, from nothing too.
“We started out with only 1,400 square feet and the bare-bones minimum as far as equipment goes, including no employees, no structure, nothing,” details Shahin Safai. “Now we are sitting on a company with over 50 employees, where 40 of them are coaches, and we have a team of GM’s and sales associates.”
The facility is now a sprawling state-of-the-art 7,500 square feet building in the heart of Beverly Hills, including a separate group training facility over 1,000 square feet. The gym even incorporated Deco Lighting into its gym to set the tone for the mind and body, wielding the micro-benefits of often overlooked aspects of the training experience.
And the gym’s brand is underscored by its talented team of executive trainers, coaches, and more. That team has served as the foundation for RPT being ranked as LA’s #1 Training Facility twice in the last couple of years.
But the modern gym experience isn’t complete without the story or the social proof, which helps RPT stand out among a crowded field of competition.
Opportunity & High-Profile Branding
The Safai brothers started their journeys in Los Angeles without speaking a lick of English, working odd jobs at hotels and eventually gyms, when the idea clicked to venture out on their own and explore the world of fitness entrepreneurship.
That eventually led to RPT’s founding in 2015, where it resides in Beverly Hills — ostensibly the epicenter of social media personalities and, by extension, cultural fitness trends. And their social media presence highlights the facility’s (and brothers’) social media affluence.
RPT’s official Instagram account already has over 77k followers, and Shayan’s personal training account has more than 57k, as well as 65k for Shahin’s. Both have also recently served as the flashy mediums for unveiling RPT’s new line of fitness merchandise, known as RoyalActiveWear.
That type of social acknowledgment of RPT has translated to other social media platforms as well, with a partnership with Instagram fitness star, Sommer Ray, on the horizon, and numerous luxury hotel partnerships — including Peninsula Hotels — a mainstay for the gym’s brand. Growth has been nothing but extraordinary so far, and the Safai brothers plan on expanding to big corporations next — buoyed by a vision for a specialized, ultra-private training environment that could incorporate the amenities of a large corporate gym while providing a private, highly specialized experience.
In the competitive world of augmenting fitness and health prerogatives among the public, separating the signal from the noise can be challenging when you have your own predicaments to deal with. That’s why the vision of the modern gym experience is promising, and one that can hopefully help transition society away from obesity and its myriad downstream health deficiencies.
RPT has achieved that vision, and in the process, it has become more than just a gym — it is a microcosm for the modern cultural product of social fitness.
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