Welcome To The Fittest City On Earth

Want to get healthier? Learn from the best. Anna Hart spent a week in Santa Monica, California: “The birthplace of the physical fitness boom of the twentieth century”.

- Anna Hart

It’s 8am on a Monday morning when I slap my yoga mat onto the hot studio floor, feeling a pre-emptive sense of virtuous well-being as the first beads of sweat gather on my brow. But any smugness is swiftly eviscerated when I overhear a few hissed words from my neighbour to her friend. “Are you double-classing today, too? The killer combo is hot barre then hot power yoga, back to back,” she says. Welcome to Santa Monica, California, where ‘double-classing’ is a verb.