Extreme fitness: are you tough enough?

Forget spinning and Zumba, gyms are now filled with chains, hammers and tyres. When did work-outs get so hardcore? Stuart Heritage joins the men and women going primal

Hit a tyre with a sledgehammer. That’s all I need to do. It isn’t an especially big sledgehammer, nor an especially small tyre. But can I do it? Can I balls.

Either of my grandfathers could have managed this without a second thought. They’d have put a hole in the tyre on their first attempt, such was their aptitude for manual labour. Even my dad, a month after his 65th birthday, could do this.

I am rubbish at hitting tyres with sledgehammers. My elbows bend at funny angles

Primal fitness asks you to reconnect with your animal self, and have as shitty a time as possible while you’re at it

Once the session ended, I crawled off to fold myself into the foetal position on a changing room bench