Womens gym Norwich: every female only option

The female only venues

• EmpowHER Fitness Norwich, Unit 1, 5 Whiffler Road NR3. 5.0 from 43 Google reviews, open 6.30am to 7.30pm Monday to Saturday, closed Sundays. It is doubling the size of its Whiffler Road site.
• Fitter Body Ladies Norwich, 25 Morgan Way NR5, in Bowthorpe. 4.9 from 71 reviews, and structured as a coached programme rather than an open gym floor.
• Vixxen Studios, 100 to 106 Ber Street NR1. 5.0 from 40 reviews. A female focused reformer pilates studio that opened recently in the city centre.

Three venues for a city of 147,000 is thin, which is the honest finding here rather than a complaint. Two of the three have opened or expanded in the last year, so the direction of travel is the right one.

Female trainers and female led studios

Seven of the 109 personal trainers we list describe themselves as women's personal trainers, including Pilates Back To Health at 5.0 from 98 reviews and Mum-Fit Norwich on Guardian Road at 5.0 from 26. Beyond the gym floor, most of the city's 19 pilates studios and 25 yoga studios are small, independent and run by women, which for many people solves the same problem in a different room.

Fitter Body Ladies and EmpowHER both work on coached sessions with set times. If you want a room you can walk into at 9pm, neither is that, and the honest alternative is a quiet hour at a mixed gym.

What to ask a mixed gym before you join

Most women in Norwich train at mixed gyms, so the practical questions matter more than the label.

• Is there a separate free weights area and can you see it from the entrance.
• Which hours are quiet. Staff know this exactly, and the answer is usually mid morning and early afternoon.
• Is the 24 hour access staffed or fob only overnight. Nine Norwich gyms open around the clock and they are not all staffed all night.
• Is there a women only class block on the timetable, and is it included.

For quiet independents with small memberships, look at north Norwich and Thorpe St Andrew. For coached sessions where nobody is watching, see fitness classes.