Lanserhof at The Arts Club

Lanserhof's urban translation, and a joint venture between The Arts Club and Lanserhof owner Dr Christian Harisch. It occupies six floors of a building on Dover Street, opposite the club itself, in the space that was formerly Dover Street Market — with interiors by Ingenhoven, the same practice behind Tegernsee and Sylt.

It was billed on opening as the world's first medical gym, and the description holds. The induction is a diagnostic exercise rather than a fitness assessment: MRI body composition analysis, a Spine and Movement Lab, and cardiovascular screening, with the results building a training plan that is medically supervised rather than trainer-devised.

The clinical side extends well beyond exercise — cardiology, orthopaedics, intravenous infusions, nutrition, acupuncture — supported by a team of doctors, therapists, sports scientists and trainers.

What it is not is a residential clinic. The Mayr-based fasting programmes do run here — seven, fourteen or twenty-one days under medical supervision — but undertaken from home, arriving for consultations and checks rather than withdrawing from ordinary life. That is the proposition: the Lanserhof framework applied to people who cannot disappear for a fortnight, and it should be judged on that basis.

Membership brings preferential clinic rates and priority booking for the fitness suite and classes, but the medical services are open to non-members too. Londoners intending to use it weekly will find the economics work; visitors passing through should look at the residential properties instead.