To mark the launch of La Pochette at Digme Fitness Le Journal met with founder, Ultra marathon runner and tri-athlete Caoimhe Bamber to find out how they became the UKs leading spin and HIIT studios and hear about their mission to inspire us to dig deep and experience real achievement.
Since opening their first pay-as-you-train studio in Richmond, way ahead of the curve back in 2016, Digme now boasts four locations in London and one in Oxford with an envious line-up of world class instructors. The multi-disciplinary team are united in their mission to motivate and inspire everyone from absolute beginners to ultra-athletes and help them exceed individual goals in their signature classes. This ethos comes directly from Bamber and her husband, Digme’s CEO Geoff Bamber, who would summarise their mission as bringing real achievement for everyone.
The name, Digme, is relevant in understanding the studios approach. Digme is the Hawaiian beach from which the gruelling Ironman World Championship begins, an icon for ultra-athletes everywhere and experienced personally by Geoff who competed there twice. It is the extraordinary journey of dedication, courage and endurance embarked upon by the participants which underline and inspire their ideas around fitness. Caoimhe explains “fitness should create memories and take you places. It should enable you do things you couldn’t do before and make you feel superhuman”.
They want to help their clients to “set their sights high, achieve more than they ever expected, leave feeling exhilarated and be in the best shape of your life - digging deep for real gains”. Having set aside a successful City career in law to launch Digme (whilst on maternity leave no less), Caoimhe is no stranger to competitive environments but explains that’s not why they implemented high-tech performance data tracking in the studios.
Instead, the data is there in classes as a tool for the customers to track progress over time and to give themselves the extra push in a class “It’s not about competing against the person next to you, it’s about being a better version of you”. In doing so, Digme becomes a convincing agent for personal change for its customers – whether it’s losing weight, reducing stress, looking healthier, improving athletic performance or simply releasing a legal endorphin-driven high.
Add in beautiful studios to this sophisticated tracking system and the best equipment on the planet, and you have a pretty persuasive model.
And yet, what sets Digme apart is its sense of community. For Caoimhe this community is everything - she even met Geoff in a gym - and loves the friendships which form with those she shares classes with; swapping stories about evil 6.30am classes or fancy-dress party rides with spinning buddies bumped into in the supermarket. As Caoimhe sums up, fitness is “not something that should be suffered, it should be cherished. It’s your spare time, it’s supposed to be fun!”
Amen to that!
The La Pochette collection is now available to buy in all five Digme Studios, your nearest location can be found on the Digme website, https://www.digmefitness.com/our-studios.
Follow Digme socially @digmefitness
