Sit-ups, sauna, smoothie—it’s a familiar routine for most gym aficionados. But at the new wellness wing located in the 1 Hotel South Beach, the routine has been tweaked just a hair. It now includes climbing a cargo net that’s hanging off the ceiling and having a Matthew Kenney-created bowl of raw delicacies meet up with you afterwards.
Formerly known as the Gansevoort, the 1 Hotel received a $500 million renovation in March 2015 to fit the new parent company’s nature-inspired aesthetic. With its whitewashed design, airy accommodations and Tom Colicchio-fronted restaurant, the property has quickly become a sanctuary for celebrities and high-profile travelers looking to step away from the brassy South Beach scene. But until recently, the resort hadn’t been able to deliver on a key component of its holistic aesthetic: your wellness.
In late 2016, 1 Hotel installed the country’s first Spartan Gym—a permanent training location from the creators of the popular obstacle race. 14,000 square feet of red-and-black industrial space offer you the chance to train one-on-one with a Spartan-certified trainer or jump into a class on the facility’s AstroTurf. While the gym offers Pilates interval training, oceanfront yoga and even a meditation, it’s the Spartan Training that pushes the endurance envelope. During the 60-minute class, you’ll move through a series of stations at a good clip, usually climbing cargo nets, scrambling over obstacle walls, traversing monkey bars and pulling a weighted sled under the watchful eye of a trainer who’s quick to call-out anyone slacking on the job.
A soothing counterpoint to the grueling Spartan regimen: the neighboring Bamford Haybarn Spa. Located just feet from the gym, the spa is the first U.S. outpost of the popular U.K. brand helmed by founder and organic pioneer Lady Carole Bamford. The spa’s natural and sustainable philosophy was an ideal fit for the 1 Hotel’s mission. And the décor echoes that sentiment, with reclaimed hickory floors and willow bundles from salvaged trees. Treatments—which begin with a hand-and-foot ritual—range from an 80-minute massage using Himalayan salt stones or jade to bespoke facials. Afterwards, you can linger in your post-treatment serenity next to a gurgling fountain with a warm cup of tea in the spa’s white birch tree-encapsulated Woodland Room.
And because getting ridiculously pampered tends to work up an appetite, you should know that vegan celebrity chef Matthew Kenney has a fast-casual outpost here. Plnthouse, situated directly behind the Spartan Gym, offers up both indoor seating and an outdoor patio with unobstructed ocean views. Open for breakfast and lunch, the café embraces Kenney’s plant-based ethos, and features dishes like the garbanzo scramble, a cauliflower falafel bowl with sprouted chickpea hummus and harissa tahini, and an eggplant bahn mi wrap. Smoothies, juices and kombucha on tap round out the menu, along with a few dessert options that include the “Cookies + Cream”—a chocolate chip cookie paired with a vanilla bean milkshake made from cashews.
The good news: this cookie-and-milk combo really does do a body good, making seconds a delectable inevitability. “Plnthouse will be located next to the hotel’s recently opened Bamford Haybarn Spa and Spartan Gym, and near the property’s yoga space and pool which further enforces the idea that plant-based food and a healthy, active lifestyle are entirely intertwined,” Chef Kenney explained. “The health and wellness lifestyle is continuing to gain momentum in Miami, so the arrival of these concepts couldn’t be better.”
Jackie Gutierrez-Jones is a freelance editor and writer who covers lifestyle, travel and parenting. She’s contributed her local expertise and copy to UrbanDaddy, Time Out, Mommy Nearest, Vivala, Eater Miami Citizine.tv, Whole Foods Market and the Frost Museum of Science. Follow her on Twitter at @jaxiscool.
