Stephen Cheuk’s S10 Training gym has become New York’s coolest nonmembers’ club to sweat it out. Carson Griffith feels the burn.
Stephen Cheuk
Stephen Cheuk, the handsome fitness guru best known as the founder of S10 Training, is as devoted to health as the 8,000-square-foot full-service wellness utopia he has built in New York City’s West Village.
“I live and breathe health and wellness, so everything in the space is everything I would want in terms of equipment, recovery, massage,” he explains in his silky-smooth Australian accent on a call from his home on the Lower East Side. “I consider myself the ultimate consumer.”
S10 Training consists of a café, workout space, and spa, each decked out with the latest in wellness capabilities meticulously considered by Cheuk’s experience and personal preferences. Served up in the café are medical-grade ingredients by Thorne, a supplement company that also provides on-site doctors to perform blood work and lab testing for everything from heavy metals to hormone levels. The private gym, where guests can train with Cheuk himself (his clients include Joe Jonas, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Diplo) or another member of his team (Julie “Jaws” Nelson, one of Wilhelmina’s original fitness models, is very popular) in one-on-one sessions or in small groups, boasts equipment by top-of-the-line companies like Watson and Keiser. There are machines for metabolism and CO2 testing to maximize diet and exercise, dry needling, and soft-tissue bodywork in the treatment rooms; and six private spa areas where guests can control the music and lighting during their steams, showers, or infrared sauna.
S10 Training in the West Village
Unlike most fitness studios in New York, S10 Training does not operate on a membership model. It opened as the first à la carte one-stop fitness space, but Cheuk admits it can be difficult to get sessions, as trainers are often booked solid. “We’re constantly trying to hire more trainers.”
Cheuk admits he has been toying with the idea of adding a membership component to S10 Training’s services, similar to his former employer Equinox (the Printing House location sits opposite from S10’s glossy West Village location). “This will make [S10 Training] accessible to more people, as Equinox has no competition right now. It’s basically Equinox or nothing,” he explains.
Cheuk, who is originally from Perth, Australia, initially received a bachelor of arts to become a graphic designer, but he “hated sitting in front of a computer all day.” Inspired by a friend who was a fitness trainer, Cheuk decided he might try being a personal trainer part-time for extra money and travel opportunities.
“I just become obsessed with it,” Cheuk explains. “This was almost 15 years ago, when being a trainer wasn’t cool or a career path.”
The journey eventually landed him in New York City, where he cultivated a handful of clients at Equinox Printing House. Eventually, he became frustrated that he was unable to find a gym to train his clients using both the methods and materials he wanted. In 2014, Cheuk opened the first S10 location, “a little 1,800-square-foot gym in Tribeca. I remember when I signed the lease, I walked into the empty space, and I was like: ‘What the hell do you do?’ How do you do construction? How do you hire people? How do you run a business?”
The sleek recovery spa at S10 Training
For the first few months, Cheuk was the sole employee of S10 Training. But as the business grew, so did Cheuk’s need for a larger space. In 2018, he signed a lease on the current location which, after a hefty construction process, opened in January 2020—immediately before Covid. “The fact that we survived says something,” Cheuk notes earnestly.
As for S10 Training’s future, Cheuk is again looking to expand. He has his eyes set on a Brooklyn location in the immediate future, and then potentially to cities outside of New York. “This way even more people can see everything that we’ve built.”
