It's ironic that despite all the hi-tech equipment at Pure Fitness' latest gym in Causeway Bay, I'm trying to haul myself up a rope like a monkey, while a guy's hand is on my butt. "Leg straight, lean back slightly, arm over arm ... pull!" instructs Alan Pak Ka-lun, a personal trainer who is mine for the next hour.
With the help of his strategically placed hand, I make it to the top and back down again. By this time - about five minutes into my introduction to the new PurMotion functional training system - I've broken a sweat. This is vaguely worrying, as I've five more exercises to try, each on different attachments that the modular system accepts.
PurMotion was created in 2009 by Puerto Rican Olympian Jorge Bonnet. But it only recently debuted in Hong Kong, when Pure Fitness acquired the system for its fifth gym in Hong Kong, which opened in September at Lee Theatre Plaza.
The training system is like a playground on steroids. Its foundation is a central frame that weighs about 450kg, and is about 2.7 metres high, three metres long, and two metres wide. Connected to the sides and corners of this frame are add-ons: ropes, straps, pulleys, bands, cables, slings, rings, bars, rods, and handles.
It all seems very low-tech - no electricity is needed, and there are no massive weights, and no touch screens or headphone jacks.
PurMotion is the latest equipment to promote "functional fitness", one of the top 10 fitness trends for next year according to the American College of Sports Medicine's (ACSM) Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends 2013 report.