Concept 1010, a fitness facililty in Healthcare City. When I met him, I learnt about the much-hyped about Concept 1010's new workout programme.

By the end of our meeting, I took up the challenge to participate in a 10-session course to personally decide if it was worth the hype. If you recall, the idea is to push your body through a 20-minute workout once a week (or twice, if you please).

The session is engineered to create and maintain the utmost muscular intensity, as each exercise is set to the maximum weight you can endure, and each repetition is monitored to last 20 seconds – a 10-second extension, followed by a 10-second retraction.

Everything is done to ensure that during those 20 minutes a member focuses completely on the exercises.

There are no mirrors, TVs or music, and while you are there, no other members. The gym is exclusively yours for the complete duration of the session. Well, almost exclusive – your personal trainer remains beside you the entire time.

And while other people in the gym can be distracting, said trainer is there, ensuring you're anything but distracted.

So the challenge was presented, and I agreed. I entered the gym set at 20°C and met Rincy, my trainer.

The painful process

Step one: lower back machine
After a final sip of water, I surrender myself to the first machine. It actually has a seat belt buckle, so once I am seated and buckled, the weights are engaged.

And thus begins three-and-a-half minutes (20 minutes divided by 6 machines) of gruelling extensions of my poor lower back. When that final repetition is shook out of me, I'm unbuckled and hustled a metre away to...

Step two: the leg press
The weights are preset. So all I do is lower myself into the bench. Rincy fastens a shoulder brace and instructs: "Start. Slowly. Remember to breathe normally!"

For whatever reason, it is on this machine that I have the most difficulty keeping the smooth, steady pace that Concept 1010 demands. The shift from extension to retraction is supposed to be seamless, almost like a circling motion.

With the machine set to my personal weight threshold, the slow retraction is often difficult, but Rincy is ever-present to "remind" me to focus on control. So on I go, flexing each muscle fibre from the hip down, moving the foot plate back and forth for those three minutes and change.

Step three: the pull down machine
If there is a break in the 20 minutes, it is between steps two and three, for unlike the others, there is a three-metre space between the machines. Sweet rest!

But before I know it, Rincy has ensured my back is straight and before I can scheme up some distracting small talk, she's at it again: "Start. Slowly. Straighten your back. Breathe. Go!"

This machine is essentially grounded chin-ups, slowly working out the arms, shoulders, chest, back and torso. Three minutes finally comes to a close, though time seems more accurately measured by Rincy's endless demand for, "One more! Okay, last time! Slowly. Give it one more!"

The instructor, I am sure, clearly understands the word "slowly", but not I think the concept of the words, "one more" or "last" time!

Step four (half way there!): the chest press
Like the previous machine, this one too focuses on the upper body, especially the chest, shoulders and arms. Rincy encourages me to relax my mind and the rest of my body and to suspend myself in a sort of vacuum, where only my chest, arms and shoulders exist and experience the weights against gravity.

In these focused voids, I feel the various tendons, bones and muscles working together. The private gym area makes it easy to slip into real concentration and the heavy payload demands it.

All the individual attention from Rincy can be distracting at times – it's disconcerting to be the uninterrupted centre of someone else's attention.

But.. the workout would be a whole lot worse if it weren't for the delightful company. Three-and-a-half minutes of mind-over-matter training and Rincy's finally saying, "Last time!" and we are shuffling over to...

Step five: the abdominal machine
I soon learnt not to have too much cola or too big a meal before sessions. Not simply because they are the primary reason I need to work out in the first place, but because one of the six machines centres on full abdominal crunches. The ab machine starts from a straight back position going into a total crunch and pushing the maximum amount possible.

With each repetition my stomach quivers. Before I realise, we're on to the next station.

Step six: the back and neck machine
One last exercise! Can it be true? Rincy rushes me to the last machine and straps me in. This machine has a padded pocket that is lowered onto my head. I feel like a monkey about to be shot into space, buried down in all the gadgetry! The weights are engaged, and for the last 200 seconds I slowly extend and retract my head.

It is not long before I feel the steady burn of muscle use in my neck and back muscle groups.

The extension of the neck has a nice way of really opening my throat, and the breathing is sweeter than ever, which of course Rincy is so vigilant in reminding me to do. "One last time.

Slowly. One more time. Ten seconds each way." And I can hardly believe it: we're done!

I return to my phone, switch it on, and realise Rincy wasn't lying. Only 20 or so minutes have passed, yet I've somehow managed to push every muscle in my body to the brink of failure. I muster the sanity and courtesy, to gasp, "Thanks, Rincy. Same time next week?"

20-minute workouts work
I felt like I had been hit by lightning. That thousand volts had seized me, tickled and tormented every part of me, and then raged off to create chaos elsewhere. I was then free to enjoy the random twitches and tingles of the involuntary spasms associated with well-worked muscle groups.

About 20 minutes after my first session, once my body realised that it was released from the weights and free again and, I just sort of shook.

Now, amid this haze of use-induced-confusion, my mind and body were suffering. I slowly realised that this method works for me. Twenty minutes a week. I can handle that.

I'm not trying to sound like I am so very important that I have too many activities demanding my all-too-precious time. I'm just... well, I am not that into working out!

That Concept 1010 delivers one of the overall healthiest and most effective fitness programmes is just a bonus, really. The idea of an hour-long workout isn't going to get me into the gym.

Much too much of an ordeal: the drive, change, ever-wandering around between machines, hour-long series of psychological self-pep-talks, showers, changing again and driving back. Not too appealing.

Furthermore, the idea of visiting the gym three, four, five times a week? Not a chance!

Finally, I must share an uneasiness I face when I look at myself in gym mirrors. There's a certain layered vanity to the situation, especially noticeable on the cardio machines. Two staples of the standard gym workout – treadmills and stairmasters – have always struck me as strange and ironic: time on them only makes me question the progress of technology and civilisation as a whole.

They give me the uncomfortable feeling that, "Yes, Steve, you are indeed wasting your time, energy and life walking in circles and getting nowhere!" So there I am, a twofold attack of vanities!

But again, all my aversion is not based in some sense that I am so busy, I just don't have the drive that sort of commitment requires. Sports, friends, movies, work and restaurants, sure, but history (and my stomach) has proven that I will not stick to a rigorous workout routine.

As mentioned, Concept 1010 offers exclusive, one-on-one use of the facilities during the session. This is also nice, as waking up at 5 am to avoid the crowds hardly appeals either.

In those early morning hours I'm hard pressed to name almost anything that I feel more important than sleep.
So suffice it to say that this "half hour of power" really suits me!

For days after the workout I walk around relishing the feeling of slightly inflated muscles. It is a nice reminder to watch my nutrition levels, opt for using the stairs, and use small day-to-day opportunities to engage in a healthier lifestyle – and actually enjoy that lifestyle instead of being stuck in a gym.

By my next appointment, most evidence of the last session's work has settled, and my muscles are ready again for a full force workout.

At present, I am only a few sessions into the 10-session programme. Between the actual working out and the attention it brings to fitness during the downtime, some results are already apparent. I feel better, I'm eating better, and my muscles are feeling more like muscles.