Gym slammed for tasteless promo: 'Slavery was hard and so is this'

The post attempted to link the workout to the film 12 Years A Slave. Photo / Supplied

A British gym chain has issued a public apology after one of its branches decided to mark the UK's Black History Month with a tasteless promo for a slavery-themed workout.

PureGym went public after their Luton & Dunstable gym shared details of their "12 Years of Slave [sic]" workout.

It read: "Entitled '12YearsOfSlave' (after the epic movie) this is our workout of the month designed by @mattsimpt to celebrate black history month. Slavery was hard and so is this.

"The twist to this is one rep of your first exercise, two of the second but before you move on to the third exercise which is also three reps you must start at the beginning to move on AND that's how the entire workout goes."

The offending post. Photo / Supplied

The post was later removed, but not before being criticised for being "tone deaf" and "offensive".

"Please delete this, apologise and do better. It is incredibly inappropriate/offensive to liken a difficult workout (which, compared to slavery, is a walk in the park ... and undertaken voluntarily) with the slave trade," a Facebook user quoted by The Independent said.

Another user added: "Pure Gym must have an offensively tone-deaf marketing team thinking it is acceptable to compare a workout to slavery."

"I appreciate that local gym's Facebook pages are probably run locally, but this is under your brand and you should probably fix this s***," said another.

PureGym eventually responded on the chain's main social media accounts, saying: "PureGym apologises unreservedly for a post made today by our gym in Luton. This post is wholly unacceptable, was not approved or endorsed by the company and was removed as soon as it was brought to our attention.

"Each of our 271 gyms has its own social media channels which are run locally. We take this matter extremely seriously and are urgently investigating how and why this post was made."

Official statement from PureGym regarding an inappropriate post on the Luton & Dunstable gym social media channels. pic.twitter.com/c91xwHIogk

— PureGym (@PureGym) October 5, 2020