[Physiological, social and motivational characteristics of fitness center clients].

Physiological, social and motivational characteristics of attendants to a fitness club. Little is known on the epidemiology of exercisers not engaging into competitive sports events, such as those attending fitness clubs. We investigated 85 regular attendants to a fitness club in Zurich, Switzerland: 44 men and 41 women, with a mean age of 35 (+/- 10) years. All subjects carried out the club-based fitness-test and answered additional questions on sports activity, lifestyle, and their motives to exercise. As anticipated, fitness club attendants smoked less and were more active and more educated than the general population. Among fitness club attendants themselves, known and plausible interrelationships between endurance capacity, body fat content, and habitual exercise could be confirmed as highly significant. Body fat content, as estimated from bioimpedance measurement, was more closely related to important dependent variables than the body mass index, for example to female endurance capacity (r = -0.33 vs. -0.03), or to age in men (r = 0.48 vs. 0.22). Unexpectedly, social factors were only poor predictors of differences in fitness and exercise levels within the study sample. Compared with joggers, fitness club attendants seemed to be motivated relatively more by targets of health promotion, e.g. weight control, and less motivated by "intrinsic" joy and fun with sports activity itself. Further studies will have to demonstrate whether fitness clubs are actually able to promote "lifetime exercise".