Flexing their muscles: Clubs push total body fitness
Date: 25-11-2006
Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited States |
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As competition heats up, racquet sports are augmented by a wide range of workouts
Indoor tennis was a hot item when Kay Yuspeh joined the fitness industry in the 1970s.
There were about a dozen tennis and racquetball clubs in the Milwaukee area then, and many of the managers were fresh out of college.
Yuspeh, at age 24, managed a club on Milwaukee's south side.
"It was a very young industry" with a lot of enthusiasm, she recalled.
Today, the clubs that once focused exclusively on racquet sports have largely morphed into multi-purpose fitness centers. Besides tennis and racquetball, they offer a smorgasbord of other activities such as indoor golf, climbing walls and water parks.
The Milwaukee area has attracted some of the national health-club chains, such as LA Fitness Inc., which is coming to Bayshore Town Center next spring.
LA Fitness usually opens a couple of health clubs when it enters a new market, said Yuspeh, now owner of Elite Fitness and Racquet Clubs, which has fitness centers in Brookfield, Glendale and Mequon.
The national chains come to areas like Milwaukee, even if there's already a plethora of locally owned clubs.
"In order for the big, publicly traded clubs to keep their shareholders happy, they have to keep expanding," Yuspeh said. "We have all been getting a lot more competition. There are 56 fitness franchises now that people can buy into."
Heading toward saturation
In New Berlin, there are 27 health and fitness businesses within a few miles of each other. Some of them are small storefront operations that cater to niche audiences, but it's still competition.
Eventually, the market here will become saturated, said Mike Kuglitsch, vice president and general manager at Motion Health & Racquet Club, in New Berlin.
People are drawn toward the small specialty clubs, or they're going to the "super clubs" that offer everything, Kuglitsch said. Clubs that have a bland menu of strength training, cardio workouts, and maybe a lap pool, are headed down the path toward extinction.
Motion Health & Racquet falls into the "superstore" category with indoor golf, tennis, a water park, 33 treadmills and tons of other workout machines. The sprawling club at Moorland and Beloit roads opened four years ago and now has about 6,000 members.
"We are lucky in that we have such a large facility," Kuglitsch said. "In the busiest time of the year, which is January, I have yet to see where people couldn't find something" to do at the club.
Tennis is still a mainstay at the Elite Fitness and Racquet Club on Burleigh Road in Brookfield, but over 30 years the club has evolved into a health and fitness complex that offers everything from karate classes to piano lessons.
Group exercise classes are the hot item now, Yuspeh said.
"Pilates and yoga are big because the baby boomers are getting older. They can't take the pounding like they used to," she added.
The tennis club where Yuspeh started her career has closed, and the building now houses a charter school.
"They didn't stay on top of the market. The clubs that expanded into multipurpose" places are the ones that lasted, she said.
Even as the area attracts more health clubs, the current owners say they can stay in the game - partly because they've been here for decades and know their membership well.
"We are kind of like of like a country club without the golf," Yuspeh said.
Some members have been with the same clubs for decades.
"This has been like my second home. It's my support group, my camaraderie," said Jimmy Go, a Brookfield physician who has belonged to the Elite Fitness and Racquet Club on Burleigh Road since the 1970s.
Nationally, the number of fitness clubs built has outstripped membership growth. There were about 29,000 clubs in operation in 2005, up from about 12,000 a decade earlier, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.
That's probably not good for some of the businesses, but consumers have benefited from the increased competition.
"Ultimately, it's good for the consumer because those clubs that are going to stay will have to get better at what they do. The owners who don't keep up will probably find themselves in a different business," said Ray O'Connor, chief executive officer at Wisconsin Athletic Clubs, which has six locations in the Milwaukee area.
"As operators, would we like to have a little less competition? Sure. But is that the way things typically work? No," O'Connor said.
Something like hotels
Health and fitness clubs are something like hotels: There are luxury clubs and budget ones, all serving different markets.
"I think ultimately we are going to see more players here. I don't think it has reached its height yet," O'Connor said.
Milwaukee ranks 27th, among U.S. metro areas, in fitness-center memberships. About 15% of the adults here belong to some type of health club, according to national data.
Fitness clubs, on average, have about a 40% membership retention rate.
Club managers say it's a constant challenge to attract and keep members. In some cases, people reject the club scene because of its reputation for high-pressure sales tactics.
"Unfortunately, a lot of people are still afraid to take club tours" because of a poorly handled sales pitch at some facilities, said Kuglitsch with Motion Fitness & Racquet Club.
YMCA clubs still dominate the Milwaukee area, in terms of the sheer number of memberships. The second biggest player here is Bally's, a Chicago-based chain.
It's expensive to run one of the big clubs. Motion Fitness & Racquet Club, for example, pays about $40,000 a month for water, gas and electric service.
Some of the smaller clubs have benefited from the growth in mega-sized facilities and their clamor for members, said Ken Weber, owner of the small Brickyard Gym in Bay View.
"Every time they launch a big advertising campaign, it sparks interest and sends people my way," Weber said. "It's just like having four restaurants all on the same corner. They all benefit" from the additional traffic.
Unlike multipurpose clubs, Brickyard Gym has focused on strength training and bodybuilding. Twenty years ago there were many more clubs like it, but most have since closed.
"The competition among the small clubs was very tough," Weber said. "Now, there are only two of us left: Brickyard Gym and Animal House Gym."
