Gym Class Heroes
Teenagers across the country are bucking the mallrat stereotype and, instead, becoming a presence at local health clubs
When Solana Mejia joined her local Curves health club for women at the age of 14, she weighed a dangerously high 234 pounds and was desperate to turn her life around.
"I had pretty much hit rock bottom," says Mejia, who lives in the San Fernando Valley in California. "I had a negative view of exercise,” she says. “At school, they make you do gym and make you do laps. For a heavy kid, it wasn't fun coming in last every time."
The youth friendly atmosphere of Curves was just what Mejia needed. She soon began to lose weight and, more importantly, she began to change her attitude about exercise. She enrolled in kick boxing and aerobics classes, watched what she ate, started running three miles a day and working out at home.
As a result she's dropped 70 pounds in three years. "Joining Curves sort of became a launching point for everything I do now," says Mejia, now 17 years old. "It taught me the basics of fitness and how fitness programs work."
Mejia represents a growing trend among teens to hit the exercise circuit instead of the mall after school. With either punching bags or interactive fitness programs at their local health club, they are changing the mentality regarding teens and health.
From 1987 to 2006, the number of people under 18 who joined health clubs rose from 3.4 percent to 8.4 percent, according to American Sports Data, Inc. In 2006, there were 2.3 million health club members between the ages of 12 and 17, according to a study by American Sports Data and the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.
Danny Auerbach, 15, Los Altos, Calif., says he was one of those teens who used to hang out downtown or tried to find a game of pickup basketball after school. Now he's found a new home when the bell rings: Overtime Fitness, an interactive gym with teens in mind.
"This gym is definitely a teen hangout," Auerbach says. "They have video games where you have to use your body to play the games. They have a whole part of the gym that is dedicated to schoolwork and rooms where you can hang out with your friends or use a computer."
Located in Mountain View, California, Overtime Fitness features traditional gym fare such as free weights, treadmills and exercise bikes. New twists make it more appealing to the teen market, including a 17-foot-tall rock climbing wall, bungee cord jumping and a fitness arcade complete with virtual boxing and dancing. It even offers wellness seminars on diet, sleep issues and acne.
"I think health clubs have not been oriented towards teens as members," says Laura Tauscher, CEO of Overtime Fitness. "Teens like more interaction socially, and, in our opinion, gyms need to have a recreational element, a social element and a coolness factor."
New technology may also help attract teens to fitness centers, says Rosemary Lavery, public relations coordinator for the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association.
"Interactive fitness and exer-gaming have become popular in the last few years," Lavery says. "Dance Dance Revolution, Wii sports and seamless iPod integration are examples of tech developments that the club industry can utilize. The teen generation [is] very tech savvy as a whole, and virtual fitness is a great way to get them moving, as opposed to sitting on the couch with a remote."
Overtime Fitness has yet to turn a profit since opening last September and recently opened its enrollment to adults in hopes of boosting revenue. Tauscher says it's all part of their "journey to profitability."
Meanwhile, other health clubs are taking notice of the growing teen market.
Among the clubs that are providing teen programming, Lavery says, are the Cherry Hill Health & Racquet Club in New Jersey, Club Sport in California and 24-Hour Fitness.
"We see the teens as an area of growth and as an opportunity," says Brian Everson, director of research and development of Life Time Fitness, a Minnesota-based company that operates 65 athletic, fitness and recreation centers in 15 states.
"We are currently testing an interactive area with our current model centers for teens,” he says. “We grant access to the fitness floor to kids above the age of 12. Plus we have programs and amenities to keep kids active, like rock walls, open basketball, swimming pools with water slides - not just a single 'teen' program."
While the clubs get more active in promoting fitness to teens, so do the teens themselves.
Many teen members of Overtime Fitness are busy bringing in their friends to check it out as part of the company's "teen training" program, Tauscher says.
Back in the San Fernando Valley, the fitter, happier Mejia hopes to use her enthusiasm for fitness to help others exercise. She recently turned in a job application at her local Curves, where owner Brenda Lemus calls Mejia "a walking advertisement."
Mejia just smiles at the compliment. "Some people have told me that I've inspired other people, which is cool," she says.
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