Gearing gyms to genders

Cuts Fitness for Men is trying to get rolling, having started in 2003 with one facility in Clark, N.J. It has 10 open now, with at least two more on the way -- though none are in Missouri.

Southeast Missouri's single men's-only gym, The Blitz, recently closed. The center used the same 30-minute workout routine that Cuts offers.

But some area fitness centers say there's really no need to create a gender-based center for workouts. However, women who use the Curves fitness centers in Cape Girardeau and Jackson like the exclusivity.

Scott Hubbard of The Training Edge in Cape Girardeau said each workout routine should always be geared to an individual's needs and ability, not their gender.

By offering workouts and weight training programs that are individualized, Hubbard said there isn't any need to offer single-sex centers here.

"It's suited more to goals and abilities," he said. However, there are some fitness centers that offer equipment lines suited just to women, he said.

Gennaro is testing whether he can succeed by having men follow the trail blazed by women.

Curves founder Gary Heavin has his doubts. "Men are different from women," he said.

Curves leaped from a standing start in 1992 to about 6,000 facilities today, and claims to open around 200 franchises a month.

As with Curves, Cuts offers a half-hour aerobics-and-strength combination at a low price in a facility that can be tucked into the space of a men's store in a strip mall. It's a bare-bones workout shop. There are no coffee bars, no dance floors, not even a shower. It specializes in fast fitness for time-pressured participants.

And that's exactly what Melissa Sandin liked about the Jackson fitness center when she joined. There's nobody to compete against or wait on for a machine. And women who come to the facility like the quick workout.

"Three times a week is nothing compared to trying to fit in an hour and a half five days a week," she said.

Like Curves, Cuts programs target beginners. The machines work on hydraulics -- they resist the pressure of an exerciser pushing just as a car shock absorber resists the pressure of a car hitting a bump. Exercisers who want to work harder push harder, which creates more resistance in the hydraulics.

Between each machine is an aerobics station where exercisers can run in place. In a nod to machismo, Cuts' stations include a punching bag. Participants work by the clock: After a set period at each machine or station, they move to the next.

Such quick workouts can give benefit, said Dr. Doug McKeag, director of the Indiana University Center for Sports Medicine. "You do need at a minimum somewhere around 30 minutes," he said.

A single-sex focus can be acceptable under federal civil rights law, although more stringent state and local statutes might require clubs in some areas to accept both sexes, said Tony Ellrod, a Los Angeles lawyer with a specialty in health clubs.

A 2000 survey done for the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, a health club trade group, looked into whether people would prefer to start an exercise program at a single-sex club. The survey found that 63 percent of women but only 43 percent of men preferred single-sex.

Features editor Laura Johnston contributed to this report.